Talk:Program Capacity and Learning

Program Capacity and Learning

Criteria to prioritize Program Capacity and Learning work

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Leave your comments below. I believe that both impact and scalability are key elements to prioritize program capacity and learning work since they are directly connected with program capacity and learning networks. Replication of best practices is crucial for an education program to prosper and expand. On the other hand, sustainability and community leadership are required in order to have some impact and scalability. They go hand in hand. Community leaders can create and expand education programs and they are usually supported by the learning and teaching community. Thus, building leadership skills is essential. --Roxyuru 10:45, 1 February 2016 (UTC) Hi Roxy, thanks for your comments and feedback! Do you have any ideas or comments on what are best ways to share these practices, in your view? I'm asking because we have experimented with a few resources, like program toolkits (i.e., Education toolkit, learning patterns and learning circles. We are now looking forward to improving these formats, and any feedback of this sort would be really useful. Thanks! María (WMF) (talk) 14:59, 4 February 2016 (UTC) I believe we should add a <br/> after the first point (impact). Or multiple line breaks, for increasing our contributor base should be our top priority. If we can't expand our editor base, all the other directions are irrelevant. We are bleeding people, plain and simple. Sure, there's less low-hanging fruit on Wikipedia, the internet has changed since 2005-2007, there's plenty of reasons and possible explanations. However, the truth is we face extinction: the number of one-time editors is pretty constant, yet we loose more devoted, grognard Wikipedians than we attract, and it's a problem all wiki sister projects face. It might not be that obvious when looking at English language Wikipedia, or any other huge project where the language base is large enough, but still. As far as our education activities go, we often focus on what we can teach to others, on skills we can pass on, like citing sources, critical analysis of sources and so on. Yet I get the impression that we're loosing sight of what such education projects were aimed at originally: attracting more people to our movement, to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikisources. If they learn some useful skills in the process - that's splendid. But first and foremost we need to make sure that the people we reach stay part of our movement, that they actually hit "Edit" once in a while. Without people we could expand content indefinitely, but we'd loose manpower to manage it. Halibutt (talk) 09:48, 2 February 2016 (UTC) Hi Halibutt, thanks for sharing your thoughts and perspective. I wanted to chime in as part of the Wikipedia Education Program here on the PC&L team. The education activities that we support focus primarily on getting students to make contributions to Wikimedia projects, particularly growing local language Wikipedias and addressing content gaps. While we hope that students stick around and become part of the Wikimedia community, that has never been our primary goal. We hope to make the most of student activity in a mutually beneficial way -- students learn important skills and our Wikimedia projects benefit with new, quality content. We take the long view that there will always be a steady supply of students, and Wikipedia assignments can continually bring some of them into the fold, if only for a semester (retaining professors and institutions ensures continuous contributions, rather than the same cohort sticking around). Again, it would be great if more student editors stuck around for the long term (and some do!) but that seems outside the scope of Wikipedia classroom assignments, Wiki Clubs and Wiki Camps, etc. Feel free to disagree :) and let us know if you have different ideas or approaches here that communities could pilot! Tighe Flanagan (WMF) (talk) 16:30, 4 February 2016 (UTC) @TFlanagan-WMF:, I know that and I'm very fond of your work (and mine as well, as I personally ran/supervised dozens of wiki workshops last year here in Poland :) ). Yet, I believe we're talking about two distinct things here. On one hand there's Wikipedia as a repository of content. We can expand/acquire new content indefinitely with student assignments, GLAM cooperation, institutional projects, government support, you name it. Wherever there is content, we can acquire it, it's only a matter of time and money. But there's also Wikipedia as a place where volunteers digest content, edit it, polish it, make it easier to understand, update it, and do all the heavy lifting that make Wikipedia what it is. I strongly believe that Wikipedia's success was possible not because it had the best Public Domain content we could acquire from external sources, but because we had enough active Wikipedians to, say, turn the racist, sexist and misleading 1911 Britannica articles into verifiable and reliable knowledge. And keep those articles updated well after the semester ended. I know I might be barking at a wrong tree here, but loosing the editor base is the largest risk there is. Sure, Wikipedia is a great teaching tool, it belongs in education and teaching Wiki to students worldwide is important, fun and rewarding. But that's not enough if we want Wikipedia to last another 15 years as a live project. For that we'd have to increase the number of students who actually stay, or find a way to attract new people. Sure, Wiki Education is one way to do it, and I would love if the project was, errr, more oriented towards that goal. So I guess it's a matter of priorities: we could either treat teaching free licenses, citing sources and whatnot as a nice bonus to us searching for new Wikimedians, or finding new Wikimedians a by-product of teaching basic scientific method to teens and adults. I'd go with the earlier. Halibutt (talk) 14:04, 5 February 2016 (UTC) Thanks for expanding on your thoughts, Halibutt. I'm not sure I have an answer when it comes to the shrinking editor base, but appreciate you highlighting it here. I also think it would be good to ground that discussion in some context -- each language/project has a different rate of participation and dynamics when it comes to editor retention (citation needed). Depending on the kind of targets we set, some of the traditional education activities do result in some retention, so while it's not a magical solution for growing the editor base, but it's probably part of the solution. And I also appreciate how there are many facets to "education" in the Wikimedia world, and glad you are a strong ally leading and implementing activities in Poland. Tighe Flanagan (WMF) (talk) 15:50, 5 February 2016 (UTC) I believe one priority should be supporting network building. When people meet others who share the same concerns and goals it is easier to develop projects or accomplish tasks. If we define together the priorities of the program (increasing the number of artices, growing the editors base, training people, attracting new people to the movement, or make people stay) and tackle them as a global task force, we could have more impact. I think we need a more precise vision of how global, regional, and local efforts are (or should be) related to each other.--Paolaricaurte (talk) 21:59, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Proposed Projects for Program Capacity and Learning

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Leave your comments below. In reference to the Program and Event Dashboards, it can be a good idea to keep both the Wiki Ed Dashboard and the Outreach Dashboard so that educators who are familiar with either of them could keep on using the dashboards, at least for a while, until they make the transition. I like the idea of having one dashboard that works for general programs across all Wiki projects and all languages. --Roxyuru 10:52, 1 February 2016 (UTC) Hi Roxy, this is a good point. We are definitely thinking of technological solutions that are not a barrier to program leaders' work, but a facilitator tool. In this sense, we hope to integrate al useful UX design that is already implemented, specially if program leaders are already familiar with it. María (WMF) (talk) 15:02, 4 February 2016 (UTC) I think we need to set short, medium and long-term goals. We should consider the obstacles or requirements to achieve those goals, including capacity building, technological solutions, network building, project-oriented work, etc. Then, we need to define a strategy, and an implementation plan. --Paolaricaurte (talk) 22:07, 20 February 2016 (UTC) Hi Paolaricaurte. I couldn´t agree more with you! In a project-oriented team work about program capacity and learning, technological solutions and network building should go hand in hand, together with the strategy we select to achieve our short-term goals and the long-term objectives we have in common. --Roxyuru 21:53, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Other comments

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Leave your comments below. @MCruz (WMF): just making sure that you see the comments on this talk page. Thanks, --Pine✉ 06:27, 4 February 2016 (UTC) Interested in finding ways to create impact? Do communities matter to you? There are many resources about community management. Take your pick.Have a look at https://experts.feverbee.com/t/do-online-communities-change-long-term-behavior/2061, https://www.feverbee.com/how-to-build-an-online-community/ or https://www.feverbee.com/the-10-principles-of-professional-community-management/ Richard Millington is the author of Buzzing Communities, a worthwhile read. Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 19:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC) Thank you for the recommended reading list, Ad Huikeshoven! María (WMF) (talk) 22:54, 12 February 2016 (UTC) Just wanted to say a big thank you to the PC&L team for engaging in this discussion! I really appreciate you all asking program leaders what we want and what we think of your preliminary ideas. Having this discussion is really important for both sides. Thank you! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:09, 12 February 2016 (UTC) Thanks to you for leaving your thoughtful comments, LiAnna (Wiki Ed)! María (WMF) (talk) 22:54, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Process: GLAM-Wiki Support

Positive Support	Long overdue, need for coordination and support at some level +++ Long overdue advocacy of technical change and support +
Suggestions
Concerns	Scoping as “GLAM” instead of broader “partnerships” including STEM ++ Does allocating staff time to a coordinator make sense, especially when most of the needs are largely technical? + Could the role be filled by something different than one person?
Challenges & Risks	Risks identified by team are reasonable, especially concern for technical capacity Needs Clear smart goals (worked on in Annual Plan)

From Daria via email: "GLAM-Wiki support looks promising because of not having that much centralised support in recent years."

