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Wikimedia LGBT/2023-10-19

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This online video conference is open to all participants of the LGBT+ User Group , and is intended as an opportunity to discuss shared interests, opportunities, and challenges. The meeting will be conducted in English and Spanish, with a translator present.

We will plan on using the first 20 minutes for User Group Administrative/Governance Updates and the remaining 40 minutes for Community Discussions. There will be no guest presentations at this month's meeting.

The meeting will have an entry lobby, please reach out on the Telegram group if you are left waiting. The Wikimedia Universal Code of Conduct will be followed for this meeting.

Expected attendees

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RSVP here!

Agenda

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User Group Administrative/Governance Updates

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shared notes - https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/LGBT_2023_10_19


  • Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group Membership Registration and Elections
  • Upcoming: Wikimedia LGBT+ Board Elections
  • Wikimedia LGBT+ asked Wikimedia Foundation for operational costs for one annual year
    • See the proposal - Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Sustaining Wikimedia LGBT+
    • The User Group is applying for funding for governance/administration from the WMF. Feedback from UG participants and partners about strategy, fundraising, and governance is welcome and encouraged.
    • General plan: hire a part time Executive Director, additional staff and consultants
    • Total proposed annual administrative budget for 2024 was: USD $100,000
    • Budget for programming would be negotiated with WMF in other grants, such as for Queering Wikipedia, safety concerns, and a conversation series. Additional non-WMF grants may be sought for program support.
    • Questions about this annual grant from the WMF and generally about UG governance and financials?

Community discussion

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  • Queering Wikipedia 2024 Discussion
    • WMF has recommended we do a planning meeting/leadership training event this year, and host conferences every other year
    • Let's have a discussion reflecting on our goals and capacities to host Queering Wikipedia going forward
    • Outstanding tasks from QW2023? Wikimedia LGBT+ pages don't have documentation of QW right now..
  • Events and announcements
    • Wiki Loves Pride updates from anyone organizing an event or related campaign
    • Anyone have other events to promote/announce?
      • Put yours here or come ready to say something about your event
  • Wikimedia Foundation events in anti-LGBT+ jurisdictions
    • It is a recurring issue for Wikimedia LGBT+ to be asked to support WMF events in anti-LGBT+ spaces.
    • What should our position on this be? We do not have time to discuss and create a plan of action as a group now. Will revisit in 2024
    • We requested WMF funding to organize discussion on this in February 2022 and September 2022. WMF did not select for funding at that time. We are invited to submit again in 2024.
    • Anyone who has volunteer capacity to organize discussion or draft position comments may do so. This is a complicated issue.

Share + Discuss Ideas and Proposals

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(please add any specific Wikimedia projects/events/activities topics you'd like to share with the group or open for discussion)

Chai Time! (After-meeting informal chats)

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Tea, Turkish style
A tea cabin in Sreemangal, Bangladesh

Getting to know each other and having fun is an important part of why we exist! Following the meeting, there will be a half hour of unstructured time, where the meeting room will stay open for people to chat and form any proposed breakout rooms.

