Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: transition to implementation begins

[Gerard Meijssen]

 Hoi,

The biggest problem of this strategy document that I see is that it is
oriented towards our own internals. This is best understood from the first
sentence: *People-centeredness means that every aspect of our Movement must
address the needs and challenges of the people who power it and whom it
serves, so that each one can contribute in their best way to the sum of
human knowledge.*

It does not mention what we do and why we do it. It follows that based on
this we cannot give priority to our biggest bias; what we do first and
foremost is service wants in English. This bias is huge and when we were a
company, we would recognise that around 50% of Wikipedia traffic is in
English. We would realise the extend that scholarly publications are in
English studying aspects of English Wikipedia. We would know that we do not
have much data on everything else. We would be aware of our other products
and strategise how to improve their market value. For our movement, market
value is in the number of people it serves. We would for instance know that
Wikisource books are marketed in India external to us and we would consider
what it takes to provide a proper interface so that people find what is
available to them thanks to a non-English community. A community we do not
notice nor respect.

We are so happy with American students (doing good work) on English
Wikipedia but we do not engage high school students, even primary school
students who could write in their language expanding Wikipedias often with
less than 10.000 articles.

We have an opportunity to turn this around. We have this notion that we are
going to do things differently in this strategy. We have the papers that
for many are too long to read and we have the Special:MediaSearch (publicly
available for two weeks now) that enables search in Commons in all our
languages. When we support it in the Wikiway, we will allow for it not to
be perfect. We will find that as we add items to pictures that we will find
more results or even only results.. Try to find هيلين كوبر using text based
search in Commons and compare the results.

As a product, Commons only serves our own needs. We do not know the number
of downloads of pictures we do not know the extend Commons has been
searched in other languages. This is true for Wikidata as well. We may know
the volume of queries it serves but in what language and how do we extend
the usefulness of Wikidata in languages other than English? What strategies
are in place is this a key performance indicator? How can we show that we
care?

With Commons enabled for search in any language thanks to the
Special:MediaSearch, we have the perfect tool to start address this bias.
We can measure in what language Commons is searched. We can measure the
number of labels added to Wikidata that help people find images. We can
measure the number of downloads from Commons that happen as a result. We
can then demonstrate the pent up need there is.

This will likely be very much driven by the Wikimedia Foundation itself.
There will be outcries from vested interests that it detracts from
other/their priorities. People will state that they are disgusted with us
giving priority in this way. But do realise, white black of yellow, when
your language is English you are well served and others are not. English is
only about 50% of our traffic and you would not say so from what we
advertise we do.

Thanks,

  GerardM
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[Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: transition to implementation begins

[Ryan Merkley]

Dear all,

It’s my pleasure to be writing to you about the Movement Strategy. We have come 
together over the past 3 years to develop our Strategic Direction [1] and then 
the recommendations [2] to guide our collaborations and future. So many of you 
contributed to the process — some for only a part, and others throughout the 
entire process. With the recommendations complete, our focus now shifts to 
implementing the recommendations in a collaborative, open, and transparent way. 

Transition
To make the transition from the publication of the recommendations to their 
implementation, we need to do some planning. It’s a 10-year strategy, with 
dozens of initiatives, dependencies, and connected goals, to be delivered in a 
more distributed, deliberative, and open collaborative model than ever before. 
We’ll need to work together to define how we prioritize, sequence, resource, 
and support each initiative. 

So much of our work is done online, but a lot of strategic work also happens in 
person. We can’t do that now, and so we’ve had to adapt to engage broadly, and 
in inclusive ways.  To create this plan, movement-wide virtual events will kick 
off in September. We will use the Movement Strategy principles [3] as a guiding 
framework to ensure the planning will be inclusive and empowering for our 
diverse range of communities, without leaving anyone behind.

As a result of the pandemic, we lost the chance to work together in-person on 
the transition to implementation at the Wikimedia Summit in Berlin [4]. Yet we 
gained an opportunity to include a higher number and a more diverse profile of 
participants. Engaging with online contributors, technical developer 
communities, and smaller user groups throughout the process will be a key 
priority.

Successful virtual engagements with a high number of diverse participants are 
difficult to do well. Therefore, a Design Group will collaborate to prepare for 
the virtual transition discussions. This group will consist of community 
members reflecting different parts and perspectives of the movement, including 
representatives of regional collaboratives (CEE, ESEAP, Indaba, Iberocoop, 
North America, South Asia, WikiArabia, WikiFranca), the EDs and chairpersons 
groups, and WMF staff.

Anyone who is interested can contribute. Regular summaries of the preparation 
work and design discussions will be published on meta so that anyone interested 
will be able to share insights and help improve the process, even if not part 
of the Design Group itself. 

Participation
I look forward to: 
Working with many of you at the virtual transition events.
Ways  to participate and the schedule of events will be determined by the 
Design Group. The current plan is to start the virtual transition discussions 
with the movement in September.
The virtual events is where major discussions will take place on sequencing, 
prioritizing, and resourcing the recommendations across the movement.
Seeing those of you interested participate in the open review of the transition 
preparations.
The task will be to review the work of the Design Group and share your 
perspective, enriching the thinking to improve the events.
Open review will happen in parallel to the work of the Design Group from the 
end of June to the end of July / beginning of August.
Having nominations from different movement groups and collaboratives (mentioned 
above) for the Design Group.
The task will be to design as a group how the transition process of online 
events will be set up.

Want to know more?
We have put together a placeholder meta page [5] and will keep updating it as 
more information becomes available.
Join office hours with the Movement Strategy core team on Wednesday. June 10 @ 
17:00 UTC (Google Meet ) [6] or Thursday. 
June 11 @ 08:00 UTC (Google Meet ) [7] to 
share any comments and ask questions.
Our email channel is always open: strategy2...@wikimedia.org 
.

Best,
Ryan Merkley
Chief of Staff, Wikimedia Foundation


[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017 

[2] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations
 

[3] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Movement_Strategy_Principles
 

[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Summit_2020/Report 

[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/2030 

[6] https://meet.google.com/uun-pzmb-kti 
[7] https://meet.google.com/rva-yqaq-zdk