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Discussion In what ways does the GLAM-Wiki Support concept support the area Program Learning & Infrastructure? What questions or concerns do you have? Add a topic and leave your comments, or add to an existing topic, and sign below Clarifying terms and interface with existing and affiliate leadership roles Hello, What is the WMF "Strategic" team? Done -- supposed to be "Strategic partnerships"Astinson (WMF) (talk) 17:59, 5 February 2016 (UTC) PL&I should support GLAM, not the other way around (as worded above under "discussion") How does WMF intend to interface with the many existing GLAM programs of affiliates? Affiliates can have local contacts and detailed cultural knowledge. It seems important to me that WMF efforts in GLAM should complement and reinforce the efforts of affiliates, and the affiliates should lead in this area. WMF can play a helpful supporting role, for example by developing software tools that are helpful to GLAM professionals and volunteers. --Pine✉ 00:22, 27 January 2016 (UTC) On point 2, you are correct, that was a needed edit as the stem contained the word support as well (i.e. how does this support support appears incorrect but actually would have been) JAnstee (WMF) (talk) 03:05, 29 January 2016 (UTC) @Pine: For the question about WMF interface with affiliates: we don't plan to be supporting any local institutional relationships -- that is still going to be the local responsibility. Our main focus will be on: a) identifying project models and strategies that help affiliates grow impact of GLAM-Wiki, b) promoting GLAM-Wiki through international networks, and c) advocating for technology and other support at the WMF that benefits GLAM-Wiki. We are thinking that we will position any hires for this effort not as "coordinators" or "project managers", but rather as a "strategist" -- the job will largely be focused on strategic interventions: finding the best successes coming out of the existing GLAM-Wiki community and figuring out what movement support will ensure that those successes can be repeated in other communities and scaled in communities where they have already been successful. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 16:40, 5 February 2016 (UTC) Astinson (WMF) I guess I'm unclear about why WMF would take on this role. The affiliates discuss these matters among ourselves on a fairly regular basis, and adding this expense to the WMF sounds questionable at best. I wouldn't support devoting WMF financial resources to a strategist role as you're describing it; that money can be better used elsewhere. --Pine✉ 05:50, 6 February 2016 (UTC) Thanks @Pine: for the discussion of prioritization. However, I think what you are missing is the time and money already being spent on GLAM-Wiki: the Foundation gets a barrage of GLAM-Wiki requests in a lot of different contexts (from Engineering, to Evaluation, TWL, Education, Grants, Strategic partnership etc). Our staff (in PC&L and CE more generally) is frequently doing the work of interfacing with the GLAM-Wiki, but no one is responsible for thinking "Where do we intervene for best impact?" (so, sometimes, efforts that are incredibly low impact, get a lot of wasted resources). What we have seen from having both the Wikipedia Library and the Education Program at the foundation, is surplus of small technical, infrastructure and social efforts that have sped up growth and impact of the program model, because someone was responsible for the "that field of program intervention" (around "educators" and "research" in these cases). Secondly: We have seen GLAM-Wiki conversations become very concentrated in a couple of community spaces, and when requests and opportunities for GLAM-Wiki support come into the Foundation from other community spaces, we create a lot of organizational wasted time (or missed opportunities), because Staff spends considerable time finding a) who at WMF can help, or b) shopping around the community for support -- and often not finding the best person because they aren't immersed in the GLAM-Wiki community or that local context. We want to make this already expended effort, an explicit responsibility --- with the intent that it can have greater impact because its a) strategic and b) can impact places where their aren't affiliates, or where community members aren't yet introduced to the GLAM-Wiki network/learnings. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 16:11, 8 February 2016 (UTC) Astinson (WMF) It seems to me that the Outreach wiki has some good information on GLAM. The shifting justifications here makes me uneasy; first the explanation for this was that "Our main focus will be on: a) identifying project models and strategies that help affiliates grow impact of GLAM-Wiki, b) promoting GLAM-Wiki through international networks, and c) advocating for technology and other support at the WMF that benefits GLAM-Wiki", and now the explanation is "the Foundation gets a barrage of GLAM-Wiki requests" and "no one is responsible for thinking "Where do we intervene for best impact?" and "Staff spends considerable time finding a) who at WMF can help, or b) shopping around the community for support." If the WMF is getting a barrage of GLAM requests and can't handle what it's already getting, then promoting further requests is likely not something that WMF needs to be doing at this time. If shopping around the community for support is proving to be a weak point, then that signals to me that WMF should be investing more grants and other resources in empowering the community to assist with GLAM work; this can be done through Community Resources. Spending WMF staff time and money in one department (CE) so that it can lobby another department (Product) to spend its resources on GLAM tools strikes me as wasteful. Finally, it seems to me that referring people who want to do GLAM work to Outreach wiki should be straightforward, and these referrals can happen with minimal staff time. I continue have difficulty justifying adding WMF staff time for this proposal when it seems to me that other solutions are available, more aligned with the mission of Community Engagement, and far less costly than adding WMF staff time. If WMF wishes to invest staff time in GLAM, I would advocate for that time to be for further development of GLAM software tools, possibly augmented by a modest amount of intern time for updates and improvements to GLAM information on the Outreach wiki. --Pine✉ 19:55, 8 February 2016 (UTC) yes, more support please. a refresh of GLAM movement is needed. Slowking4 (talk) 02:20, 30 January 2016 (UTC) I'm hoping the language used for this work will be inclusive of STEM and Healthcare instead of as its written now with a sole focus on cultural heritage. Much of the support and capacity building will be identical. Our partner organizations such as the U.S. National Archives, and Universities, not-for profits organizations, professional organizations, and healthcare agencies are already supporting the wikimedia movement beyond cultural heritage in areas such as STEM and healthcare. Additionally, these and other partners hold images, videos, files, and other content like documents or data that are appropriate for Commons, Wikisource or Wikidata, or Wikipedia. We need to work with WMF Engineering, wikimedia affiliates, and partner organizations to identify the full spectrum of needs of GLAM, STEM, and Healthcare and develop a plan to accomplish all of them. Of utmost importance is to realize that the people using these tools and processes will be affiliates and partners outside of cultural heritage organizations. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 21:17, 3 February 2016 (UTC) "GLAM" is not the concept - "institutional partnership" is FloNight has the right idea. The spirit of this proposal can be kept, because the spirit of this proposal is to use the term "GLAM" to mean "institutional partnership". Large sections of the Wikimedia community assume that all Wikipedia partnerships have to be with GLAM organizations. This is partly a historical legacy that some GLAM organizations had early partnerships, partly a WMF branding legacy that the organization wanted to avoid conversations about the implications of Wikipedia being used as a health information resource, partly a community legacy in broadly accepting media donations (the standard GLAM engagement) but being unsure about institutional encouragement of text development, and partly a lack of central management in that different content sectors felt the need to have their own support hubs when if there had been staff, the common infrastructure would have been provided centrally so that the same content would not have needed to have been developed independently for GLAM, open access, medicine, Art+Feminism, the education program, and STEM collaborations. In fact, lots of organizations want Wikipedia partnerships, and instead of developing GLAM branding, this idea should be developed as "Wiki-support for organizations". The proposal says, "GLAM-Wiki community is one of the strongest community-generated programs". This is true, but other projects are at least as significant. Medicine is a sector that is at least as influential as GLAM. en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine - highly active WikiProject community Doc James - elected a representative to WMF board. This person was elected for his personal accomplishments, but also, it helped a lot that Wikipedians are ready to have representation in the medical field. Physicians have continual encouragement to engage Wikimedia projects. The election of a physician is not an anomaly. history of many significant institutional partnerships with Wikipedians. Consider Johnbod and en:Cancer Research UK, for example. The wealthiest GLAMS are poor. The Wikipedia community made an odd decision to go begging for money from libraries, who already are struggling. The finances behind communication and education in the medical sector are great. It might be worthwhile for Wiki thought leaders to compare the size of this sector to the size of other sectors considered for outreach. Medicine should included in discussions because of its power and ability in the communication sector. Wiki Project Med is a candidate to be a Wikimedia thematic organization. There is great community engagement in this organization, and it is unlikely that any GLAM organization will have comparable support or development within the next two years. GLAMs have been underfunded forever and the arts will continue to be abused by society. For once, give them a break. There is nowhere else where the budgets for the arts has hope of benefiting from the budgets to other sectors like medicine. Even if GLAM is the focus, make the foundation of support multi-stakeholder so that every investment can benefit every field of study and interest. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:09, 4 February 2016 (UTC) Hi @Bluerasberry: We agree with you there are a lot of opportunities in STEM. STEM collaboration have been identified as a strong potential target program if/when we get to expand our programmatic staffing. We are planning this project on GLAM-Wiki because it focuses energy on a programmatic field that has already demonstrated a critical mass of need, while trying to get outcomes and learnings that will support other outreach. Moreover, GLAM projects have already succeeded at demonstrating scalability and there are attempts at scaling in a majority of our communities. We have learned from The Wikipedia Library and Wikipedia Education Program, that the most effective targeted support for volunteer leaders and strategic innovation, typically comes from staff devoted to developing deep knowledge of the professional communities which the volunteers are contacting, not from supporting all models of potential partnership. The cultural heritage community has very clear professional needs/experiences that need to be supported (including the ready and rapid turn to volunteer support and open and collaborative digital platforms because of the underfunding you describe) . In the short term, staffing for this GLAM-Wiki effort is likely going to only be 1/2-1 person, which means the GLAM-Wiki strategist will necessarily need to need to limit their scope of expertise/work/support. There is a surplus of needed GLAM-Wiki support in most of our communities -- in particular, there is a continuous flow of requests to different teams at WMF for grants, technical support, connections with volunteer communities, and volunteer advising for GLAM projects-- something we have yet to experience with STEM institutional outreach. We are making sure that our efforts in GLAM-Wiki bolster success in other efforts. For example, advocacy for initiatives like the GLAM-Wiki Toolset, Structured data on Commons, or Structured Citation Metdata will create powerful tools for the STEM community as well. As you have described, "institutional partnerships" learnings and technologies that come from GLAM-Wiki, have had a number of ripple effects in STEM, TWL and the Education Program. The new PC&L team is responsible for making sure that any benefit and learnings that comes out of TWL, GLAM, WEP or any other programmatic effort, becomes more useful for other programmatic fields, including STEM, and for our affiliates, including the Wiki Med Foundation. The way we view our role in PC&L is to take programs in the seed-grow-scale cycle that have already "grown" and then help them go from growth to scale. The STEM volunteer community still needs to develop and replicate more "seed" models for engaging the STEM professional community, to help demonstrate how STEM partnerships can grow to include more volunteers communities, more organizations, and more models that meet the STEM professions where they are at. We ask that you continue the excellent work you've been doing helping the STEM outreach community continue to solidify project models, and defining what is both similar and different about outreach to this professional audience compared to educators, librarians and other cultural heritage professionals -- so that we can make a good argument in future funding cycles for targeted support and dedicated staffing for STEM as a program. We are glad to continue advising on these developments, as Jake has done with helping set up the Cochrane WIR and supporting the BMJ pilot. Moreover, we would really like to see the STEM community take advantage of the Grants programs, like IEG and PEG, Affiliate Support, and WIRs to further advance and establish these new program models and strategies. Our perspective implies nothing about the *importance* of STEM, merely where it's at in its evolution towards becoming a major program in our Movement. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 17:42, 5 February 2016 (UTC) Made a mistake with @FloNight: Astinson (WMF) (talk) 17:43, 5 February 2016 (UTC) Hello, @Astinson (WMF):. You're asking for our thoughts, suggestions, and support for the programs that you are proposing, so I'm going to take advantage of the opportunity. :-) In my opinion, you are vastly underestimating the harm that comes from siloing these programs into an Education Program, a GLAM-wiki Program, and STEM and Healthcare Program which seems to be the strategy that you and the team are supporting from your comment. Generally speaking, most of the institutions that are good partners for the wikimedia movement are publishers, educators, have libraries/archives, and are service providers/manufacturers (often research). Many of them have internal department that do communication and event planning. These characteristics surpass an industry/sector label. We are missing opportunities to work more effectively with these organizations if we silo off programs with overly narrow labels. I strongly encourage you to lose the labels and vocabulary that are a barrier to people finding resources to support their work. It is confusing and oft putting to direct partner organizations to resources that are needlessly specific. It is especially maddening when it is totally unnecessarily for them to be identified as tools for education or cultural heritage partners. Additionally, I also encourage the Program Capacity and Learning Team to look beyond the programs, events, and projects that are receiving WMF funding. While it is natural to want to support the programs that WMF is directly funding, it is equally if not more important to give resources to projects and positions that rely on external funds or done on wiki with volunteer labor. I understand that this team needs to write up a realistic plan that they can effectively support. But if seems short sighted to ignore for a full year a vibrant on wiki community that is largely self supporting when the needs of STEM and healthcare could be addressed in the existing framework with relatively minor adjustments or expansion of concepts. With the good possibility of Wiki Project Med Foundation becoming a thematic organization, I don't know that Program Capacity and Learning team or the whole Community Engagement Department will ever be the central hub for health care in the wikimedia movement. So, we need to explore alternative ways of of joint program planning between the health care contributors and WMF because from my perspective it is not working well now. There is no natural entry point for influencing WMF annual planning unless you need funding to sustain your program. That seems wrong in a movement that has been built on volunteer work, and the going forward will rely on institutional partners as contributors. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 22:36, 5 February 2016 (UTC) Hey Sydney. You know that when I think of partnerships it includes more than just libraries/education/glam. It's the same for Alex. In the diagram that explains what pieces make up our team, we say "GLAM and other content partnerships". We are giving ourselves room to explore initiatives outside of the named/established/funded models. What we want to make clear, however, is our limited capacity to support any and all programs at the same time, particularly with staffing. For the past year Alex and I have worked hard on community-facing partnerships outside of the typical spheres, as you've suggested. We'll keep doing that. What we can't do though is commit to having a hired person, with say, STEM expertise who is going to invest 40% of their time into building resources and relationships to advance those. We're not dismissing the STEM work, but we are prioritizing in areas where there is already significant community infrastructure. I would like more than anyone for STEM work and medicine in particular to be a high programmatic priority--in time it will be, if initiatives like Cochrane and NIOSH, and Wiki Project Med (disclosure: I'm on the Board) continue to grow. So, yes, absolutely we view these areas as critical for growth; no, we do not view them as silo'ed and separate. We support good opportunities when we find them. The difference here is only one of prioritization and commitment of experienced staffing resources. We're trying to be honest about that to set community expectations fairly. When WMF can truly support robust programs in STEM++, we want it to look differently than when we are just saying we can throw them into the mix too. In other words, the distinction between these programs is not in our heads, but in our short term strategy and staff allocations about where we think we can make the most impact in partnership with the community. Jake Ocaasi (WMF) (talk) 17:03, 8 February 2016 (UTC) Thanks Sydney for the great feedback. To add to Jake's comment, I want to say that part of what we want to do within PC&L would be to find better ways to locate new opportunities and priorities. As Jake said, our expertise right now falls into education, GLAM, and libraries, but this can shift as time goes on. I am thinking that is where other focus areas of the team can step in; specifically Community Listening project and Affiliate partnerships. We hope that these two areas can help with exploring what are the community's needs and opportunities that can actually feed into annual planning, so we can resource them (beyond those we fund via grants). I think that we definitely understand that reducing our focus to just GLAM and education is limiting and we need to expand. Does this help to answer your comments? I am also wondering: Do you have other labels, titles, words that we should use so that we speak to institutions/organizations that are not in education/GLAM areas? I've heard the word "knowledge communities" and "knowledge partners" before... --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 20:25, 9 February 2016 (UTC) Hi EGalvez (WMF), I would really appreciate finding language that is less industry/sector oriented for consultations about tools and processes that most likely will be created for use by everyone. To be inviting of STEM and healthcare we need to make the wikimedia movement look like we are expecting them to contribute. :-) My primary role as a WiR at Cochrane is to be a liaison between the wikimedia movement and Cochrane. I speak here as an advocate for a joint efforts to make high quality medical content freely available. Don't overlook those of us that are working in outside organizations who are not getting funding from WMF grants when you design the pages for Community Listening and Affiliate Partnerships. We can talk about this more in Berlin. