Hi Christophe, Have you considered reaching out to the Futures Lab team? https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Futures_Lab. They may already have some momentum, and hopefully a budget for paid staff time, for work that aligns with what you have in mind. I hope that the Futures Lab team would be happy to have you as a partner or even a teammate.
Additionally, you might want to reach out to WMF staff who are working on aligned initiatives, such as for contributor growth, attribution of Wikimedia sources by AI assistants, etc. I suggest that you start with reaching out to Futures Lab and then see what happens from there. Also, you might want to invite the Futures Lab team to send a representative to your meeting. Pine🌲 On Fri, Jul 3, 2026 at 12:23 PM Christophe Henner via Wikimedia-l < [email protected]> wrote: > I love this discussion, thank you all for speaking up. :) > > One note on "the community can just do it," I do think it's the right > direction, so please read the next couple of paragraphs as a friendly > amendment (just to make sure everyone's on the same page) rather than a > pushback. > > "The community can just do it," feels very appealing right now: because we > are missing ownership and leadership, self-organizing is kinda the only > option with that vacuum. It probably is the best tool we have to > rebuild/respark the ownership we are missing. > > That being said, a couple of comments: > > 1. Community means staff too, to me. Many of the people the movement pays > are also among its most committed contributors, so let us not run this as > volunteers versus the Foundation/paid staff. I know it sometimes reads > simplistic, but we're all in the same boat, or at least we should be. > > 2. At this scale the work will need people with dedicated time on it. > Because the Foundation is not taking leadership doesn't mean it doesn't > have a responsibility. The Foundation owns most of the resources in the > movement, and if we, as a movement, are to change/evolve, we need those > resources. It can't rely only on volunteers. However, I'm not saying we > need X, Y or Z, just that we will need people with dedicated time at some > point. > > Brooke, to your comment on the Foundation being a service organisation, I > would agree if the Foundation was being supportive. But it's neither > leading the change nor being supportive on that topic, in my opinion. And > don't anyone get me wrong, I do know how hard it is first hand to do either > (or both), but I also know it can happen. And I hope they'll take the first > opportunity to join in the discussion. > > Speaking of opportunities, I've started a second thread with an invitation > to meet next week. It's a bit of last minute notice, but I'd love to keep > the momentum :) > > > -- > Christophe > > > On Fri, 3 Jul 2026 at 00:10, Samuel Klein via Wikimedia-l < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> Dear Nada, excellent framing. It is entirely in our control to fix >> outreach, build welcoming and forgiving environments, make strides with >> less-resource languages and communities. >> >> Christophe, thanks again for persisting in this thread (and planning a >> range of activities around Wikimania!) I see many people engaged with >> these topics who don't want to engage in discussion about angst over >> current problems, but are deeply enthusiastic about, and actively engaged >> in, building new things / working on new possibilities. >> >> Brooke writes: >> > Wikimedia is a participatory system... We have to put in the work >> ourselves. >> >> Absolutely. The civilized netizen's first duty is to be always prepared >> to rewrite <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco> anything truly >> important from scratch. >> >> Galder writes: >> >>> One correction: I'm not a trustee! >>> >> >> But we surely trust you, including to make the world's best Txikipedia. >> >> We have many good ideas and talented people in the community. We do >> need persistent spaces to discuss and make plans, in part because in the >> last growth spurt we fragmented communication channels across hundreds of >> pages, sites, lists, and apps. Recombining many of those streams would be >> good for coherence and continuity. >> >> But our wikis are better suited to experimenting, reverting, and >> iterating than distilling large-scale consensus. Quick decisions by >> ~sortition (or by the first few people to turn up) help polish the roughest >> edges. Having spaces that push back against the iron law >> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy> of oligarchy and >> preserve freedom to experiment is essential, even when simultaneously >> waiting for delayed consensus. >> >> Our strongest shared identity is as people committed to building >> freely-licensed knowledge together, in every language, accessible to the >> entire world. More people care about this today than ever before. We simply >> have to make space for it again. >> >> 𝐖♡, SJ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- [email protected], guidelines >> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l >> Public archives at >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/RJV4EYFT53SYRNXZPOMP54CXTRGWLNB3/ >> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- [email protected], guidelines > at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/UZBRT3CYMTTGU47QIT2NKACDWIBSGRW7/ > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
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