Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/2019 Community Conversations/Partnerships

Current situation

Uneven professional level

Organisational partners are mostly professionals. Wikimedians are mostly volunteers with only partial time to spend on a project. There are few possibilities to build and keep a long-term collaboration between a Wikimedia Chapter or User group and a cultural institution. Wikimedians do not sufficiently understand the requirements of an institution. Institutions insufficiently understand the possibilities of the Wikimedia applications, tools, systems, and projects. Geert Van Pamel (WMBE) (talk) 16:51, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Aligned Players

It would always be great to have aligned partners working and most importantly assisting The Wikimedia Movement, however, it cannot be ascertained on how they intend to keep Affiliates (Chapter importantly) within the loop. It would be very unprofessional if two entities within the same geographical domain approach the same potential partner. Some problems in this regard have already occurred in India between Wikimedia India and CIS-A2K.--Abhinav619 (talk) 02:55, 11 April 2019 (UTC) Abhinav619, what is CIS-A2K? James Salsman (talk) 06:43, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

@James Salsman: Please visit the page here. A staff based organisation working in India for Wikimedia Mission. --Abhinav619 (talk) 06:53, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

@Abhinav619: Thank you. Which has the better working conditions for interns? I propose that alignment issues be decided in favor of rewarding the side with the better working conditions for interns, and assisting to bring the other one up to the level of the winner. James Salsman (talk) 07:02, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

@James Salsman: Not able to understand your statement. CIS-A2K is a staff-based organisation and Wikimedia India is by the volunteers, the two can't be compared.--Abhinav619 (talk) 07:18, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

One of the Groups has a question related to this. Give me up to a week or two, please. James Salsman (talk) 07:55, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Partnerships to beat back disinformation and take back the internet

Please see Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Working Groups/Partnerships. James Salsman (talk) 13:43, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Privacy, tracking, and research partners

The Product & Technology WG suggested posting this here.

Today the assumption that Wikipedia readers are not tracked was stated by a subject matter expert in a different forum, and obliquely confirmed by a senior Foundation official. So (and partially in regard to the CTO criteria I requested above, in case they are disregarded wholesale) I want to remind the Working Group that dozens of the Foundation's research partners world-wide, who are covered by nondisclosure agreements that impose no specific data security requirements and who along with their coworkers are subject to subpoenas and national security letters, hold "the complete ... server logs from Wikipedia ... about 14 terabytes of raw logs per month" including the "IP address, proxy information, and user agent" of "Wikimedia’s full server logs, containing all HTTP requests to Wikimedia projects," as per pp. 19-20 here. James Salsman (talk) 16:53, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia Deutschland staff perspective

Over the last weeks WMDE's Strategy Liaisons, Moritz Rahm and Cornelius Kibelka, have conducted interviews with 13 experts among our staff on the themes of the working groups. Mostly, the qualitative interviews were done with groups of 2 or 3 people, the texts provided are summaries of the statements.

What does ‘framework’ mean?

For non-experts, outside the Wikimedia bubble, the scoping document seems a bit too high level, for experts it’s fine. However, some explanations and some details are missing, e.g. what “framework” actually means in that context – as it sounds like one size/one process fits all –, as well as how ideal partnerships should work. It seems the document is a bit too much focused on ourselves, as in openness is missing to create framework together with partners vs. imposing a framework on them.

Partnerships are like projects, which can be long-time stories with lots of projects inside and almost no end – or like a very very small, limited project. In general, it seems that for partnerships we – as a Movement – should take into account more perspectives of other stakeholders, even of those not originally involved, as this would open up new opportunities.

‘We believe partnerships should be goals in themselves’ lacks explanation.'

While it’s understandable where the sentence “We believe partnerships should be goals in themselves” comes from, it doesn’t make sense or at least lacks further explanation. The sentence suggests that partners should be or at least act as our closest friends, and we should be a movement of happy people sharing the same vision. Partners can also be different but might help us to achieve our goals. Sometimes it can be enough to share some goals, not all movement strategic goals.

With whom we shouldn’t partner with?

Something that is not included so far is the aspect with which partners we shouldn’t partner. Of course, a partnership with an external entity can only work if a certain value catalog is shared – but what are these values? Some of these values are of course local, context-specific – like what is ‘openness’? But we, as a Movement, should have certain global values for our partnerships work, we could set them on an abstract level, while specifying them on the local level. For partnerships we should define exactly what openness etc. in a partnership means. Values and a shared vision need to be taken into account as factors.

WMDE’s work on partnerships

In general, it’s hard to identify if WMDE’s partnership knowledge is applicable in other countries or context. We have good methods on internal knowledge sharing – a premise for starting a good partnership with an external entity – but that’s not easy to copy. For WMDE, it’s always a bit difficult to include the community/ies in our partnerships, especially on a structural level. Also, communicating with other Wikimedia organizations and groups on partnerships, has been a challenge.

If you have any questions, please let us know. Best regards, --Cornelius Kibelka (WMDE) (talk) 14:16, 2 July 2019 (UTC)