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 23:01, 10 February 2016 (UTC) Hi Sydney Poore/FloNight - Thanks so much for sharing what this looks like from your point of view and where you currently work. What I'm reading is that you think we should not say "GLAM" in our titles of our outreach work, but instead say "Organizations/Content Partners/Something Else", and then use GLAM, STEM, etc. as examples of what those organizations could be? Is this accurate? If so, this makes sense to me. It could be true that we are missing out on other key opportunities. In getting at what your saying about feeling overlooked, there could be some kind of influence effect for your work; if at the foundation we remain focused in naming GLAM (and use GLAM as a headline), new and existing communities might not branch out to other spaces as quickly into other industries like yours. Seems like there are a lot of ideas to explore here, I am looking forward to chatting with you in Berlin :) --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 23:22, 11 February 2016 (UTC) EGalvez (WMF) and Sydney Poore/FloNight: I wonder, would it make sense to expand GLAM to GLAMR with the "R" standing for "research"? I have considered "GLAMER" with an "E" for "education" as well, but I think that the education programs are distinct enough from GLAMR that GLAMR makes more sense than GLAMER and that education programs should be in their own bucket, while research institutions can be grouped with GLAM because they share a number of similarities in terms of their interests for Wikimedia. What do you think about expanding GLAM to GLAMR? --Pine✉ 05:52, 12 February 2016 (UTC) @Pine:, I wouldn't recommend inventing new jargon as the best approach to connect with external partners in STEM and healthcare. Healthcare has a big overlap with Education and there are targeted collaborations with medical students, dental students, nursing, and physical therapy. And while "research" is one important aspect of the work done in STEM and healthcare that is relevant to wikimedia, there are others. For example, a project with experts on digital health literacy and health communication is something that is in the preliminary stage of discussion with Cochrane and other stakeholders including Wiki Project Med Foundation. The term research would too limiting for projects that involve creating and curating open access health education content and tools. (images, video, games, MOOC, patient forums, personal health decision tools.) Initiatives to input data into Wikidata is happening in STEM and healthcare. Some of this is directly related to research findings. But others projects like those that involve health informatic which different enough that involving specialists is useful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_informatics Additionally, collaboration around translation of health content is an important component of work being done. Because of the specialized language of STEM and healthcare, and the need to create content in plain language for consumers around the world, collaborations around translation are happening. All that considered, I think research is too narrow to be useful. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 18:42, 12 February 2016 (UTC) Hi Sydney Poore/FloNight, I think that I now understand how you are thinking about public education on health-related issues. I think that it makes sense to keep GLAM or GLAMR as related concepts, but perhaps we could refine the general scope of Education to mean two different kinds of education: education through the WEP program where students create content as a part of their coursework, and education from institutions (health and many others) that want to educate the general public. The former kind of education is focused on the content creators, and the latter kind of education is focused on the consumers of Wikimedia content. Would that way of thinking align with your conceptualization? --Pine✉ 20:59, 12 February 2016 (UTC) Hi @Pine:, it feels like you are putting words in my mouth. :-) I'm not looking to invent new jargon or define the scope of STEM and Healthcare projects and programs. My point is that STEM and healthcare are robust areas with many opportunities for partnerships. Just as institutions involved with Cultural Heritage can be G or L or A or M, their professional associations, and educational institutions. Healthcare has a wide variety of educational institutions, research organizations, governmental agencies, NGOs, professional associations, publishers, as well as places that provide services to consumers. My original point is that any of these potential partners could be good fits for projects, campaigns, or events because many of them share our mission to provide high quality health care information, and they have departments with professionals who could offer resources to the wikimedia movement. I'm not so much asking for specific support from the PC&L team that has limited capacity. Rather, I don't want the work done by PC&L to create barriers to current and future projects by creating high profile portals for communicating with the wikimedia movement that aren't welcoming to STEM and healthcare who are being invited into the community through existing projects. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 22:23, 12 February 2016 (UTC) Hi Sydney Poore/FloNight, let me see if I can re-frame. I would enthusiastically support including STEM institutions (in which I would include health care institutions) in the list of organizations that WMF considers for mission-aligned work. I am thinking that maybe PC&L, the community and affiliates can broaden the explicit scope of thinking from GLAM institutions to GLAM+STEM institutions. For example, here with Cascadia Wikimedians, I personally am very interested to see if we could form a partnership with the Gates Foundation's mission-aligned activities in the global public health and education disciplines. --Pine✉ 04:09, 16 February 2016 (UTC) Who you gonna call? As an experienced GLAM program manager, I appreciate that after some years the WMF oficially includes some GLAM into their programs support. You ask about which kind of concept support should be done by PC&L: I would say GLAM is a perfecte playground area for implementing your mission: You can help GLAM community growing leaders development, helping to develope tools to support our partnerships and reading organization's reports and blogpost to facilitate knowledge sharing among members. I think GLAM is a good place to test the capacities and effectiveness of the PC&L team. For newbies affiliate partners, PC&L should become the "who you gonna call" place when you want to start GLAM or when you started but you want to go one step beyond, sharing program experts info and skills with a wider audience.--Kippelboy (talk) 11:37, 8 February 2016 (UTC) The support for GLAM programs could be given in two complementary ways: Technological solutions Reorganizing the existing knowledge. Michal Lester לסטר (talk) 12:31, 16 February 2016 (UTC) Though our hire will not be a developer, a key part of the work for this role is going to be around advocating the right prioritization of development in the Foundation to benefit GLAM (and to work with volunteer developers to speed up networking to support tool development). And, we think collaborating with volunteers to reorganize the existing knowledge is going to be the bulk of the first 3-6 months of work, when not developing community relationships. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 15:51, 16 February 2016 (UTC) Also, Thanks @Kippelboy and לסטר: Astinson (WMF) (talk) 15:51, 16 February 2016 (UTC) Astinson (WMF) you said that "our hire will not be a developer" but my understanding from Rosemary is that (1) the purpose of this consultation includes a willingness to have a discussion that includes the openness to altering plans, and (2) no decisions about hiring will be made until after the completion of this consultation. Based on this discussion here, it doesn't seem to me that hiring a non-developer into a WMF staff role is an appropriate solution. It seems to me that a case could be made for hiring a developer (probably part time) or allocating time from existing Product staff for GLAM tools, and/or hiring an intern for organizing GLAM knowledge (along the lines of Michal's comment above). I would like to ask RRein (WMF) if she can clarify if she has actually decided to hire a non-developer into a staff role; that is not my impression, and my feedback would be that the resources would be more efficiently and effectively used for (1) developer time for GLAM tools and/or (2) for an intern who may be far more cost-effective than an FTE hire. Thanks, --Pine✉ 05:36, 17 February 2016 (UTC) You are correct, @Pine:, I should have said "fill the role" (no commitment yet to a hire, but we do need to support the program). We do not yet have a firm (or Annual Plan approved) way of supporting this program yet. We do know, that both the Education and Library teams have been able to make significant technical progress on key technical needs from staff who are not primarily developers, but who can bring a large variety of resources/developers together (including the Library Card Platform, Wikipedia Library Metrics, the Magic Button for Wikimetrics, and the new development of Program Dashboard). We have also identified organizations who are already working on low hanging needs from the GLAM-Wiki community, including structured data on Commons. What is needed, at this point, is advocating and coordinating for the WMF and the community technical capacity to strategically work on those efforts and resource commitments from both within and without the WMF. (see my response to Flonight about risk). I will let RRein comment more on her end. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 15:55, 18 February 2016 (UTC) @Pine: Hi Pine. We have not reached any decisions on the definition of positions on the team or prioritization of projects but have connected to our partners in community tech about infrastructure support including Glam Wiki tools. Much if this infrastructure also is revealed in the community wish list. Our team is actually going through a process of mapping available staff hours and then connecting what we have heard in both our outreach to program leaders and affiliates heard in the WMF community consultations. To best plan, the team has looked at all existing workflows and committed as a group of focus 30% of staff time on capacity building linked to the criteria. This weekend we will be theming comments, benefits and risks identified on project concept pages and then converge on what that looks like against smart targets. --RRein (WMF) (talk) 00:14, 19 February 2016 (UTC) @Astinson (WMF): and @RRein (WMF): thanks for those comments. It does sound like a reasonable idea to me for Community Tech engineering time to be invested in time relevant to GLAM+STEM content-sharing programs. I share FloNight's concern about the need for SMART measures of success for this initiative. I would also be interested in cost-effectiveness of this position, which is partly why I am keen on devoting WMF financial resources for this project to an intern instead of regular staff time with its far higher costs. Thanks, --Pine✉ 05:43, 19 February 2016 (UTC) Risks and barriers to success of GLAM-Wiki Support What do you see as potential risks and barriers to success for the GLAM-Wiki Support program, and what steps are you taking to mitigate them? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2016 (UTC) @FloNight: We have identified several major risks so far (probably not all that there are), and I am including some of how we are defining the role to mitigate risk: Risk 1 WMF begins to fill the role of unnofficial GLAM coordinator for regions where there are leadership vacuums in GLAM outreach. We are deliberately developing the role as a "strategist" rather than a coordinator or program manager, thus trying to make clear that building individual partnerships is not within the scope of this position. We are also emphasizing the criteria for PC&L projects, particularly the "Scalability" of the work. Individual, local organizations that do contact the WMF, will be put in contact with either a) community leaders or b) Community Resources, to make sure that they are in the workflows/responsibility of individual local leaders. Moreover, a partnerships will organizational level are largely There is a secondary risk here too: supporting the effort with someone whose skills/assets in the Wikimedia community's GLAM-Wiki efforts, not fitting well our need for strategy and learning, rather than piloting innovative locally-focused projects. Our most successful program leaders, tend to be very gifted in innovating and implementing local programs, and this role will be much more focused on strategy and guiding impact and learning. We are going to deliberately fill support of this program with someone who has demonstrated impact in guiding international strategy from within the community, if possible, to ensure that we don't end up in a cycle of innovation and "pilot" efforts, which was very well suited for the Wikipedia Library which didn't have a cohort of innovating leadership a couple years ago, but is not appropriate for such a mature volunteer community. Risk 2: The GLAM Coordinator erodes community and regional leadership or creating a dependency on central coordination of GLAM-Wiki. We are explicitly, ensuring that efforts like the GLAM-Wiki Newsletter, which have active community coordination, are not within scope of this effort. We also plan to encourage further development of coordination efforts like the US GLAM-Wiki Consortium, the European GLAM-Coordinators group, and other ways of coordinating at more regional levels, like the CEE group, as part of our leadership development efforts. Risk/Barrier #3: we don't get sufficient support from developers at WMF to sufficiently push the technological needs of GLAM-Wiki We have been seeing some really good signs in the last few months, of interest in supporting tools that help the programs community succeed at their efforts. There has been an effort so far to develop a "skunkworks" policy to support projects coming out of the Wikimedia programs: our developers want to help more of these high impact spaces. Moreover, the clear consensus emerging on the strategy consultation indicate that GLAM-Wiki capacity is a must to support, we are trying to start cross departmental conversations now,so that these departments are putting GLAM-Wiki in their Annual Plans in the most useful way. We have some backup plans if this technical capacity doesn't get strategically allocated at the WMF: we would like to tap the technical development capacity of organizations the Wikipedia Library team has cultivated relationships with like Internet Archive, SPARC, CrossRef, DPLA, and Europeana. Additionally, both movement partners like WMDE and Wiki Ed Foundation and the volunteer developer community have expressed interest in supporting programs infrastructure. I am sure I am missing something, but these are the initial high risk issues that we have identified. I would welcome further/feedback discussion on your end. What other risks are you seeing?Astinson (WMF) (talk) 18:10, 16 February 2016 (UTC) Thank you, User:Astinson (WMF). You have identified several good risks with the last one being very significant since a large number of people would like improved tools. It is great that you are identifying alternative relationships that could assist in the area, too. See my suggestions below for my thoughts about how to increase the chance of getting funding. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 20:28, 16 February 2016 (UTC) Success? And how will you know if GLAM-Wiki Support is successful based on the criteria you identified? Will you have other measures of success? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2016 (UTC) Hi @FloNight: The criteria are largely used for prioritizing energy and effort. That priotization is going to be the responsibility of the new hire, after deeper conversation on the priorities from the GLAM community, when choosing projects/efforts/workflows. Short term success will likely look like a) anything labeled GLAM-Wiki coming in or out of the WMF gets cc'ed to this person -- and those conversation work in cooperation with each-other, rather than in disparate corners of the org, b) we start deep conversations with various Engineering teams about how their efforts strategically benefit the GLAM-Wiki community alongside other extant programmatic efforts (incl. TWL, EDU and STEM) -- its becoming a priority in the strategic plan consultation-- and c) identify and organize, with community collaboration, the existing GLAM-Wiki documentation to facilitate the participation from new communities -- CR and PC&L have seen a lot of attempts at GLAM-Wiki that don't utilize the best practices already well documented and we think this is because of how spread out the documentation is. Does that help clarify what success will look like? Astinson (WMF) (talk) 15:47, 16 February 2016 (UTC) Hi @Astinson (WMF): Missing are the ways that staff person hired for the role of GLAM-wiki staff position, the WMF (internally) and others (community, readers, donors) can tell whether the programmatic activity is achieving it's stated purpose. While I understand that community consultation will be an aspect of the position, it needs to be be driven by a pre-determined measurable set of expectations and outcomes. Are you looking to have a single statement about shared priorities? That seems unlikely to me. A ranking of most requested would be closer to gaining buy-in. And while, I think I understand what you mean when you talk about the staff person being cc on email and being a liaison between GLAM-wiki and Engineering teams, in my opinion, in order to have the best chance of getting recommended for funding this program needs to have a clear set of relevant targets. At this stage, the idea needs to have measurable objectives in place that if met will show doing this programmatic activity will improve on past performance. For example, is a goal to have more GLAM documentation translated into more languages quicker? Do you want 25% more GLAM related documentation translated next year compared to this year? Or to identify a group of languages that will have full documentation by a certain date? Does that example make sense for the type of work this person will do? To sell having this position created, you need to show it will give measurable improvements to gaps identified through your recent community consultations. I would work at creating strong measures of success that could show areas of improvement over previous years. Right now it looks too vague. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 19:56, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Tool: Wikimedia Knowledge Hub

