Talk:Wikimedia Summit 2024/Participant list

Criteria

Hi. As a board member of Wikimedia Ukraine which will not be represented at the Wikimedia Summit, I find these criteria rather surprising and unexpected.

At Wikimedia Ukraine we value diversity. About ten years ago we intentionally decided not to send the same people to the Summit every year, and we have a rotation policy ever since. I was the Wikimedia Ukraine board delegate in 2022, and I deliberately did not apply for the 2024 spot. We agreed that it is good to have multiple board members involved in these strategic discussions, in particular to avoid the bus factor.

In this context I find it surprising that any repeated attendee from Wikimedia Ukraine would have automatically qualified (by ticking the My affiliate has a written published strategy that integrates Movement Strategy and I joined the Wikimedia Summit in 2022 boxes), while a new attendee does not get this advantage. (And we were also penalised by not formally appointing community ambassadors but that would concern any WMUA attendee).

I think the Summit organisers should have announced that they explicitly prefer seeing the same attendees as in 2022. It is not an unfair criterion per se, and Wikimedia Ukraine is still happy to have a staff spot. But I do believe that this criterion should have been announced in advance, as this might have impacted our decision. Thanks — NickK (talk) 07:55, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Hello @NickK,

We are sorry to hear that the selection criteria were a surprise, and you would have nominated another person. However, the organising team communicated several times that the selection of representatives is based on their degree of previous engagement around movement governance topics. This was stated on the nomination form and on our meta page (in the section regarding nomination). Participation in the previous Wikimedia Summit was only one of several ways to demonstrate such pre-engagement. Many of the participants who got selected for the Wikimedia Summit 2024 didn’t participate in the Wikimedia Summit 2022. We understand that the outcomes of the selection process are disappointing to those not selected and hope that people will be following the event online. Thank you for your understanding. Eva Martin (WMDE) (talk) 10:20, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

@Eva Martin (WMDE): Thanks for your answer.

It was not a surprise that previous engagement was a part of requirements, we knew it and did select a member accordingly. What was more surprising is that the criteria were designed to encourage repeated attendance, making it more difficult (yet not impossible) for Wikimedians not attending in 2022 to qualify.

It also did not help that channels Wikimedia Ukraine used for strategic involvement (such as SWAN participation and providing feedback via the regional CEE Hub) were not the ones giving extra points. At the same time, the ones we did not use (we did not formally appoint community strategy ambassadors because we did not see any benefits, did not apply for MSIG because the CEE Hub did and Wikimedia Ukraine has an annual grant, and opted not to provide written feedback separately from the regional hub) would have allowed to score points.

Once again, I don't think these criteria were unreasonable. However, they are skewed to certain choices which were not the choices Wikimedia Ukraine made. These choices were not deal-breakers for us, so we could have made different choices had we known that it would impact our participation. The issue is that we did not know these criteria in advance

We will reach out regarding online participation separately — NickK (talk) 14:26, 20 October 2023 (UTC)