Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/Prioritization events

Announcements

Left one at the English Wikipedia--Ymblanter (talk) 11:33, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

• Thank so much Ymblanter. I have followed up with a message and hopefully we can hear back from the community. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 15:50, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

  Thank you. I am not very enthusiastic but may be we can get something out of there.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

  What do you think is the barrier at the moment? MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• Probably nobody is willing to invest their time in the analysis of the strategy text which should be a prerequisite to the event, and possibly people who can do it are already happy with other events or may be do not care. Let see whether something comes out of the office hours tomorrow, I will join unless something comes unexpectedly at work.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:11, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Arabic language event

The Arabic-speaking community held its prioritization event on October 17th, 2020. The event was organized by Wikimedia Morocco and Wikimedia Levant, and it had a duration of two hours and was attended by a total of 32 participats. The event was a presentation of the recommendations followed by a loosely facilitated discussion (data about priorities is being collected through an online survey, with the results to be shared soon). Meanwhile, here's a summary of the original discussion minutes:

• One major priority for the community is to develop communitie and user groups by providing them with more resources to facilitate growth. The larger the communities and user groups are, the more the content they will produce.
• Partnerships and external collaborations are crucial in supporting contributors and improving wikiprojects.
• The recommendations of Improve User Experience and Provide for Safety and Inclusion are particiularly relevant for the Arabic-speaking community. Difficulty of recruiting newcomers and reporting of abuse are among the major issues in the community that are tackled by those two recommendations.
• Priorities change as communities grow and develop. Each affiliate needs to define its own priorities that meet its current needs and scope of work.
• Some of the Strategy recommendations could affect the existing policies and guidelines on online projects. For example, the Universal Code of Conduct may require amending some of the current guidelines on Arabic-language wikiproejcts.
• Engagement from the Arabic-speaking community has been low in the Strategy process, UCoC and other movement-wide conversations. This is possibly because the community doesn't feel such conversations have sufficient importance or impact on their work. Lack of engagement, however, may lead to implementing global strategies that are not fit for the community, but against which it would be too late to argue by the time they are implemented. Solutions include raising impact of the impact of Strategy and recognizing those who engage (e.g. with barnstars and expression of thanks).

--Abbad (WMF) (talk) 18:42, 21 October 2020 (UTC).

Lack of engagement, however, may lead to implementing global strategies that are not fit for the community - thats a lame excuse if WMF isn't able to motivate the community. Maybe the community simple does not need a strategy? .... Further more; if the community engages in global issues and does not share the oppinion of WMF is simply ignored. Not true? So the community was (and is) very clear about WMF changing its name to Wikipedia-smth. What was the reaction of the WMF? Right; and survey asking if WMF should be called Wikipedia Foundation or Foundation of Wikipedia. and after an outcry what happened? Right first nothing and now there is working group created with mainly WMF people to solve the "issue". So probably trying to find a way to convince the community... Stop blaming the Community. You (WMF) are just using participation as a fig leaf ...Sicherlich ^Post 20:29, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Discussion space

There is now an open discussion space on Meta to have conversations about priorities without the limitation of events, for those interested --Abbad (WMF) (talk) 16:00, 29 October 2020 (UTC).

This is useful, but that is also have a kind of end date? Maybe on the day of the last global event or just after? Zblace (talk) 08:02, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

I have tentatively added the date of the second set of events (December 4th-5th) as the "deadline". According to the current objectives for events, such discussions will likely be no longer relevant afterwards. I'll rephrase the wording in a more "decisive" manner once there's more clarity on the events plan --Abbad (WMF) (talk) 22:59, 6 November 2020 (UTC).

Prioritization online survey for project communities in German-speaking regions

This is the report of the online survey on Wikipedia for project communities in German-speaking regions

Setup and reporting of the survey: Christoph Jackel

Total number of participating users: 30 (+2 after closing of the survey on Nov 8, without talk page)

Users with prioritization: 13

Users having other or no prioritization or spoke out against all strategic recommedations: 23, thereof solely against them: 10

(numbers altogether more than 30 because users partly expressed their opinion twice in different sections)

Prioritizations

#9 Innovate in Free Knowledge

Technology

• lay Focus on young people using other platforms
• offer pictures and short videos also for knowledge acquisition
• restrict edits by unregistered users (IP)