Positive Support	Easy navigation of learnings would be helpful +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1
Suggestions	Keep it community crowdsourced +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 Having some paid staff support would keep it maintained +1 +1 Easy access to toolkits and easy search of existing content Better curation of and context for where learnings are applicable +1 +1 Focus on interaction and peer exchange not just static documentation (like Q&A) +1 Needs active networking and contacting of community leaders and affiliates--so hub is timely and discoverable Hire person like a paid technical writer to help volunteers produce their own documentation (interview them and do the formalization for them)
Concerns	Unclear who will manage and have access to change it Staff-controlled portal could become sterile and overly polished rather than active and evolving--feel foreign and disconnected from volunteer experience +1 Hub won’t accommodate less formal groups like “Women in Red” or smaller usergroups +1 Already many pre-existing hubs--evaluate the merit of those first to avoid worsening the problem +1 +1 Mediawiki is not great at supporting real-time interaction... (Wiki Ed Q&A for example does better) Centralization could stifle innovative learnings and not support new approaches +1 +1
Challenges and risks	Translation and language barriers +1 Unclear documentation of risks and success criteria

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Discussion In what ways does the Knowledge Hub Support concept support the area Program Learning & Infrastructure? What questions or concerns do you have? Add a topic and comment, or leave a comment on an existing topic, and sign below Learning Patterns Library Navigation & Maintenance A Learning Patterns Library that is easy to navigate and is regularly maintained would be helpful. --Pine✉ 00:23, 27 January 2016 (UTC) Agree - personally, I consider a crowd-sourced knowledge hub more suitable for our movement, then a polished, editorial style manual by the communications departement. I think it would be helpful to build on the experience we gathered with the existing Learning Pattern Library and try to learn from it, refine the concept. There is definitely room for improvement concerning navigation and search. But also concerning the question how to deal with the existing patterns - how can we make sure people update their patterns if needed, or add their knowledge to existing patterns in the true wiki spirit? Some of the patterns could also use more context, so it is clear under which circumstances the learnings were gathered, whether it is indeed an almost universal insight (most of them are not) or rather a more specific insight. Another added value would be a hub that also contains easily accessible good practice tools and templates (e.g. templates for invitation letters for visas, annual reports etc.) for certain reoccurring tasks, so especially smaller volunteer groups and affiliates do not have to reinvent the wheel. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 10:39, 1 February 2016 (UTC) Of course, a learning patterns repository that can be easily accessed will certainly be helpful. My biggest concern is on it's maintenance. Will it be coordinated by paid staffs or trusted volunteers? Aside community program leaders, WMF staffs, the coordinators? Who else can have access? Wikicology (talk) 12:42, 3 February 2016 (UTC) From my experience working with individuals, small groups, or large affiliates, it is difficult for anyone to find the resources that they need. So, I welcome a Knowledge Hub. And I agree with CDG (WMAT staff) that it need to put a strong emphasis on the needs of smaller groups, and also people who are very new to wikimedia movement. We need to lose the wikimedia jargon or define it. Also, remember that some of the people looking for information or to share their own ideas are not part of any formal organization but are mostly collaborating on wiki. I'm thinking of the WikiProject Women in Red that started on Wikipedia English last year. The group is well organized and collecting measures of success without formal program leaders. The Knowledge Hub needs to be welcoming to folks like them. I fully support the idea that the Knowledge Hub can be a place where everyone, (WMF paid staff, Affiliate paid staff, Affiliate volunteers, and everyone else) contribute. Having WMF paid staff dedicated (at least part time) to this area would mean that it wouldn't solely depend on volunteer's time for maintenance work and clean up. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 21:53, 3 February 2016 (UTC) No oppose There are already several learning hubs. Outreach:Main page and Grants:Learning patterns are examples. In both of these projects, Wikimedia Foundation staff has created walled gardens that are supposed to be a "Wikimedia Knowledge Hubs". If anyone goes forward with making a new "Wikimedia Knowledge Hub", then I strongly request that the first action taken is a listing of all such WMF-staff funded projects and critical reviews of what did and did not work about each one. Whenever I read WMF-staff created learning materials I feel like an alien has come to study Wikipedia and is writing about the community from a foreign perspective. WMF staff teachers are rarely or never members of the Wikimedia community and historically tutorials produced in this way are like undergraduate anthropology research papers written after summer trips abroad to a country where they do not speak the language. The documentation is written in English, but the information far out of line with the Western English-speaking world, and if the information is intended for the developing world then it really ought to be made with paid staff native to those countries and not Western writers publishing in English. If there really is a desire for a Knowledge Hub, WMF staff should never write the tutorials. Instead, send money out to active individual community members, especially in underrepresented countries, and pay individuals to share their ideas. I know there is a taboo about paying the volunteer community, but there is a 10+ year barrier in developing the most fundamental boring administrative documentation, and paying volunteers on short-term or one-time contract is preferable to paying technical writers who do not understand Wikipedia. In some cases paying local people to do work would be less expensive than recruiting volunteers to give free labor. Volunteer labor is not free - someone, somehow is always paid to develop the infrastructure to recruit it, and I would like to see more development of more infrastructure that consults with the people who will actually use the information and not just treat it as an abstraction. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:51, 5 February 2016 (UTC) agree with this, those with the experience using are well placed to co-author instructions though staff skills can enhance the out come do it collaboratively get the best of both skill sets Gnangarra (talk) 09:31, 8 February 2016 (UTC) providing curate doesnt equal control and that culturally different practices are needed to achieve the same outcome, even across english speaking communities. Gnangarra (talk) 09:31, 8 February 2016 (UTC) First of all, many thanks for bringing this (frequently demanded) issue on the agenda. I’d like to endorse many of the aspects raised above and the general idea of an intensified joint learning, too. Currently, learning in the movement might be constrained by the sheer amount of sites and pages dedicated to knowledge transfer, existing language barriers, using too much Wikimedia jargon, less ressources for maintenance, lacking openness and low levels of exchange among the contributors of the resources. If you plan investing in an improvement of this situation, it would be great to follow some general principles, which are already touched in your outline: Main focus on interaction and peer exchange: learning happens when people share their views, discuss and jointly work on resources. But currently we have many resources which are just stored on Meta (mostly in English only) and are neither read nor fostering real interaction. A start could be to build more connections between the contributors of the knowledge resources e.g. by combining thematically structured tools, templates, learning materials with dedicated places for exchange and co-working (on-Wiki, Facebook groups, mailing lists - whatever works best) Share the burden: I strongly agree with the idea of sharing the workload, everybody doing what she or he is skilled and resourced to do. Expertise from conducting programs in local contexts can come from volunteer groups and individuals worldwide, WMF staff or larger affiliates could help to document, structure or spread the knowledge. E.g. at WMDE we have made good experiences with supporting volunteer program leaders in translating their learning materials and helping to adapt them to existing formats like e.g. the learning patterns on Meta. Build upon already existing resources: curating and bundling of all the materials already available on Meta and other wikis and mining for documents and reviews hidden in the closets would already be a big step forward. Or as Blue Rasberry and CDG (WMAT staff) turned it above: no need to reinvent the wheel / less walled gardens. Overcome language barriers: there lies a great potential in a broader translation of learning materials and linking the different language versions (e.g. via the translation tool). Resources in English are helpful, but not always sufficient to ensure high reach into local language communities. Templates, libraries and pages should by default be designed for easy translation. Make it easy to use and edit: let’s avoid using too much Wikimedia jargon or solely internal Wikimedia perspectives in order to stay open for contributors from outside the movement. Templates and tools must have a clear benefit for programmatic work without becoming too complex or abstract. Concrete examples of good practices are essential to facilitate understanding. Focus on easy templates instead of increasingly elaborated documenting formats. Keep our diversity: central hubs tend to provide standardization and structure (which is one of their main benefits). Nevertheless, the beauty of the Wiki universe lies in diverse experiences from volunteers across countries, projects and languages. There should always be space for sharing new and unexpected learnings.--Christof Pins (WMDE) (talk) 12:18, 17 February 2016 (UTC) Flexibility for independent strategies How flexible will this be? I can see it very easily used to justify much of status quo, especially chapter dominance of Wiki activities. We are in an unusual position, an education program what works independently and has affiliate (user group) status (Wiki Learning Tec de Monterrey). Right now we are stuck as to how to proceed because all the existing "learning strategies" "patterns" what-have-you, are all geared towards what has already been done. Thelmadatter (talk) 19:29, 2 February 2016 (UTC) Hi Thelmadatter; can you say more about what you mean about being "stuck"? Do you mean that you have difficulty finding peers to exchange knowledge and ideas with with because you work in an innovative space? I'm wondering what are the key areas that you are stuck in? Also - the idea is that we want to collaborate with program leaders to build these projects; so we definitely want to hear this feedback about "flexibility" and how we can meet this need in the design. Thanks! --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 2 February 2016 (UTC) From my perspective, (Thelmadatter might have a different view) there is a need to identify informal and formal groups of people, and individuals who are working outside the traditional affiliate model and find better ways to support them. Many of these would have a thematic base or be some other type of specialty group (like a Wikipedia Student Editing Club that's formally recognized by their University, but not an affiliated with wikimedia) or people working on a time limited themed campaign (we are seeing many of these with a gender gap theme also some Wiki Loves XXX.) Some of these group do have User Group status but always will be different from the User Groups who are on the path to becoming local Chapters. Capacity building may or may not be the same for these groups because leaders might rotate in and out at shorter internals than most affilates. The activities might need short term planning because the leaders are not going to be involved at a later time and can not make commitments for long term strategies. Another example, themed groups might be collaborating with professional associations or not-for profit organizations who share aligned missions but never will have wikimedia as their main priority. For example, a motivational presentations, editor training sessions or edit-a-thons sponsored by a topic experts at their annual professional conference may be the main activity of group related to Wikimedia. Many groups rotate locations and program planners for meeting so would need to be flexibility in getting support from local Wikimedians. Understanding the best methods to integrate new users into their local language community after the event would be an additional priority. Support for groups doing a time limited project that after it wraps up there will not be future involvement. For example, I'm considering approaching people in the horse racing industry in Central Kentucky to collaborate to improve Wikipedia content. Long term editor retention would not be my goal. After the working group finished improving the identified content, the working group would disband. My priority is not being innovative, recruiting users, or working on a specific time line to accomplish the work. But rather the project's primary measure of success will be adding well sourced content to majority of relevant Wikipedia articles. There are many people around the world who live in large countries without close by affiliated organizations. Having a variety of easy to access toolkits integrated into a Dashboard would make it much easier to do this type of independent work. These are off the top of my head, I'll try to think of more later. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 17:21, 4 February 2016 (UTC) This conversation is so helpful in refining the problem we are trying to solve. Thank you all for joining the conversation --RRein (WMF) Answering User:EGalvez (WMF). (I know there is a cleaner way to ping but I dont know what it is.) By stuck, I mean I see two options, a) becoming a "concept project" (concepto proyecto) under the umbrella of the Tec de Monterrey. One successful example of this is the Mati-Tec program ([http://www.itesm.mx/wps/wcm/connect/snc/portal+informativo/por+tema/investigacion/not_terceraetapamatitec(050214) in Spanish) which started with lending primary school students cell phones with math programming for their classes in a section of Mexico City. It has since expanded to several states. The advantages of this are a formal autonomy from my department. We are tied there to a large extent by our informality and that fact that I am a faculty member of the Humanities School. The cons are that any grants made to a concept project are charged 30% of the money for overhead costs. I understand that is normal for this kind of thing, but I know of no affiliate or ed program doing something similar I may be wrong. I also dont know if this would affect our affiliate status. b) Option #2 is becoming an independent organization and registering with Mexican authorities and the WMF as a thematic organization. It may or may not be harder to negotiate with the Tec to be affiliated with them somehow and of course, we have to arrange all finances, working space, etc. In essence, we have to balance the needs and values of the Wikimedia community with those of the school. For the most part, they overlap quite nicely, which is why we have been able to do as much as we have. But it does mean being diplomatic, especially as we gain visibility. (Mati Tec does not have this issue as it is completely the brainchild of Dr. Olmedo, a Tec professor. Partners provide funding and equipment only.)Thelmadatter (talk) 21:02, 18 February 2016 (UTC) Hey @Thelmadatter: Thanks for the detailed information - it was informative. I can see how choosing what approach to formalize is a big challenge for your organization and something that PC&L team may be able offer support or connect you with someone who might know more. We are looking at how we might align our support with the organizational effectiveness work from community resources and Affcom. Thank you for clarifying the challenge you are facing. --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 18 February 2016 (UTC) creating connection and maintaining it - institutional knowledge one of the hardest aspect I've found is in just finding the network, when I was elected as the President of WMAU the knowing where to go, what lists to be monitoring. Also that WMF staff still make contact with people they have previously contacted rather than with positions which are publish on Meta. What this means is the constant rebuilding of networks or the continual back tracing through past committee members only to find that requests hadn't been answered. The Knowledge hub needs to be actively contacting and connecting with each affiliate as well watching for and contacting new people starting projects, the offering of inperson group events at wikimanias/wikiconf even an in San francisco where it can readily facilitate wider connections to staff. Gnangarra (talk) 09:24, 8 February 2016 (UTC) A Wikipedia about Wikipedia That's one thing I've always thought about. As a community we are great to organize world's knowledge but we s*uck to organize our own knowledge. I think on a Knowledge Hub as a simple entry point where I "search" like in Google or wiki search box and results come out easily. Nevermind if it is "how to organize an editathon" or "how to do an APG" or "where I can find a Wikimedian in Boston". It's Kind of a paradox that we are not able to do this. We have hundreds and hundreds of documentation pages (meta, outreach, chapters, orgs, talk...) that need curation. I would love to see PC&L knowledge hub as a "curated content from Wikimedia documentation messy world" until we have a useful "Wikipedia about Wikipedia". On the other hand, I must admit I don't really expect a good knowledge hub to happen...but more a 15+1 stantard exect. Best luck! :)--Kippelboy (talk) 11:44, 8 February 2016 (UTC) I 100% agree with Kippelboy. Wiki Ed created ask.wikiedu.org as a Q&A platform for our program participants; please use a similar (or even the same! it's open source!) technology for this hub, or something else that enables curated content. Wiki pages just don't work for this. On a related note, I (as a program leader) really struggle to find the time to write out clear, concise documentation that someone else could follow. I think one area WMF could play a very important role (and this is sort of in line with what BlueRasberry was saying above, although I'm not as convinced that these people need to be community members) is to hire people who are skilled at interviewing and documentation to work with program leaders globally. In a conversation, I can easily explain what I've done, why I've done it that way, what worked, what didn't, and what I'll do differently next time, but putting that all into the language that someone else could follow takes so much of my time, and it's easy to put it off and then never do it. But if I had a one-hour interview with a paid WMF person, I could explain a lot over the phone, with that person asking questions when things that are obvious to me are not obvious to them. Then the WMF staffer/contractor would write up the documentation/learning patterns/etc. in a clear and concise way that someone could follow and send it to me for review. Editing something is a lot more of a manageable ask than starting from scratch. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:45, 12 February 2016 (UTC) I agree with LiAnna. A paid technical writer could do wiki-documentation with community interviews. That is a viable strategy, community-writing is a viable strategy, but creation of more documentation without much more community support than has been sought in the past should cease. There are enough non-community supported resources already. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:31, 16 February 2016 (UTC) Risks and barriers to success of Wikimedia Knowledge Hub What do you see as potential risks and barriers to success for the Wikimedia Knowledge Hub, and what steps are you taking to mitigate them? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2016 (UTC) Success? And how will you know if Wikimedia Knowledge Hub is successful based on the criteria you identified? Will you have other measures of success? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2016 (UTC) As i have mainly thought about this to be a very beneficial addition, I think its importance can be mainly judged by its use and help to others. All am saying here is, having completely produced a hub that provides these knowledge, responses on how useful it is to users may be very key to measuring its success. However having a way to rate its usefulness by users to say "I give this learning pattern a star because of ....." will mean a lot to other users or will guide them towards easily navigating through the many available.--Flixtey (talk) 20:58, 19 February 2016 (UTC) In which languages will the Hub be available? Hi! I like this project very much. In which languages will it be available?--Reem Al-Kashif (talk) 23:17, 15 February 2016 (UTC) Hi Reem Al-Kashif! As usual, we will work to translate the resources we create, and make them as accessible as possible. Macruzbar (talk) 22:50, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Tool: Program and Events Dashboard

Positive Support	Top priority +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 Crucial tool for scaling +1 +1 +1
Suggestions	Consider privacy standards for this tool Consider translation of materials Make cleaner version of the Dashboard (current one has too many features to be usable for all programs) Enable tracking of articles rather than tracking of users +1 See if we can integrate ORES tool into Dashboard
Concerns	Questions raised are answered here.
Challenges and risks	Question about how we define success

