Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/mapping

Proposal: Movement Charter Mapping Exercise

The work of the mapping exercise of the Movement Charter is to:

• collect, organize, and synthesize past community input into the charter processes, combining it with external context and comparisons to governance structures used by other movements and organizations; and
• identify areas of disagreement or misalignment that require further community discussion.

Building on that work, the Wikimedia Foundation will partner with stakeholders to articulate the perceived purpose for a movement charter and make practical proposals for next steps.

The final product will be a summary and synthesis of agreements, disagreements, and ambiguities and practical next steps that will help us as a movement find a practical path forward.

Purpose and Scope

Purpose - Realign movement stakeholders on purpose and practical next steps of a movement charter.

Scope

➼ Identify areas of agreement and disagreement: The proposed exercise will focus on mapping of agreements, disagreements, and open questions related to the movement charter and its content across the Wikimedia movement.

➼ Clarify specific proposals from the Wikimedia Foundation: Provide space for specific proposals from the Wikimedia Foundation to better address concerns that it raised in deciding not to ratify the prior version of the charter.

➼ Propose additional areas for charter development (e.g., external landscape): Include more contextualization of a movement charter that can respond to a landscape of external trends, and benefit from other charters and charter-like documents in the field.

Essentially, such mapping will create a basis for informed difficult conversations and decision-making for future changes in the roles and responsibilities within the movement to ensure better coordination of activities between movement stakeholders, achieve wider and stronger impact, and be more responsive to the changes and needs in the world.

Tracks

The mapping will happen across five tracks of work:

Track Guiding questions	Description	Goal
1. External Context How will a movement charter help the Wikimedia movement address external trends and overcome external challenges?	Identify the relevant technological, social, regulatory and other external trends that are most relevant to the Wikimedia movement. Evaluate how a charter could help the movement respond to each of those trends.	➼ Look outward and strategically contextualize conversations in response to what the world needs from the Wikimedia movement, and how a movement charter can support that.
2. Purpose Explicitly list the purposes of a charter and name specific problems it can help us solve together	Clearly and concisely list key problems a charter can help solve and, as a result, clarify the core purpose of a movement charter. This is a core component of the mapping exercise, and is intended to create a shared understanding and common ground for more functional and purpose-oriented conversations and actions.	➼ Create a shared understanding and common ground for more functional and purpose-oriented conversations and actions toward a movement charter.
3. Agreement/Disagreement in prior charter processes Map specific positions, ideas, proposals from prior charter discussions (e.g. MCDC, affiliates, contributors, others)	Analyze content produced by movement stakeholders to map perspectives and positions that identify areas of agreement and disagreement. This includes prior charter text produced by MCDC, affiliate position papers, individual contributor contributions, etc.	➼ Have a map of agreements, disagreements, and varying perspectives to inform and guide future conversations, decisions, and actions.
4. Foundation Proposals Identify proposals to address prior concerns raised by WMF	Identify specific proposals to address prior concerns raised by the Wikimedia Foundation, along with processes for refinement and feedback. To ensure greater alignment to guide the movement towards future-, solution- and action-oriented next steps.	➼ Ensure greater alignment to guide the movement towards future-, solution- and action-oriented next steps.
5. Comparison Charters Do charters exist for similar movements? What can we learn from these?	Examine charter or charter-like documents (if they exist) from open source communities, technology organizations, international NGOs, volunteer-led social movements, etc. to understand how others have tackled this type of exercise and identify relevant lessons for the Wikimedia movement.	➼ Understand how technology-oriented social movements in particular have tackled the task of defining roles and responsibilities, decision-making procedures, and values and principles.

Process and Engagement

The Wikimedia Foundation will be leading the work on the mapping exercise, remaining in an active dialogue with people and groups who have expressed an interest in staying involved in this conversation (e.g. affiliates, interested contributors, former MCDC members, others).

Timeline

Concrete timeline is yet to be defined, however, the hope is to collect initial feedback on these mapping topics by January 2025.

In-person and meeting format engagement

Regional conferences in October-November 2024, as well as other in-person events, create opportunities for conversations around the mapping exercise and the future of a movement charter. Additionally, dedicated online calls in different time zones will be organized to have a focused conversation - times and dates will be announced on this page.

On-wiki engagement

This dedicated page will be updated with the latest materials, concluding with the publication of the outcome of the mapping exercise. This talk page will be monitored for any input, insights, or comments both on the content and the process throughout the mapping exercise.