Knowledge management

• create wise acceptance strategy for Wikidata in other projects
• actively and proactively look for strategic cooperations to make research results, teaching content, exercises, etc. freely available from publicly funded bodies (researchers, scientists, teachers)

Internal management

• addressing structures and problems in German and English communities

#2 Improve User Experience

• used HTTP-Cookies, but also the absence of deanonymizable user tracking should be presented offensively, more prominent, transparent and comprehensible
• ask all Wikipedias if they have special tools and bots that the community as a whole can benefit from
• better responding in consumption needs (offer concise content when searching).
• Improve search functions (ignore spelling mistakes, simultaneous search in sister projects (especially Commons) etc.)
• ask readers for feedback via banners
• resources for newcomers, cross-project development and further use of tools overlap closely. (recommrndation# 7 Initiative 35)
• Detectability of bots and tools must be significantly improved
• Increase connections with sister projects.

#8 Ensure Equity in Decision-making

• Support for the proposed initiatives, especially the Regional & Thematic hubs
• To focus on old ambiguities that hide the conflicting interests of foundation and online communities more poorly than well
• Define clearer roles and more clearly defined areas of responsibility
• No endorsement, but rather a demand for a real, representative body as legislature, representing the communities:
  • A parliament elected according to fixed rules and for fixed terms of office and called the Legislature for the Movement
    • -> Elects Executive Council with clear rules
    • No appointed persons in the executive committee (co-optation)
    • Decision on admission of "external" communities in the legislative body
  • Second chamber with e.g. two representatives per community.
  • All negotiations of the bodies are public and can be followed by anyone inside and outside the community.

Further deliberation on recommendations

Recommendations are listed here in descending order of participation

Identify Topics for Impact (not prioritized)

• Initiatives for smaller language versions in particular would be appreciated
• stronger focus on sub-communities that write without proper citation
• raise awareness for old articles without a single reference for verification
• investigation by the WMF on how many incorrect articles we have (e.g. Stalin's bathroom)
  • how do they damage the reputation of Wikipedia
  • what can we do about it
• take action against fake news on an influential platform like Wikipedia is more important and urgent than ever before
• take action against fakes and against poorly referenced content.

Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement (not prioritized)

• support especially for ongoing fostering and support of diverse online and offline contributors, funding for underrepresented communities and alignment with environmental sustainability initiatives

Ecology

• It should be easily retrievable and transparently depicted, which energy is used for the operation of the Wikimedia servers, and from which energy sources they are fed (worldwide).
• The servers should be operated "green".
• The servers should be manufactured with fair components
• The buildings where the servers are located should be made of sustainable materials. The air conditioning of the server rooms could be made sustainable

Internal needs

• Regularly inquire about the needs of the communities
  • Identify and target different groups in their diversity

Provide for Safety and Inclusion (not prioritized)

Internal management

• Analyze existing structures.
• Proactively fight injustice in case of blocks.
• Secret elections of administration and arbitration committees
• Create awareness in the community regarding loud and dominant members
• UCoC is a good approach. (Comparable to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)
• separation of people enforcing and creating protection

Content

• More equitable relevance criteria (notability)
• abolishment of awards for articles

Invest in Skills and Leadership Development (not prioritized)

• Ask the community about supportable organizations and individuals
• Find out organizations or people who are good at particular things and inform them that we need them.
• Personal approach instead of targeting groups
• Centralize knowledge communication.
• Coordinate public perception

Manage Internal Knowledge (not prioritized)

• Centralize knowledge communication
• Make tools easier.
• Introduce gamification (rewarding edits)
• Traffic light system (quality management)
• Fixed scheduled dates for review and revision of pages that have not been changed recently

Coordinate Across Stakeholders (not prioritized)

• Wikipedia can set standards (e.g. neutrality) and recommend successful projects for replication elsewhere

Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt (not prioritized)

- no comments or prioritization -

Further ideas

If other priorities are identified:

Newcomers

• Top priority should be on more new authors for Wikipedia
• Keywords: Dealing with newcomers and motivating them regarding the ever increasing requirements for article creation
• Expansion of the mentoring program
• Special program for authors at real meetings (regulars' table),
• Helping newcomers should become a basic rule of Wikipedia.
• Newcomers should be cherished and be wooed
• Newcomers should be given all the help they can get.
• Increase presence at universities, libraries, etc.
• Recruit specialiced authors
• Improve working conditions for new authors