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Discussion In what ways does the Programs & Events Dashboard support the area of Program Learning & Infrastructure? What questions or concerns do you have? Add a topic and leave your comments, or add to an existing topic, and sign below Comments: Translation, Privacy, and documentation time Translation will be important for these materials Privacy standards will need to be in compliance with WMF policies and local laws. WMF is unlikely to have sufficient legal knowledge of jurisdictions around the world to customize these tools appropriately for so many localities, so leadership from affiliates, volunteers, and GLAMs will be necessary. A common complaint that I hear is the amount of time that volunteers and affiliates are expected spend documenting their activities for WMF. This dashboard may be helpful if it moves a significant percentage of the administrative overhead burden from affiliates and volunteers to WMF staff and tools. --Pine✉ 00:27, 27 January 2016 (UTC) Excellent points Pine, thank you for bringing that up. One of the goals of the Dashboard is indeed to make pulling data much easier for community members to do. I think that would be much appreciated by everybody who spends a lot of their precious time trying to get good data to show (part of) the impact of a program. FKoudijs (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 29 January 2016 (UTC) I see this as the top priority. Even in the education setting, the current tool is clunky for use outside of classrooms, for example student editing clubs. One of the greatest obstacles to outreach and mentoring is the lack of tools to monitor the progress of new trainees leaders, and new trainers. Getting tools for event planning, training, metrics altogether in a Dashboard that can be used at one off events or longer projects would be awesome! I agree that creating a Dashboard for use across languages is important. My work as WiR at Cochrane, I work with people all around the world who would be editing in many different languages. At the same event, I have people who have different native languages. Having a tools that tracks contributions in multiple wikis would be helpful since many of them work in multiple languages and Commons. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 22:15, 3 February 2016 (UTC) Thank you for those comments, Sydney. I'm glad you agree on the importance of this tool. FKoudijs (WMF) (talk) 01:27, 4 February 2016 (UTC) The future of existing Education extension, and questions on the Education team and community roles I have the following questions: What is the future of the current Education Program extension? Will WMF provide engineer support for the improvement of this extension which is in use on many language versions of Wikipedia, or will Programs & Events Dashboard automatically replace the current extension? If so, how do you intend to execute such replacement? I wonder if you could also kindly share your thoughts on what is the main role of the Wikimedia Foundation's Education team, i.e. in which ways should it direct its attention in future years. What do you consider the biggest success of the education team of the past 2 years? Do you plan to engage the worldwide education community in creating a specification of the Programs & Events Dashboard? Thanks! --Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 19:15, 3 February 2016 (UTC) Thank you for those questions, Vojtech. Here are my answers: Unfortunately the education extension is not at the point where it can be kept on the wikis as it it. There are a long list of issues with the extension, ranging in severity from nuisance to security issues (the restricted tasks linked there). Addressing all of these issues will require rewriting significant portions of the extension, and the current plan by the Wikimedia Foundation is instead to develop the Programs and Events Dashboard. Further, if new security issues are discovered, or the ones we know about are actively exploited, the engineering staff may have to disable the extension while it is still in use, presenting a risk to education programs who are actively using the education extension. We are aiming for a gradual replacement of the extension with the Dashboard. Right now, we are working on adapting the Dashboard so that it works in multiple languages and across multiple wikis. We will test that on one wiki first, and depending on the results, do a gradual rollout. Rollout will depend on how many bugs happen, and how willing communities are to adopt a new tool. This will be something that we will need to have conversations about with our community members. We strive to make the transition as painless as possible, and will also try to take into account the cyclical nature that education programs follow. I'm curious as to who you are asking about the role of the Education team and the biggest success over the past two years. I will give you my opinion as lead of the Education team. :) Main role. We were, and will remain, facilitators and connectors at heart. We connect people with other people, resources and tools as needed. Over the past years, we have slowly worked towards a transition where our team is no longer the central point of information in a big international network, but we become one of the parts in a big interconnected network. This is a big shift, and one that can only be accomplished slowly. My hope is that by pushing forward tools like the Programs and Events Dashboard, we can lighten the administrative load on our volunteers, so that they can focus on the core of their work (like running an education program, for example). Initiatives like the Knowledge Hub may also help our efforts to make people better connected to each other. I would like to move to a model where we can work jointly with community members to ensure that they are receiving capacity building (e.g. professional development for their volunteer work) and are ever better connected to others, so that they can learn from other's experiences. Biggest success of the past years. I find it hard to pick since I'm generally proud of the team and all that we've done. :) That said, having the Education Collab, for all of its growing pains, is a huge success to me because it helps with all of the things I listed in the bullet above this one. Having one Education Portal where people from around the world can find information about education programs worldwide was huge amount of work that I am really proud of. Having programs that previously counted on deep involvement from the WMF, especially in the Arab World, transition to a stable situation with strong local leadership is a huge achievement. Seeing new pilots pop up everywhere around the world, though most of that cannot directly be attributed to the work of this team, is something that makes me very happy. Through our investment in personal connections to people we have increased the number of programs known to us from around 60 to almost 90. This increase in number means we have a better sense of who is doing what where, what is working and what is not, and who you should go and talk to if you want to know more about x. All of the things I listed, are work that has taken hard, sometimes mostly unnoticed, work that I believe is paying off for everyone involved in the education program. And since you were asking me about the successes, I'd like to ask you what you consider to be the successes of the education program team at WMF. :) I hope I am understanding your question about the Dashboard correctly. Please note that we are not thinking of designing an entirely new product from scratch. We are using an existing product and making that usable for a broader audience. Due to resource restraints, that's what we need to work with. There is, and will be, just one instance of the Dashboard. It will look differently depending on who you are, where you are and what you want to use this for. For now, the minimum viable product will require that people on multiple wikis can use it in different languages. There's a lot more that I'd like to see done and improved, but we are currently mapping out what that might look like, how those changes can be made, who might be able to do that, and what all of that might cost. That's a complex exercise. Some of that is tied into the WMF's annual planning, for which there will be an extensive community review period (stay tuned for that, this is happening around March, I believe). Our goal for the Dashboard is to have community members with us every step of the way. Testing, documentation, suggesting improvements, and if people can, even bug fixing would be great to have community help with. It depends on what people are interested in helping with. If this doesn't entirely answer your question, please feel free to follow up. Thank you for those valuable comments and questions. FKoudijs (WMF) (talk) 01:27, 4 February 2016 (UTC) Sorry, forgot to ping Vojtěch Dostál. FKoudijs (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 5 February 2016 (UTC) Most important thing ever The Education Extension and Wiki Edu Dashboard offer some of the most important features that must exist in order for some common Wiki-outreach projects to develop. Very routine things like edit-a-thons, institutional partnerships, and Wikimedia chapter / user group organization need the kind of metrics which these tools present. Thanks to AGreen (WMF) and User:Adamw for spending time on this. Adam - do and say what you will but please do not get fired before you finish what you are doing here. I have been an organizer for the Wikipedia Education Program since 2011 when I started presenting to classes. I expect that I have used both the education extension and the dashboard more than any other event organizer for English Wikipedia events. The features of these tools were so compelling that I try hard to use them, even though they obviously were created without sufficient user consultation with Wikipedians who organize events or go into classrooms. The Wiki Edu Dashboard offers many of the most useful features of the education extension and more, so when that became available, I started using it and began to quit using the education extension. There are still some problems with the dashboard. If I had to articulate the biggest problem, is that it has too many features. When I use it, I use it in a stripped down way by turning off as many features as it allows me to turn off, and I only use it as a registration space for English Wikipedia editing cohorts. This is in contrast to its design, which directs editors in cohorts to visit the dashboard regularly. I prefer to keep users on Wikipedia outside of the dashboard, and I want the dashboard tools only for myself as an organizer. See an example of what I do at en:WP:Touro. This is a course page on English Wikipedia. The only student interaction with the dashboard is their initial registration so that I can track them. The obvious change that I want for the dashboard is stripping away the educational branding. It should present as little text as possible so that it can be used for classes, one-day editathons, a sign-in sheet for events where people do no Wikipedia editing, WikiProject membership lists, and all other instances where Wikipedians need for a group of participants in any arbitrary project need to identify themselves and submit to on-wiki tracking. If I made a request for additional development, it would be that the tool also be adapted for tracking development of arbitrary sets of articles without following users. Right now, the dashboard provides metrics about Wikipedia articles only if an editor edits them. There is no way to get metrics about a Wikipedia article without someone registering as a "student" in an instance of the dashboard then editing articles that will be tracked. Instead of tracking by users, I need an instance of the dashboard that tracks by article whomever might edit it. There is intense WMF pressure which says that editing matters and article developing need not be considered, but this is way out of line with what classes and organizations want. Aside from the WMF, no one cares about editor count and engagement. Instead, contributors and readers care that specific articles and topics have good monitoring and engagement. From the reader perspective, if 2-3 experts watched over a set of articles and made them perfect, that would satisfy their need. From a WMF perspective, articles which are made very good by only a few people with only a few edits are a failure, because success is measured by continually recruiting new editors to continually execute low-value tweaks. In order to get expert engagement, I need a way for experts to track the development of sets of articles in a field and to see the same Wiki Dashboard metrics that are already provided, except the article list for the metrics has to be generated by inputting article titles and not by putting in editor names. There are other things that could be done. The dashboard is great for lots of reasons. Yes, please, bring the dashboard to ENWP. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:28, 5 February 2016 (UTC) Thanks for sharing your comments and feedback, Blue Rasberry! I would encourage you to make sure your specific requirements (disabling features, removing education branding, etc.) are captured in our Use Cases and User Stories on the Mediawiki dashboard page. (I believe they are, but want to make sure we don't lose any important details or nuance.) I would also encourage you to follow the work being done on the dashboard Phabricator board. This month we are working on a minimum viable product that would be a bare bones adaptation of the Wiki Ed Dashboard. Further development and features, more along the lines of your additional request, depend on what kind of support this receives in the next annual budget. Your comments here do help us make the case internally for more development and support in our planning process. Tighe Flanagan (WMF) (talk) 20:48, 10 February 2016 (UTC) Easy I've had the honour to see some new features that are being developed on the "content translation" tool (kind of contest and campaings) > I would love to see something like this for edu or editathons. I do believe reporting can't take me more time than planning or evaluating. We need a single tool that, with a list of usernames and a timestamp, gives you the related information or the information asked for WMF reports. A mix between global metrics and similar tools. But easier for everyone. I think the "piles" concept used in labs could be a good thing. Also Jembot, run by a Spanish Wikimedian gives you quite a good amount of information. IMHO, I just need a simple and easy tool like content translator but for events & EDU.--Kippelboy (talk) 11:50, 8 February 2016 (UTC) Hi Kippelboy, thanks for sharing this idea. I am not familiar with these additional features of Content translation. From a program or event perspective, once you have your cohort established (through a tool like the Dashboard, or previous tools like the education extension, or simply a list of usernames) you can have your participants (students, editathon attendees) use whatever approach to edit you see fit. And their on-wiki contributions can be tallied up and reported back out. I'm wondering if you want some integration between this dashboard tool and content translation? I definitely agree that reporting time needs to be minimized. I'm also going to note that a global metrics report was also just launched as part of Wikimetrics, with that goal also in mind. Let me know if I missed the mark or if there is anything in particular you think we should be mindful of as we work on the dashboard. Or if this is a broader tool discussion which we need to loop our Language Engineering colleagues in on. Thanks! Tighe Flanagan (WMF) (talk) 21:10, 10 February 2016 (UTC) Dashboard is crucial for scaling The Dashboard this proposal is based on is Wiki Ed's Dashboard, so I'm obviously biased — but I firmly believe making this tool work for all language projects and for all programs types is the single biggest thing WMF could do to support program leaders. Wiki Ed is successfully supporting more than 150 courses (3,000+ new editors) each term with one program manager and two Wikipedians because of the Dashboard. Yes, you can do things by hand, but that takes valuable volunteer time, and good volunteers are our movement's biggest bottleneck to scaling our programs. I highly, highly support even more WMF staff time to be devoted to making all the features we've built for this tool work for all languages and all programs. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:53, 12 February 2016 (UTC) The Dashboard is super important. Developing the Dashboard needs to be a process in which stakeholders take part, and the engineering folks give ongoing support. Michal Lester לסטר (talk) 12:23, 16 February 2016 (UTC) Thank you to both LiAnna (Wiki Ed) and Michal Lester for those expressions of support. It's important we hear from you how all of these proposed plans resonate. I'm glad that they are. :) FKoudijs (WMF) (talk) 23:45, 16 February 2016 (UTC) I do agree with the comments about the relevance of the Dashboard. We should reduce obstacles to document the progress of the programs so that program leaders could focus more in working with people. --Paolaricaurte (talk) 22:18, 20 February 2016 (UTC) Risks and barriers to success of Program and Events Dashboard What do you see as potential risks and barriers to success for the Program and Events Dashboard, and what steps are you taking to mitigate them? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2016 (UTC) Thank you, Sydney Poore/FloNight for your question. We have defined some frequently asked questions (FAQ's) about the Programs and Events Dashboard. I invite you to take a look at them and then see if that answers your questions. Feel free to follow up here or on the FAQ talk page if we missed any of your questions. We are happy to elaborate further. FKoudijs (WMF) (talk) 23:50, 16 February 2016 (UTC) Success for Program and Events Dashboard? And how will you know if Program and Events Dashboard is successful based on the criteria you identified? Will you have other measures of success? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2016 (UTC) Thanks for this excellent question. The Programs and Events Dashboard scores high on all of the criteria you referred to. As to how we will know whether it's a success: for us it will be a success if we reach a minimum viable product (MVP) by the end of February. That is by no means the end of development of this tool, but it's a good start. As we are looking forward to the next annual plan for WMF, we hope to build further development and maintenance into the annual plan for our PC&L team, working together with our engineering colleagues. Of course we don't know whether this will be approved, but this is our firm intention. FKoudijs (WMF) (talk) 23:54, 16 February 2016 (UTC) Hi @FKoudijs (WMF):, my question was concerning the Program and Events Dashboard Project in the next annual plan. I'm thinking ahead to FDC and community review period and the need to have it spelled out. So, I'm interested in understanding the mission aligned objectives that the PC&L Department has identified to occur from funding the Program and Events Dashboard Project. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 02:59, 17 February 2016 (UTC) This project is the top priority I vote for this project as the first priority. The Education Program in the Arab World has significantly added to the quality and quantity of the content in the Arabic Wikipedia. I have seen and used two extension pages so far and I hope this project will host course pages for good. Will it support Arabic?--Reem Al-Kashif (talk) 23:21, 15 February 2016 (UTC) Thank you for that vote of support, Reem Al-Kashif. We absolutely want to enable this for Arabic. In fact, for our minimum viable product (MVP), we are hoping to get it ready for use on Arabic Wikipedia, both for education programs and for other programmatic events like writing contests, for instance. We look forward to working closely with you in early March on testing and deployment. FKoudijs (WMF) (talk) 23:56, 16 February 2016 (UTC) Narrow focus on certain outcomes I encourage the development of easy-to-use and effective data dashboards wherever they are beneficial for a program’s management and evaluation. Tools like the Wiki Ed Dashboard or the Outreach Dashboard are tailored to course-like settings and to track participants and user contributions on Wikipedia (aka Global Metrics). Surely, improvements in this field will be very helpful e.g. to fulfill reporting requirements for this kind of activities. But please keep in mind, that “programs” across Wikimedia projects and languages can be legion and strongly differing in their intended outcomes. I hope that focusing on this kind of program dashboards won’t distract us from exploring other ways of collecting outcomes and demonstrating impact. Additionally, I’d like to endorse Blue Rasberry’s demand for tools to track article sets instead of user contributions. This might also reduce some of the legal/privacy issues Pine referred to above.--Christof Pins (WMDE) (talk) 12:21, 17 February 2016 (UTC) Hi @Christof Pins (WMDE):, I agree that we need to keep our minds open to the best indicators of success. We can't let the Dashboard get stale with out dated methods. I'm interested in hearing the other types of targets and outcomes that you are using now or interested in exploring, and seeing if they could be included in a structured way in a Dashboard. Because the best way for contributions to scale is for more of the hardest set up work to be automated, I'm hoping that eventually a Dashboard can be offered to grantees and other external partners that could include a variety of different ways create programs, projects, and events, and evaluate them. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 15:46, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Process: Outcome Mapping

Total community editors to topic 5/22 total community editors

Positive Support (4 editors)	4 out of 5 editors shared an general endorsement "I think I see where this is coming from, and I definitely support more, and more systematic qualitative outcome tracking (a challenge the FDC affiliates are already trying to master in their reporting)" +1 "I would support in principle having "more consistent measures and observations for our qualitative impacts as well as our quantitative." "Looks like a very good project."
Suggestions	Needs more description and examples (3 editors total) I'm unclear on the purpose and benefits of "outcome mapping" as explained here. Some examples would help. +1 +1 I think I understand the intended purpose of the Outcome Mapping. To be sure, I'll put it in my own words. :-) The Outcome Mapping will be a community engagement exercise led by PC&L team to define a set of qualitative outcomes. The qualitative outcomes will not be pre-defined by PC&L. And the point of the community engagement is not to train affiliates about how to use a particular set of pre-defined qualitative measures. Instead, instead, PC&L will assist people in the community to draw on their own knowledge and experience to create them. Once the Outcome Mapping is complete there would be wikimedia movement wide list of qualitative outcomes to be used to report on impact of programs, events, projects, etc. The emphasis is on changes in behavior and relationships instead of products. 1. "This framework should be simple for grantees to undergo and for grant committees to understand." 2. "The process should add clarity to grant committees as they are making funding decisions." 3. "I'm hoping that some simplification and clarification can be done." 4. "I also hope that the grants committees will be asked for their comments on this proposal." Fund existing volunteers to help with efforts and administrative burden and allow more volunteers to contribute in ways that match community demand. … If you do outcome mapping, do not hire aliens to manage it! Support community to do it. "Do we have a place for systematic quantitative data gathering? It would be great to do both in the same space. I really hope this system proposes an easy, stress-free system.
Concerns	(1 editor total) Adding to the reporting burden of affiliates and grantees How is this different than what we are already doing? Is the goal to provide a new set of vocabulary, analysis tools, and measurements? What value do grants decisions makers see in qualitative data?
Challenges and risks	(3 editors total) This model seems too vague to be very useful. +1 (Note this was before the explanation page was added) I am wondering if this new model is more complicated than necessary. +1

Outstanding questions:

• What do you see as potential risks and barriers to success for the Outcome Mapping, and what steps are you taking to mitigate them?
• How will you know if Outcome Mapping is successful based on the criteria you identified? Will you have other measures of success?