Notes

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  1. User Group Administrative/Governance Updates
    1. Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group Membership Registration and Elections
      1. You have an opportunity to register as a voting User Group member. Membership launched Tuesday 12 September Wikimedia LGBT+/Membership/Registration-questions
      2. See here for details about the Membership process: Wikimedia LGBT+/Membership. Members will have voting privileges for upcoming Wikimedia LGBT+ Board Elections: Wikimedia LGBT+/Elections
      3. This is the first time that Wikimedia LGBT+ has attempted to establish membership
    2. purpose of establishing membership
      1. useful for doing elections
      2. organizing group discussions on social and ethical issues
      3. deciding strategic priorities in a democratic / group consensus way
      4. Please invite LGBT+ editors you know to apply for membership and consider standing for election!
    3. Updates on member registration:
      1. Current number of registered people - about 50
    4. Problem or issue reports?
      1. can banned or blocked users apply for membership?
      2. yes, but make a note of this in the application where it asks about this
    5. Questions about membership registration?
    6. Questions about running for the Wikimedia LGBT+ Board or Board elections?
      1. The election starts the day after the last day of voter registration. What if someone registers, then stands for election, but is determined to be ineligible?
      2. It would be ideal to have a period for scrutiny but this election did not make time for this. In the future we would like to make time for this. If there is a problem we will note on the talk page that the issue happened, and how we addressed it.
      3. When might registrants learn that they are not accepted as members?
      4. If someone registers, then they may only learn that their application for membership is rejected as late as 15 November. They would learn at latest on this day because ballots go out then. That is not ideal; it would be better to tell people sooner.
      5. What is the tenure of elected candidates?
      6. 3 years for this election
      7. What happens if the election would not be competitive, because we only got the same number of candidates as seats, or fewer candidates than seats?
      8. The election will proceed anyway. The expected result is that all candidates would be elected to trustees. We would still count the votes, and report any protest actions like write-in votes or spoiled ballots.
    7. Can anyone say where they shared invitations for people to join the group?
      1. en:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_LGBT_studies#Invitation_to_join_Wikimedia_LGBT+
      2. Talk:Wikimedia_LGBT+#Invitation_to_join_Wikimedia_LGBT+
    8. Upcoming: Wikimedia LGBT+ Board Elections
      1. General rules at Wikimedia LGBT+/Elections
      2. Details about this year's election at Wikimedia LGBT+/Elections/2023
      3. Only registered members can vote
      4. Only registered members can stand as candidates
      5. 1–15 November 2023 - Candidate nomination period
      6. 16–30 November 2023 - Voting
      7. This is the last user group meeting before election starts!
    9. Questions about elections?
      1. if someone is a trustee of Wikimedia LGBT+, then can that person also be a paid contractor or subgrantee of Wikimedia LGBT+?
      2. There is a conflict. It is conventional that trustees not also get financial support through the organization. Wikimedia LGBT+ may be unusual, and there may be exceptions, and we know of special reasons why trustees may need money. We can discuss exceptions, and possibly we could pay trustees for certain projects, but we would discuss that this conflict exists and how we manage it.
    10. Wikimedia LGBT+ asked Wikimedia Foundation for operational costs for one annual year
      1. See the proposal - Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Sustaining Wikimedia LGBT+
      2. The User Group is applying for funding for governance/administration from the WMF. Feedback from UG participants and partners about strategy, fundraising, and governance is welcome and encouraged.
      3. General plan: hire a part time Executive Director, additional staff and consultants
      4. Total proposed annual administrative budget for 2024 was: USD $100,000
      5. Budget for programming would be negotiated with WMF in other grants, such as for Queering Wikipedia, safety concerns, and a conversation series. Additional non-WMF grants may be sought for program support.
    11. Questions about this annual grant from the WMF and generally about UG governance and financials?
  2. Community discussion
    1. Queering Wikipedia 2024 Discussion
      1. WMF has recommended we do a planning meeting/leadership training event this year, and host conferences every other year
      2. Let's have a discussion reflecting on our goals and capacities to host Queering Wikipedia going forward
      3. Outstanding tasks from QW2023? Wikimedia LGBT+ pages don't have documentation of QW right now.
      4. Recap of the event:
        1. The original grant was for a big 2022 conference. That did not happen.
        2. Instead there was a 2022 smaller strategic planning event
        3. We had a full size event of the sort originally promised in 2023
        4. The Wikimedia Foundation has encouraged us to continue to host these events, with strategic events and public larger events in alternate years