Existing community

• Will there be still enough voluntary authors in 2030 (Rec #1?)
• appreciation of good authors
• More incentives to write even for latently active scribblers
• Protection of the existing community (as opposed to the acquisition of new groups)
• concepts against editor retention
• Improve working conditions for authors
• More funds for real meetings
• Create an atmosphere in which writing is fun again
• Free access to suitable literature (e.g., Wikipedia Library)
• Access to all digitized literature (especially for emerging communitities)

Global administration and WMF

• Use of more languages in a global context
• Better communication with WMF and integration of the project communities in their decisions
• Restore credibility of WMF
• Adequate communication between community and decision makers
• Querying needs on a regular basis
• WMF as member organization
• Establishment of a genuine, representative body of the communities (public parliamentary democratic system with chambers and executive, see above)
• Define a clearer division of roles and more clearly defined areas of responsibility
• Focus on infrastructure provision
• Focus on providing the necessary infrastructure for the operation of the online encyclopedia and its sister projects
• Further development of the software
• Organization of meetings of Wikipedians
• Avoid misdirected projects (Superprotect, Framban, Branding project, tagging on Commons)
• no promoting of commercial reuse

Internal management

• Real conflict management with e.g. redefinition of the arbitration committee; dealing with conflicts of content and their settlement "Mediation Committee 2030"
• The hierarchies of pending changes reviewers and admins are opaque (scales globally)
• Leadership development is needed where there are hierarchies. But hierarchies should rather be reduced
• Reduce bureaucracy
• Thinning out sprawling rules of the community
• Better conflict resolution in the projects
• Better handling of self-promoters, paid editing and honeypots

Technology

• find out which new projects would be possible
• New software (migration of contents)
• Expansion of the server and hardware infrastructure
• Software expansion ("tools", etc.) through democratic decision by Wikipedian community
• Formulaset on the state of the art
• Referencing without need of instruction
• Page layout that works from Smartphone to 4k for all formats commonly used today without restrictions

Help pages / internal knowledge

• More centralized discussion to bring people back together (Rec #7 Ini 35?)
• Wikipedia needs a forum where you can ask basic questions.
• AHelping instructions belong on the main page
• There should be some kind of searchable table of contents (also for commons)

Content

• Do something about the increasing number of outdated articles
• Better quality management for articles is needed
• Companies spend money for marketing and manipulation of articles. This must not happen (Rec #8 Ini 36?)
• Articles are often not up to date and are updated too rarely. Idea: internal quality warning light
• A utopia would be that articles are only created in dialogue with users, so that the scope and design are individual.
• Improve handling of cleanup and requests for deletion
• Discussion of our relevance criteria (notability), since an opening to world knowledge would also mean more inclusionism
• Help with the myriad of copyright infringements on Commons, where about 2,000 of them have to be deleted every day and it is difficult to cope up with
• Where can consumers report a fake? Idea: Fake button
• Project pages only for coordination and correction of dubious content
• Reader surveys about article content
• Provide content for the education system and, if necessary, appropriate teaching skills

Revenue

• How do we keep our German Wikipedia fit for donations
• Donation displays should be more discreet, but all year round

Global Plurality

• Ensuring plurality of different projects. This is strength, not problem.

Charter

• A completely different charter with basic rights for all participants and guarantee of fair procedures
• Civil Rights Convention

Public Relations

• Other public relations. What is the public interested in, what does Wikimedia offer

Significance for society

• How can we better reflect our growing importance in society (Rec #8?)

General refusal

If none of the 10 priorities should be addressed :

Language

• Simple questions would make more sense
• The language is not accessible to all users
• Language is too abstract
• Language reminds of political slogans
• Translation is bumpy

Other approach

• Analysis of the actual problems is more necessary
• There are currently more important problems in the cooperation
• Rather concentrate on the essentials (especially the operation of Wikipedia)
• Wrong approach, the basis needs more rights

WMF

• The WMF moves further and further away from the base
• WMF has too much power
• WMF must become more credible

Process

• Contributors have neither been involved nor heard
• Not enough appreciation of the editors

Personal reasons

• No time to read through