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Discussion In what ways does the Outcome Mapping support the area Program Learning & Infrastructure? What questions or concerns do you have? Add a topic and leave your comments, or add to an existing topic, and sign below Needs more description and examples I'm unclear on the purpose and benefits of "outcome mapping" as explained here. Some examples would help. --Pine✉ 00:28, 27 January 2016 (UTC) Thank you, Pine. I am aware that we need to clarify the process with some examples and I am working to draft an informational page to supplement this basic prototype information here. You can see the draft page in my sandbox for now, while I work to refine it further. Most importantly, outcome mapping offers a framework to guide a cooperative project to identify those things we most need to capture in terms of storytelling and reporting about our qualitative impacts through core programs. For example, for Education and GLAM programs - important outcomes are identified as partnership development, changes to perceptions of the value of Wikimedia content, and changes in our alignments between the larger networks of players (even beyond our Wikimedia project and program partners) involved in, or affected by, our larger movement impact. Currently, we have quite a bit of information on these needs, but no shared priorities or frameworks for capturing and sharing to show the bigger picture of these offline impacts.JAnstee (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 2 February 2016 (UTC) Hi JAnstee (WMF), the link that you provided goes to a nonexistent page. Would you please fix the link? Thanks, --Pine✉ 23:59, 2 February 2016 (UTC) My apologies Pine. It it now fixed.JAnstee (WMF) (talk) 01:05, 3 February 2016 (UTC) I think I see where this is coming from, and I definitely support more, and more systematic qualitative outcome tracking (a challenge the FDC affiliates are already trying to master in their reporting), but to me too this all still sound very vague and blurry. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 10:48, 1 February 2016 (UTC) Thank you, Claudia, for your comments, you are correct in seeing where this fits, I apologize for the fuzziness. I am working to draft a brief explanation page with examples and potential strategies and timeline. While I am still working to refine it, you can see the draft page in my sandbox for now.JAnstee (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 2 February 2016 (UTC) I'm all for helping affiliates and others doing programmatic activity do a better job of conveying their impact on the wikimedia movement. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 22:33, 3 February 2016 (UTC) JAnstee (WMF), after looking at this closer, I agree with Claudia that this model seems too vague to be very useful. I honestly can't see volunteer lead affiliated organizations being able to learn this approach well quickly. I have a pretty good grasp of qualitative minded evaluation and I find it too confusing to use after reading over it. Can you offer other structured ways to report qualitative value? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 19:10, 4 February 2016 (UTC) Hello Sydney, I am not sure that I fully understand your question as this is not yet a proposal for how to report, but how we would identify what we most want to be able to report and develop some shared strategies for. Given that, please let me know if I have missed any point. While there are existing evaluation frameworks that could be imported to the Wikimedia movement (for example the Impact= Influence, Leverage and Learning from ORS Impact, the Systems Change Framework, and other elaborated models for measuring systems change are highly relevant to many of the qualitative changes I am aware of resulting from Wikimedia program work. However, the outcome mapping approach here was intended to allow for collaboration in developing a shared model more from the bottom-up (within the outcome mapping approach). The biggest intention of this proposal being to engage in collaborative intentional design for more systematic capturing of our qualitative impact. Unfortunately, elaborated models generally have many more points of measurement than will likely be shared priorities so the outcome mapping approach to evaluation design seemed better fit to the design process. It may still be a better option to make a comparison of existing models and choose one that most applies to WIkimedia programs, but that too, would seem to require community engagement in the mapping process to develop a quality shared evaluation plan that would be most successful. JAnstee (WMF) (talk) 00:44, 6 February 2016 (UTC) Hi @JAnstee (WMF):, After further reading your explanations and comments to me and Pine, I think I understand the intended purpose of the Outcome Mapping. To be sure, I'll put it in my own words. :-) The Outcome Mapping will be a community engagement exercise led by PC&L team to define a set of qualitative outcomes. The qualitative outcomes will not be pre-defined by PC&L. And the point of the community engagement is not to train affiliates about how to use a particular set of pre-defined qualitative measures. Instead, instead, PC&L will assist people in the community to draw on their own knowledge and experience to create them. Once the Outcome Mapping is complete there would be wikimedia movement wide list of qualitative outcomes to be used to report on impact of programs, events, projects, etc. The emphasis is on changes in behavior and relationships instead of products. If that is mostly correct, I have further questions and comments. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:23, 7 February 2016 (UTC) Hello Sydney, yes, that is correct, with the small caveat that it is not completely frame-free but would use the outcome mapping framework to guide that process. JAnstee (WMF) (talk) 16:58, 8 February 2016 (UTC) Reporting burden and the value of qualitative outcomes (split from description needs above - questions after reading further details) Hi JAnstee (WMF), thank you, I think that I now understand this proposal better. I have a couple of questions: How would we move forward with this framework without adding to the reporting burden of affiliates and grantees? How do Community Resources staff and the grantmaking committees feel about this proposal? Would they feel comfortable investing a quantifiable and finite resource (funds) in programs where the measurable benefits are small or nonexistent? If so, what would be their methodology in evaluating grant proposals where the benefits, if any, are likely to be qualitative rather than quantitative? Thanks, --Pine✉ 01:18, 3 February 2016 (UTC) Hello Pine. Good points, thanks for asking. I feel I can answer the first better than the second but will loop in the Community Resources team and hopefully they might help address your questions also. The goal of the outcome mapping process is intentional design to develop shared priorities and strategies for what changes we want to capture and what ways we capture them for programs. In many cases, the burden will rely on direct synthesis of shared models into exiting workflows of storytelling and reporting as it is not a set of requirements we are discussing, but the development of some shared targets and strategies to help align our individual efforts to tell a more quality story of program impact. Where many program and community leaders now struggle on their own with how to capture these changes in their storytelling and reporting we can save them time and frustration over lack of qualitative measures. The shared set of concepts and strategies for monitoring qualitative changes that we would generate through the outcome mapping process would provide a set of shared resources to reduce the burden overall. As for what the grants team and committees feel, I understand everyone recognizes the need for deeper contextual, as well as more consistent quantitative, data. As far as small or nonexistant outcomes, it has been clearly communicated in several outlets that the committees and grants officers are working to award grants dollars based on proven impact. Importantly, qualitative changes are not by definition small or nonexistant. Qualitative change is rather inseperable from quantitative measures of change, I wrote a blog about it last year which you can find a longer version of in our portal. Even more importantly, if a program or project are seen to have only small impact looking at only the quantitative indicators, it becomes rather necessary to ask the question as to what, if any, changes took place more qualitatively, before anyone can make a determination of actual impact. Creating a shared framework and set of possible strategies for qualitative data will better ensure that those qualitative differences may be more easily evidenced and considered. I hope this makes clear sense, as for committee decision-making and methodologies, my understanding is that we are all iterating on these processes together, however, let me ask Katy Love and Siko to see if they can answer further.JAnstee (WMF) (talk) 17:54, 3 February 2016 (UTC) The Resources team is very interested in having a better shared framework for making decisions based on qualitative data. I don't believe impact can only be seen quantitatively, and we (staff, committee and grantees alike) have all been challenged by the limitations of quantitative data. Like Jaime, we think qualitative measures should help demonstrate impact in ways that are neither small nor non-existent. How exactly a project like Outcome Mapping would change methodologies for evaluating proposals remains to be seen, and somewhat depends on how the project itself is designed - we'll need to collaborate and experiment to get there, but at this point I imagine it could allow for richer decision-making based on stronger data, rather than some dramatic change to the funding process itself. Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:17, 3 February 2016 (UTC) Hi Pine, to give a concrete example about how qualitative and qualitative data are used in tandem today, the Resources team is reorienting the Grants Impact Analyses to focus on integrating quantitative and qualitative data to talk about outcomes, rather than just data. As an example, the updated FY2013-14 Grants Impact Analysis looks at outcomes in the general areas of Participation, Content, and Quality; the data might tell one part of the story, but it doesn't capture or communicate the various outcomes described qualitatively in grantee reports. From what I've read, all grantee reports - from annual plans in APG to experimental projects in IEG - include rich qualitative data, but this data is has never been systematically analyzed, summarized or shared, leaving a huge gap in understanding and communicating the breadth and depth of outcomes today. Like Siko said, how this Outcome Mapping project will change the evaluation of grants remains to be seen, but I would hope it could at least bring some new information into the discussion on outcomes. -- Shouston (WMF) (talk) 20:14, 3 February 2016 (UTC) ┌─────────────────────────────────┘ Thanks for the comments, everyone. JAnstee (WMF) I'd like to ask for additional clarification on this statement: "In many cases, the burden will rely on direct synthesis of shared models into exiting workflows of storytelling and reporting as it is not a set of requirements we are discussing, but the development of some shared targets and strategies to help align our individual efforts to tell a more quality story of program impact." How is it possible to add new "shared targets and strategies" without adding to the time that affiliates will spend designing grants and writing reports? I can think of a few of options but would like to hear your thoughts first. If the goal is to provide a framework for analyzing qualitative impact of programs, I'm curious to hear if there's a way to articulate the difference between what we're already doing with grantees reporting qualitative impact in blog posts and learning patterns, and reporting qualitative impact in this new framework. Am I understanding that the goal is to provide a new set of vocabulary, analysis tools, and measurements that are designed to evaluate the qualitative impact of programs? --Pine✉ 06:15, 4 February 2016 (UTC) Hello Pine, the outcome mapping process would be used as our strategy to set some priority outcomes as a target for including in our existing reporting practices. Part of this would involve, once we determine which changes we want to capture through a shared strategy, a mapping to existing capturing strategies to see what alignment may already exist. For instance, so that when we are writing a blog, report, or other communication that we already do about the impact of a program or event, we are including more consistent measures and observations for our qualitative impacts as well as our quantitative. As Sati pointed out, we have been encouraging storytelling rather than a simple listing of activities. Currently though, we have no shared frameworks for capturing and reporting our qualitative stories. Given this lack, the burden for storytelling and reporting is actually greater currently than it would be if we had more shared tools and practices. Rather than every program leader having to create a story frame each time, they could partly rely on some simple shared points for reflection and sharing. While this would directly relate to adding focus to existing storytelling and reporting, outcome mapping capture would be different from learning patterns. While outcome mapping will help capture qualitative stories of impact, Learning Patterns capture qualitative learning stories around processes and tools rather. Curious to hear your ideas for other creative ways to add shared focus while reducing burden as well, we are always looking for more creative ideas. JAnstee (WMF) (talk) 22:55, 5 February 2016 (UTC) @JAnstee (WMF): To the extent that I'm understanding this proposal, I would support in principle having "more consistent measures and observations for our qualitative impacts as well as our quantitative." However, I am wondering if this new model is more complicated than necessary. Could you provide a few examples of how different outcome mapping captures in blog posts and reports could happen under the new framework, as compared to how they might happen without this framework? For illustrative purposes, one action that might be helpful is to take a few existing reports and transform them into compliance with the frameworks that you're proposing, so that we can see the before-and-after difference. --Pine✉ 06:04, 6 February 2016 (UTC) @Pine: I think this may also go to Sydney's point above. The proposal here is to use the framework for a process to build a set of clearly defined qualitative measures which we can create and share together. Yes, the more inclusive and participatory a process, the more complex and lengthy that process becomes. That doesn't mean it has to be more complicated for each person contributing though, it is more in the process design and communications that will need careful planning and execution. As this is a proposal for a participatory process rather than a product at this time, I am unable to concretely map existing reporting to that possible in the future, but an example might be, instead of reporting how many new partners were gained through a set of work, perhaps we would choose to map out a couple specific behavioral indicators such as how our partners helped our influence by promoting our projects, or through partner referrals or invitations to other opportunities, or some other key behaviors that emerge as highly valued outcomes we want to capture together as partners in the open knowledge movement. Does this make more clear sense? Please let me know. JAnstee (WMF) (talk) 17:19, 8 February 2016 (UTC) JAnstee (WMF) that is helpful. Two considerations that I see going forward are that 1. this framework should be simple for grantees to undergo and for grant committees to understand, and 2. the process should add clarity to grant committees as they are making funding decisions. As we can see from this lengthy conversation, I'm currently finding it difficult to get clarity on the framework that's being proposed, so I'm hoping that some simplification and clarification can be done. I also hope that the grants committees will be asked for their comments on this proposal. Thanks, --Pine✉ 19:32, 8 February 2016 (UTC) Fund existing voluntary reporting channels Fund The Signpost An obvious way to get cheap efficient outcome mapping is to fund existing volunteer efforts to relieve administrative burden and allow more volunteers to contribute in ways that match community demand. I would prefer to not see new outreach mapping channels established as experiments when there are already working volunteer-models that have community support and popularity. The most expensive part of outreach programs is doing marketing to get uptake by volunteers. That is expensive because as a prerequisite to marketing, there has to be research done to determine what barriers exist to volunteer uptake, and how the new program differs from an organically developed one from the inside. Too often I feel that WMF evaluates volunteer interest and engagement as having no cash value, and so they do not get directly compared to funded initiatives by paid staff with an easy-to-measure cash value. I am not going to say that The Signpost is perfect or could serve everyone, but it does have a readership of ~1200 weekly and ~4000 when there is a hot issue. It is also a model for other newsletters. If a new outreach reporting program is started, it is unlikely that it would be as successful in communication and building community culture as The Signpost. If I were to put a cash value on The Signpost, I would say that 1200 people read it for 15 minutes weekly, so 1200 volunteer hours a month, valued at USD $20 an hour for capturing the attention of a highly engaged, specialized, extremely valuable thought leader community base. It is worth 25,000k a month to tap into the most devoted soul of the Wikimedia community. The part of community reporting that works well is journalism, identifying topics of interest, and peer to peer engagement. The part that needs funding is the horrendous and tedious administration that no volunteer wants to do. If you want mapping, then provide paid staff to managing reporting queues and scheduling for community news and to research the hierarchy of categorization and catalog the stories written so that they can more easily be accessed by the people who want them. To further encourage reporting, hire staff to do the mindless reporting work that readers demand but that volunteers do not want to do - assist with traffic reports, compile the submission summary link lists, draft the lists of featured content, coordinate between newsletters so that each one identifies relevant content published in others, and help clean up publishing templates so that community journalism projects easily scale and can be replicated for niche interests and in other languages. If you do outcome mapping, do not hire aliens to manage it! Find a way to fund existing community volunteer efforts with administrative support to leverage existing community interest and participation! No new projects without assessment and comparison to reporting systems and community programs which already exist! No new projects without integration into volunteer workflows, habits, and culture, and without significant volunteer approval and engagement! Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:47, 5 February 2016 (UTC) Risks and barriers to success of Outcome Mapping What do you see as potential risks and barriers to success for the Outcome Mapping, and what steps are you taking to mitigate them? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2016 (UTC) Success for Outcome Mapping? And how will you know if Outcome Mapping is successful based on the criteria you identified? Will you have other measures of success? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2016 (UTC) Support Looks like a very good project. Do we already have a place where systematic quantitative data gathering happen? It would be great if we can group both in the same place. I think reporting can sometimes be a burden for volunteers, I really hope this system proposes an easy, stree-free qualitative reporting system.--Reem Al-Kashif (talk) 00:14, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Process: Affiliate Partnerships