    2. Discussion
      1. The 2022 event introduced people to each other, and was the meeting which established that we wanted to have elected trustees govern Wikimedia LGBT+
      2. The 2023 event showcased programs and accomplishments related to content creation, and also organized discussions on social and ethical issues
      3. There were challenges with both events, like for example, too much labor burden on volunteers. When we do future events, we need more resources to make participation more accessible to volunteers who are unable to contribute to organizing the event
      4. We would like to have another internal and strategic planning event in 2024, to explore having another public event in 2025
      5. The administrative burden is significant. In addition to all the usual conference organization requirements, Wikimedia LGBT+ also requires more-than-typical language translation, community outreach, security, and programmatic planning. The extra costs are because of extra burdens and vulnerability of the LGBT+ community
      6. More about trustees and governance committee members getting paid: there is a pattern in the wiki movement that the most engaged volunteers sometimes also do governance roles, and sometimes also would be the ideal paid staff in organizing programs and events. How do we manage the conflict between individuals both being in a governance role, and also being paid to do certain tasks?
        1. Whatever the case, we disclose and talk things through publicly
        2. Wikimedia projects are low-budget and not conventional corporate entities.
        3. We have a transitional period as we have never had any funding for the administration of the organization, and as we have money, all of the people who know how to operate the organization have been volunteers who have limited additional time to give without a stipend enabling them
    3. How can we get more involved in Wikimedia Movement governance beyond Wikimedia LGBT+, when there are discussions and policy development which concern LGBT+ interests?
      1. It would be ideal to make LGBT+ community statements when useful and to support our members in representing the group in conversations that happen elsewhere
      2. We would like to develop capacity to do this
    4. How do we balance in-person with online meetings?
      1. Probably Wikimedia LGBT+ will be mostly online
      2. For QW2023 we had in-person satellite events which we sponsored especially in lower and middle income countries to get regional participation
      3. we can do hybrid processes with node events when there are interested participants in a region who want to meet in person
    5. How do we manage applying for a conference grant while also convening a conference team?
      1. The conference team will not want to convene until there is a grant secured
      2. It is challenging to secure a grant without having a conference team convened
      3. Because of the nature of Wikimedia LGBT+, the Wikimedia Movement, and the Wikimedia Foundation's grant process, somehow we have to balance asking for money without having the amount of preparation that would be typical for a larger organization outside the wiki movement
      4. The Wikimedia Foundation for now has told us that they are willing to sponsor more, similar events in the Queering Wikipedia series
      5. Mehrdad: "I am not a grant officer, but I suggest two directions." Organizational priorities and setting a vision for the user group, including what staff and programming you might want to align yourself to the Wikimedia Movement Strategy. Also have a multi-year plan and goals for where you want to be in 2 and five years. The other grants that you might request are for activities, like editing events, outreach campaigns, translation programs, and the other typical Wikimedia activites.
      6. Mehrdad shares feedback from Wikimania
        1. There were many conference tracks
        2. However, participants in the conference reported in surveys and other feedback collection processes that their favorite events were those where they got to socialize with other attendees
        3. Community networking is a goal that the Wikimedia Foundation supports, as evidence suggests that social structure development advance Wikimedia Movement goals
    6. Events and announcements
    7. Wiki Loves Pride updates from anyone organizing an event or related campaign
      1. Anyone have other events to promote/announce?
      2. Put yours here or come ready to say something about your event
      3. There are lots of activity proposals for Wikimedia LGBT+
      4. in content, we have good information about the HIV/AIDS crisis from the medical perspective, but not from a cultural perspective
    8. Wikimedia Foundation events in anti-LGBT+ jurisdictions
      1. It is a recurring issue for Wikimedia LGBT+ to be asked to support WMF events in anti-LGBT+ spaces.
      2. What should our position on this be? We do not have time to discuss and create a plan of action as a group now. Will revisit in 2024
      3. We requested WMF funding to organize discussion on this in February 2022 and September 2022. WMF did not select for funding at that time. We are invited to submit again in 2024.
      4. Anyone who has volunteer capacity to organize discussion or draft position comments may do so. This is a complicated issue.


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