Total community editors to topic 6/22 total community editors

Positive Support	(1 editor total) Generally, I like the approach of the WMF to finally take over some responsibility for facilitating the development of the affiliates – a lot! Striving for more staff support for affiliate development and organizational effectiveness is kind of an old hat and has been discussed for many years. I am glad to see this finally condense into a clear mandate (and resources) of the PC&L team. A lot of these issues have been examined in the course of the Chapters Dialogue. If you read through the insights, you will see that these challenges are still persistent and that the wish for more support from the WMF is a very strong one. Chapters Dialogue/Insights/Organizational and Chapter development Chapters Dialogue/Insights/Role of the WMF Chapters Dialogue/Insights/Perceptions (see the “Empathy” section: “This is exactly what many of the interviewees wish for: overcoming the old narrative. “I don’t want to walk on the paths of those old trauma. I want to make it different”. All people in the movement wish for mutual recognition and approval. They wish for relationships that are based on trust, empathy and appreciation. History can’t be wiped out – but mistakes can be forgiven and let go of. Forgiving hasn’t been a strength in the Wikimedia community, though. While code and technology can always be considered (and tackled) in a rational way, human relationships need more than that.”) I also welcome the long-waited support for the Affiliations Committee. Especially, I would like to see the AffCom as a guide for new, young, small affiliates, based on its extensive knowledge and understanding of local communities, for example by supporting them to finalize their "on-boarding handbook for new organisations", professionalizing their liaison model, and developing the fourth affiliate type for “movement partners” I fully agree and welcome the approach to “maximizing the value of conferences, site visits and high potential events and opportunities to extend movement wide impact and reach” which fits closely to what WMDE already practices and I would like to see more in the Wikimedia movement. On a more general level, I would like to express our pleasure with the WMF's apparent shift towards partnership, trust and esteem based relationships with its affiliates. The movement is growing closer together, I hope; more dialogues and channels are introduced for communication, collaboration, and mutual support.
Suggestions	(3 editors total) This section sounds a bit vague to me. Can you list SMART goals for this group of initiatives? While building a better relationship between WMF and affiliates is certainly much needed, I feel compelled to point out that not everyone working in the program space is an affiliate. If support is limited to affiliates, please work with AffCom to create affiliate models for non-member organizations — the current options exclude from affiliation organizations like Wiki Ed, Consumer Reports, academic associations, universities, GLAMs, and other institutions actively supporting developing free knowledge on Wikimedia projects. There's a lot of really important work happening in Wikimedia projects led by non-affiliates too. The description does not really take into account that a lot of affiliates already work together on a bilateral basis, without the necessity of direct support from a central body. A comment I have made in the grants consultation still applies: I think that what could foster the collaboration among affiliates are cross-organization grants that support movement relevant programs/projects and encourage partnerships. Our strong wish is that the WMF provides the movement with a healthy and decisive leadership
Concerns	(2 editors total) How do we plan to support groups and programs that do not neatly fit into current status quo guidelines? Wiki Learning is an education program AND an affiliate, which needs advice and support to continue its quite monumental growth. Right now, I don’t see a clear path forward with the usual WMF set ups. An important aspect that needs more thinking here, though, is the conversation around global and local responsibilities as well as shared tasks. In my view, we cannot just draw a strict line between global and local tasks by simply assigning global tasks to the WMF and local tasks to the Affiliates.
Challenges and risks	(2 editors total) ? What I miss in the description, though, are words like enabling, empowering, decentrality that embrace such a diverse and colorful network of groups and organizations like the Wikimedia movement. One thing that runs like a golden thread through several conversations around roles and shared responsibilities is the fine line between paternalism and empowerment. My advice would be to regularly reflect on the challenge to provide leadership without being too bossy.

Outstanding questions:

• What do you see as potential risks and barriers to success for the Affiliate Partnerships program, and what steps are you taking to mitigate them?
• How will you know if Affiliate Partnerships program is successful based on the criteria you identified? Will you have other measures of success?

From Hangout:

There is another question: You see yourself and the re-organising of your team(s) aligned with the new strategy process of the WMF. As I suppose you've been heavily involved in designing these approaches, can you answer me what "Align efforts between our affiliate organizations and the Wikimedia Foundation to increase local language and community coverage on key initiatives." means? (I know, parts of this approach are covered by other CE teams, but parts also by your team) How do you want to "align"? And what are "key initiatives"?

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Discussion In what ways does the Affiliate Partnerships support the area Community Leadership Development? What questions or concerns do you have? Add a topic and leave your comments, or add to an existing topic, and sign below This section sounds a bit vague to me. Can you list SMART goals for this group of initiatives? --Pine✉ 00:30, 27 January 2016 (UTC) Thanks for connecting with me via hangout Pine. Your notations about AffCom informing this work as well as peer mentoring particularly noted as we build out the annual plan RRein(WMF) Same question as I put up at the Knowledge Hub. How do we plan to support groups and programs that do not neatly fit into current status quo guidelines? Wiki Learning is an education program AND an affiliate, which needs advice and support to continue its quite monumental growth. Right now, I dont see a clear path forward with the usual WMF set ups.Thelmadatter (talk) 19:32, 2 February 2016 (UTC) ? Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:51, 5 February 2016 (UTC) While building a better relationship between WMF and affiliates is certainly much needed, I feel compelled to point out that not everyone working in the program space is an affiliate. If support is limited to affiliates, please work with AffCom to create affiliate models for non-member organizations — the current options exclude from affiliation organizations like Wiki Ed, Consumer Reports, academic associations, universities, GLAMs, and other institutions actively supporting developing free knowledge on Wikimedia projects. There's a lot of really important work happening in Wikimedia projects led by non-affiliates too. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:02, 12 February 2016 (UTC) Risks and barriers to success of Affiliate Partnerships program What do you see as potential risks and barriers to success for the Affiliate Partnerships program , and what steps are you taking to mitigate them? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2016 (UTC) Success? And how will you know if Affiliate Partnerships program is successful based on the criteria you identified? Will you have other measures of success? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2016 (UTC) Questions and concerns Generally, I like the approach of the WMF to finally take over some responsibility for facilitating the development of the affiliates – a lot! What I miss in the description, though, are words like enabling, empowering, decentrality that embrace such a diverse and colorful network of groups and organizations like the Wikimedia movement. One thing that runs like a golden thread through several conversations around roles and shared responsibilities is the fine line between paternalism and empowerment. My advice would be to regularly reflect on the challenge to provide leadership without being too bossy. I also think that the description does not really take into account that a lot of affiliates already work together on a bilateral basis, without the necessity of direct support from a central body. A comment I have made in the grants consultation still applies: I think that what could foster the collaboration among affiliates are cross-organization grants that support movement relevant programs/projects and encourage partnerships. Striving for more staff support for affiliate development and organizational effectiveness is kind of an old hat and has been discussed for many years. I am glad to see this finally condense into a clear mandate (and resources) of the PC&L team. A lot of these issues have been examined in the course of the Chapters Dialogue. If you read through the insights, you will see that these challenges are still persistent and that the wish for more support from the WMF is a very strong one. Chapters Dialogue/Insights/Organisational and Chapter development Chapters Dialogue/Insights/Role of the WMF Chapters Dialogue/Insights/Perceptions (see the “Empathy” section: “This is exactly what many of the interviewees wish for: overcoming the old narrative. “I don’t want to walk on the paths of those old trauma. I want to make it different”. All people in the movement wish for mutual recognition and approval. They wish for relationships that are based on trust, empathy and appreciation. History can’t be wiped out – but mistakes can be forgiven and let go of. Forgiving hasn’t been a strength in the Wikimedia community, though. While code and technology can always be considered (and tackled) in a rational way, human relationships need more than that.”) I also welcome the long-waited support for the Affiliations Committee. Especially, I would like to see the AffCom as a guide for new, young, small affiliates, based on its extensive knowledge and understanding of local communities, for example by supporting them to finalize their “on-boarding handbook for new organisations”, professionalizing their liaison model, and developing the fourth affiliate type for “movement partners”. I fully agree and welcome the approach to “maximizing the value of conferences, site visits and high potential events and opportunities to extend movement wide impact and reach” which fits closely to what WMDE already practices and I would like to see more in the Wikimedia movement. On a more general level, I would like to express our pleasure with the WMF's apparent shift towards partnership, trust and esteem based relationships with its affiliates. The movement is growing closer together, I hope; more dialogues and channels are introduced for communication, collaboration, and mutual support. An important aspect that needs more thinking here, though, is the conversation around global and local responsibilities as well as shared tasks. In my view, we cannot just draw a strict line between global and local tasks by simply assigning global tasks to the WMF and local tasks to the Affiliates. Our strong wish is that the WMF provides the movement with a healthy and decisive leadership. --Nicole Ebber (WMDE) (talk) 17:02, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Process: Community Listening Project

Positive Support	Already being one in DACH region, would be great to do this in a broader scale. Peer exchange about surveys could be extremely useful. Also great to discuss choosing best methods for community input (already seeing survey fatigue and consultation fatigue)
Suggestions	Should not be a top-down approach! Should be integrated with learning patterns Make sure to coordinate survey initiatives across the board (affiliates & WMF); towards a collection of survey resources Make sure to reuse and document existing information about communities rather the continuously asking communities the same questions when new staff arrive
Concerns	(No concerns found, e.g. cautions/risks)
Challenges and risks	(Edward: Time and alignment - I worry about other organizations may not have this as high as a priority)

From Daria via email: ”Community consultation may be useful if you've got a model that we can work out in chapters”.

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Discussion In what ways does the Community Listening Project support the area Community Leadership Development? What questions or concerns do you have? Add a topic and leave your comments, or add to an existing topic, and sign below It seems to me that this initiative could be folded into the Learning Patterns Library. --Pine✉ 00:34, 27 January 2016 (UTC) Thanks for the comment User:Pine! Learning patterns is definitely a big part of this project through the Survey Support Desk and the knowledge hub mentioned on this page. Learning patterns may become part of all the projects, actually. Do you have other questions? Do you find this useful for your work in any way? --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 19:31, 27 January 2016 (UTC) I find the general idea quite helpful, especially regarding the opportunities for a more systematic approach to community surveys. In the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) we already try to streamline our yearly community surveys so that at least some core questions are comparable between the countries and communities. I think this could also be potentially interesting on a broader scale and the Community Listening Project a suitable platform. However, I hope that exisiting experiences from affiliates will be taken into account / that it will not be top down approach. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 11:11, 1 February 2016 (UTC) It might also be an opportunity to dicuss and exchange experiences with different tools. Some are more suitable concerning the privacy expectations of our communities than others (e.g. Qualtrics vs LimeSurvey). --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 11:16, 1 February 2016 (UTC) Thanks CDG (WMAT staff). Your questions prompted me to inquire about limesurvey (see: this phab task) but I believe the issue with the WMF using it is that it has security problems. I am curious of others use it? Also - are there other tools that are important to discuss related to surveys or other collective decisionmaking tools? About the first part of your comment; its great to hear that you have already been collaborating with affiliates in your region with surveys and sharing data. I feel this is something the WMF does poorly and we have so much to learn from you and others - so... would be great if we can chat about this sometime? :) As you say, we are thinking of this project as a peer exchange as well as a space for collaborating on movement-wide projects -- definitely not top-down. I am curious - do you have suggestions for how we can be less "top down" (even now, as we discuss these projects)? I'm also wondering how we can ensure to make room to really listen to this kind of feedback about top-down approaches on a regular basis as well as suggestions for how to fix them. We definitely need to hear feedback and ideas. --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 19:00, 2 February 2016 (UTC) Hi CDG (WMAT staff) and EGalvez (WMF), I find the approach of a peer exchange about surveys and how to share learnings from surveys extremely useful and I will be happy to contribute. The Survey Support Desk mentioned above seems to me like a promising first step towards both, a better coordination of survey initiatives (between affiliates but also between WMF initiatives and the communities affected) and towards a collection of survey resources. What strikes me even more is the question about how to choose the most appropriate methods to collect community input. On-Wiki consultations and surveys are already used very frequently and many editors complain about “survey fatigue” or “consultation overflow”. I’d really like to see more discussions about all the potential ways to connect to communities and about making surveys and consultations gain their full potential.--Christof Pins (WMDE) (talk) 12:23, 17 February 2016 (UTC) My tip: Please reuse already existing information. Anasuya and Garfield did a world tour on 2014 and wrote loads of community information. Please reuse it and share it with wikimedians. Don't reinvent the wheel again. One of the things Wikimedians dislike more is that everytime WMF person changes, we need to share our whooooole history again. Please read documentation and do you own stats and resumes.--Kippelboy (talk) 11:53, 8 February 2016 (UTC) Thanks Kippelboy - super helpful tip. This is something we would like to get better at; it can be difficult especially if sensitive information is involved. I'm not sure if you have experience with this in other organizations? What tools would you recommend if any come to mind? The grantmaking team uses Fluxx for grants management, which can also be used for something like a crm, but its is limited. We could also just get focused on improving meta as well. --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 22:58, 11 February 2016 (UTC) Risks and barriers to success of Community Listening Project What do you see as potential risks and barriers to success for the Community Listening Project , and what steps are you taking to mitigate them? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2016 (UTC) Thanks for posing this question Sydney Poore/FloNight - I am sorry I only just saw it. I would really like to hear your thoughts about this. What do you see are the major risks or barriers? For me, I am concerned about time and engaging others in this work; we are already very outstretched with different projects (not just in the WMF!), but I feel we need to get better at listening to each other, whether it be on an individual level, or an organizational level (especially given recent events).--EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 23:27, 25 February 2016 (UTC) Success? And how will you know if Community Listening Project is successful based on the criteria you identified? Will you have other measures of success? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2016 (UTC) Great question Sydney Poore/FloNight. Criteria are more for choosing which projects we want to focus on, but they can help with guiding what measures we should be looking at. Success, for me, has two parts. Since the WMF has a lot of learning to do around listening, one success could be that one year from now, communities feel more listened to and (as a result), together, we have built increased trust. And, I am hoping we might be able to measure this with surveys. I feel listening work speaks heavily to sustainability. Another success would be to know whether community leaders (and communities in general) are learning from each other about tools for listening and decisionmaking, which speaks to building community leadership. Do you agree that these are good areas to measures? Do you believe there might be others? Thanks! --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 23:27, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Process: Peer Mentoring and Leadership

Positive Support	Good concept +1 WMF can be helpful in facilitating connections and fostering discussions. PC&L should take the lead on organizing peer mentoring. +1
Suggestions	Partner with affiliates, who have boots on the ground and are context-embedded +1 Encourage the Aff-Comm to communicate best practices and facilitating conversations. Dedicating grants to have affiliates do this work +1 AffComm and PC&L have different skills to contribute to this project. How will we integrate the Organization Development tool? Offer a SWOT analysis and Measures of Success.
Concerns	Shouldn’t be top down from WMF +1 WMF is not in the best position to do this: Cultural gap / lack of global view +1 Affiliates don’t have the capacity to organize and promote peer mentoring and learning.
Challenges and risks	Leadership of the board has to be solved first.

Main discussion is who should hold this project: affiliates or WMF team?

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Discussion In what ways does the Peer Mentoring and Leadership support the area Community Leadership Development? What questions or concerns do you have? Add a topic and leave your comments, or add to an existing topic, and sign below Nice concept but should be affiliate run I like the concept, but it seems to me that this is an initiative that should be run by the affiliates as peers, instead of organized top-down by WMF. --Pine✉ 00:33, 27 January 2016 (UTC) Thanks for that comment Pine. Can you elaborate a bit more on why you think this is something that affiliates should run, and not the WMF? I'm curious to understand your perspective better. I'll give you an example of why WMF could initiate this: we have a truly global perspective, in the sense that we are constantly in contact with people all around the world, and we always work on distilling patterns and trends that emerge in the work that everybody does. Having those international connections and that global lens in all that we do, makes us well suited to initiate global peer mentorship. At the same time, something similar could of course be done by affiliates themselves. The connections may be less global then, but that may be advantageous as well, since people can learn from peers in similar circumstances. In my view it's not "only WMF should do it", but it's more "we should all do this!". WMF is now proposing to be more methodical about this. A good example of what we have in mind is the model of the current Wikipedia Education Collaborative. FKoudijs (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 29 January 2016 (UTC) @FKoudijs (WMF): I would disagree with the assessment that WMF has "a truly global perspective". For example, I hear precious little from WMF about Japanese Wikipedia, yet it ranks highly in multiple measures. WMF's technical expertise is considerable, but its cultural, legal, and linguistic know-how for operating in diverse and specialized environments will always pale in comparison to the affiliates'. Boots-on-the-ground expertise in cultural, legal, and linguistic matters all around the world are among the key benefits of having affiliates in the first place. In terms of developing peer leadership, (to be very blunt) WMF's annual planning last year was far below the standards of professionalism and transparency that the FDC and affiliates have developed, and the recent drama with WMF's board is also a source of significant concern about the leadership of WMF. I would oppose having WMF preach to the affiliates about how to do leadership or run effective organizations. On the other hand, I think WMF can be helpful by facilitating connections among affiliates and fostering discussions among them about best practices (including with WMF, which from my perspective has a great deal to learn.) As I mentioned to Rosemary, I think that a good course of action would be to encourage the Affiliations Committee and its members to take on the role of facilitating conversations and communicating good practices among affiliates, and WMF can have a supporting role in helping to the Affiliations Committee to optimize its impact. --Pine✉ 23:34, 2 February 2016 (UTC) Thanks for clarifying Pine, that helps me understand what you meant. If we take the example of the education program, I would argue that we are in essence facilitators and connectors. We connect people to people, to tools and to resources that they can use, and which may help prevent them from reinventing the wheel once more. I never approach my works as "listen to me, I know best because of my global vantage point", but rather as "if you are doing this in region x, you may want to talk to person A in region y because they have done something similar and you could exchange experiences and learn from each other". I hope that clarifies what I meant by the truly global perspective. It's also our job as WMF to always think about how the things we do will resonate worldwide. I'm sure we often do so imperfectly, but the starting point is to always think globally. Most affiliates' jobs are to think regionally or nationally. I've noticed that for some (definitely not all!), connecting their own experiences to other people's experiences can be hard, especially given how limited time is for most, and how big and diverse a place the world is. The way I see this concept, this should always be a joint project where affiliates and community members are involved in from the earliest moment. FKoudijs (WMF) (talk) 01:39, 4 February 2016 (UTC) FKoudijs (WMF) thanks for the comments. I think that we agree that WMF can serve as a connector, though in present circumstances I feel it is best for the affiliates to keep our collective distance from WMF due to the ongoing situation with the WMF Board and the WMF's periodic clashes with the community. I feel that the Affiliations Committee might be well positioned to share knowledge among the affiliates, and WMF can have a role supporting the Affiliations Committee to the extent that AffCom trusts WMF to do this and to the extent that WMF is willing to trust AffCom with supportive resources. Looking at leadership in a few varieties outside of the affiliates, for example on the meta-level committees, in global sysop and steward roles, and in technical leadership roles, I think that training for leaders could also conceivably be done through peer learning and that WMF could provide some support such as professional conflict-resolution training for administrators via consultants that were sourced by community members. Due to the periodic conflicts between the community and WMF, as well as the situation with the governance of WMF, I think that this is as deep as I would trust WMF to be involved in training community leaders at this time. --Pine✉ 06:54, 4 February 2016 (UTC) @User:Pine and @User:FKoudijs (WMF), the community engagement dynamics across the wikimedia movement are complex. There has never been a consensus for the larger affiliates to speak for the whole population of volunteer contributors, in fact in some cases, there is not a clear indication that the local affiliates are able to speak for the local language(s) community(ies) in their location. This is true of affiliates of all types and size. The community on different WMF projects in different languages have distinct cultures. WMF staff who work globally live that reality every day in their work. To me it is important that the diverse community is given a chance to participate, and discussion is not overwhelmed by voices from the largest WMF projects. It goes unrecognized by many people in the community, that people working in Community Engagement have a pretty good track record of advocating for building a stronger global community. While every try has not worked well, WMF staff and local communities do work well together in many global locations. It concerns me that some people like yourself (Pine) are saying that they want to move away these initiatives to programs run by AffCom or Affiliates without any understanding that it could undermine the existing collaborations that are working. The strength of many of these initiatives is that they have a central hub. Beyond capacity issues, I'm not convinced that any Affiliate or Volunteer run committee is as better positioned to design and execute a Leadership Training program to people across the world. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 17:03, 5 February 2016 (UTC) yes, building on GLAM-camp: find, recruit, train wikipedians to become GLAM volunteers who can interact and run events with local institutions. please see Lori about this, i'm sure she has ideas. Slowking4 (talk) 02:18, 30 January 2016 (UTC) Sincerely, I do not see enough reasons why WMF is in the best position to preach to the affiliates about leadership or how to run effective organizations. I really do not want to comment much on the recent drama at WMF but I feel the WMF can have a supporting role in helping the Affiliations Committee to optimize its impact. Wikicology (talk) 12:40, 3 February 2016 (UTC) My first hand experience working with current and past members of this team has been positive and I think that they are an important part of the wikimedia movement. Paid staff at WMF and affiliates are an important part of the wikimedia movement. Some of their reports have been invaluable for helping understand different types of impact. They are dedicated to the global movement while local affiliates naturally have a narrower focus. While individuals who have been in the wikimedia movement for many years and attend global meeting may have a good grasp of the global landscape, they are not the majority of staff or volunteers running the affiliated organizations. Add, putting the responsibility for managing peer support on affiliates adds an extra responsibility that many affiliates may not want to take on. Since up to now the wikimedia movement affiliated organizations have not developed an effective ongoing method for peer review and training, I welcome the efforts of Program Capacity and Learning team at WMF to take a lead role. That is not to say that it should be a top down approach or that WMF staff have all the answers. No one who has spent a few months working at WMF would think that a top down approach is possible solution. But the people working in the Program Capacity and Learning team are valuable resources for the wikimedia movement and well positioned to reach out globally to do Leadership Training programs. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 19:17, 4 February 2016 (UTC) Hi FloNight, what would you think about WMF providing grants to affiliates for this kind of work? For example, since WMDE already hosts the Wikimedia Conference, perhaps grant support could also be provided to them for the purpose of providing leadership training to the affiliates in general. Alternatively, AffCom could be the lead for this kind of training and WMF could provide grant-like funding under AffCom's direction for consultants to assist the affiliates and community members with leadership development. --Pine✉ 20:01, 4 February 2016 (UTC) Further thought: training for administrators, stewards, and others with non-affiliate community leadership roles could happen via a project grant under the new WMF grants structure. --Pine✉ 23:51, 4 February 2016 (UTC) User:Pine, the idea that individuals or groups of volunteers or affiliates could/should do leadership training has been discussed for years. There are "lessons learned" about contributing to the the wikimedia movement that seem to hold true across many regions of the world that are appropriate to collect and share. There have been short term projects and events in the past. But so far, there has never been an effort to: 1) do a needs assessment for all types of leaders, 2) study the effectiveness of previous offerings, and 3) then offer resources to all types of individuals or groups in the wikimedia movement. This WMF team is well suited by their academic education, prior work experience, and knowledge of the wikimedia movement to design this initiative. Like every organization, there have been successes and failures in the WMF's programmatic activity and engagement with the world wide wikimedia community. While we shouldn't turn a blind eye to the failures, it is equally wrong to ignore the successes. I'm ready to work with WMF Program Capacity and Learning team to improve the capacity and effectiveness of people working in the wikimedia movement. And I hope that these ideas are refined and make it into the finial WMF Annual Plan. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 14:53, 5 February 2016 (UTC) @FloNight: I think that we're looking at this situation from different levels of abstraction. I'm looking at the Board of WMF with the feeling that affiliates would do well to keep some distance from them and the WMF brand name in general until the leadership issues in the WMF boardroom are addressed. (I have some thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of the WMF ED as well, but I'll save those comments for elsewhere.) At the lower levels of the WMF hierarchy, I'm aware of fewer issues in WMF (in other words, it seems to me that the general performance and mission alignment are good at those levels) and would agree that there are some strengths and capacities that the affiliates and other community leaders might be able to benefit from. However, because I feel uncomfortable with the leadership of WMF, I am highly cautious of entrusting training on the specific subject of leadership to WMF under these circumstances, particularly for COI reasons. As an example of a situation that would be a problem even if I generally trusted WMF Board, consider what would happen if a needs assessment of affiliate leaders could surface a desire from affiliates to improve their negotiation skills so as to perform better in advocating for the affiliates' perspectives when negotiating with WMF about potential grants or reports. I think that could quickly lead to a COI situation if WMF was involved in an administering a survey that could surface this information or involved in training affiliate participants in negotiation skills. The training of affiliate participants and community members on subjects relating to matters such as software development or public policy, where there are often alignments between community interests and WMF interests, would raise far fewer concerns from my perspective. Considering the factors above, I believe that it would be appropriate for leadership training for affiliates and community members generally to be conducted by other affiliates or community members, perhaps with some arms' length financial support from WMF via grants. --Pine✉ 05:34, 6 February 2016 (UTC) ? Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:52, 5 February 2016 (UTC) Can't we run this project under community grants? 96.237.20.21 00:09, 6 February 2016 (UTC) I see this as both the Affcomm and the WMF being able to provide different resources and support. Affiliates can offer structural support, developmental support form working with volunteers to fund raising to when hire staff. Where as the WMF has the legal knowledge, the media handling/PR skills and the funding/grant people that it can share. Developing the skills and knowledge for leaders is something that should be done jointly taking on board the lessons from best resources available. Gnangarra (talk) 02:24, 13 February 2016 (UTC) There is A lot of experience in the chapters. Board members and staff can also take part in the mentoring program. Michal Lester לסטר (talk) 12:29, 16 February 2016 (UTC) Organizational effectiveness tool While we're on the subject of leadership training, I'd like to ask about the status of the Organizational effectiveness tool. Can someone from PC&L provide an update? Thanks, --Pine✉ 05:39, 6 February 2016 (UTC) Hi, Pine. Thanks for bringing this up. This organizational effectiveness project, as well as work to develop resources for organizations, is led by the CR team. We unfortunately don't have enough resources on the resources team (irony, I know!) to continue to develop the tool right now, since we are implementing major changes to the grants programs based on feedback from the community consultation on reimagining grants. In my view, the next logical step would be to make some changes based on feedback we received and then move that tool to a platform like Qualtrics that can be maintained by the affiliate community and also used independently of WMF. We on CR are continuing to develop the learning center for organizations that accompanied the first iteration of the tool, and CR will be developing more resources for organizations in areas that have been identified by organizations as priorities in the aggregate data (and through other work with organizations since then). I'd like to have some more conversations about what we should prioritize at the Wikimedia Conference! If you think this work is important and should be continued, please do shout it from the rooftops :) Cheers, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 23:59, 9 February 2016 (UTC) Risks and barriers to success of Peer Mentoring & Leadership program What do you see as potential risks and barriers to success for the Peer Mentoring & Leadership program, and what steps are you taking to mitigate them? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2016 (UTC) Success? And how will you know if the Peer Mentoring & Leadership program is successful based on the criteria you identified? Will you have other measures of success? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2016 (UTC) Include this in the Hub? I like this project. I think it would be more helpful if this was included as a tab in the Hub website/page.--Reem Al-Kashif (talk) 23:54, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Community Management

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Thanks for the office hours on IRC and Google hangout on February 16th, 2016. Roadmap In the presentation a 'roadmap' was mentioned, it is the subtitle of the deck of slides. In the conversation the view of PC&L on community management was asked. Here is a list of things a community manager does: Welcoming members to the community & acclimating them Building relationships with key members of the community and influencers Moderating conversation and encouraging specific topics Promoting members, making introductions to other members, and encouraging relationship formation Running regular programming/content/events Finding internal resources to respond to specific community discussions and coordinating cross-functional needs Enforcing guidelines/boundaries Managing tools – might be a combination of enterprise & social networks (FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) Reporting/measurement Channeling input and response from community into other organizational processes Planning and developing strategies for increasing engagement and conversion Source: Differentiating Between Social Media and Community Management, Rachel Happe, The Community Roundtable. Will CE / CR / PC&L provide support to for example affiliates to perform the tasks mentioned above? Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 13:54, 17 February 2016 (UTC) Thanks Ad Huikeshoven for the question - I actually subscribe to community roundtables emails - they are okay/lots of advertising unfortunately for their products. But I think as a whole this is what we aim to support. I personally don't think of it as "management", which comes from for-profit organizations that aim to increase their bottom line by getting volunteers to do their work for them. PC&L is trying to approach this as an exchange of ideas. The WMF doesn't have the answers and we should not pretend that we do. We definitely have our own faults. This is how I am approaching the idea of community "management". What are your thoughts about this? Thanks! --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 18 February 2016 (UTC)