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The Wikimedia Conference 2011 was held in Berlin from March 25 to 27. It consisted of the annual Chapters Meeting, to which representatives from all Wikimedia chapters had been invited, as well as a two-day meeting of the Wikimedia Board of Trustees.
The schedule of the Chapters meeting lists about 19 sessions, most of them aided by professional facilitators and documented in notes of varying degrees of detail. Chapter representatives were sharing their experiences about topics that are common to chapters (example: Professionalization: the first employee), and presented a short overview of their chapter in two "State of chapters" sessions (notes for Part I).
At the conference, it was proposed that Wikipedia should apply for UNESCO World Heritage status.
The conference was accompanied by a meeting of the "Movement Roles" workgroup, which, in a process re-started last year, has been trying to sort out the sometimes difficult relationship between the Foundation and the chapters, also encompassing other groups within the Wikimedia movement.
In the run-up to the conference, the Foundation's Deputy Director Erik Möller had warned that questions like "How do chapters earn legitimacy in the eyes of the communities they serve and the donors who support them?" and "What's the impact of raising hundreds of thousands of dollars on a chapter's role relative to the community?" need to be answered to avert an impending "crisis of legitimacy", where "the very existence of chapters [is] increasingly being questioned due to a lack of perceived community benefit, community and donor accountability and transparency, community participation, or community-relevant program work". Last week, "personal opinions" by Sue Gardner in response to questions posed by the facilitator for the Movement roles project were published. She warned of the so-far hypothetical case that "a chapter [could] set for itself goals that were fundamentally out of alignment with the goals of the Wikimedia movement. To pick a ridiculous example: let's say that a chapter decided its energy would be better put towards housing homeless people". In such a situation, it would become apparent that "there is no mechanism or body in the Wikimedia movement with clear responsibility for overseeing the activities or practices of international chapters"; this presents a "quite serious risk to the movement":
| “ | Most Wikimedia chapters are run by volunteers, and most of those volunteers are young. Meanwhile, the Wikipedia brand is world-famous and extremely valuable, and hundreds of millions of people – who could potentially be monetized – visit Wikipedia monthly. The Wikimedia movement chooses for ideological reasons not to fully exploit the financial potential of its brand and its readership, but that potential nonetheless exists, and is very attractive to people who would like to exploit it. The financial opportunity represented by the Wikimedia movement, combined with the inexperience of chapters’ boards, makes chapters very vulnerable. | ” |
Gardner criticized the current financial arrangements within the Wikimedia movement, arguing that a chapter's financial success depends mostly not on the value of its own activities, but on external factors such as "the reputation and impact of Wikipedia in" its geographical area, and that the agreements entitling a chapter to 50% of the fundraiser revenues they process hinder the flow of donations from rich countries to poorer countries with a huge potential, a transfer which is necessary to realize the goal to "create a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all human knowledge."
In addition, Sue Gardner took exception to a lack of transparency in some chapters:
| “ | Some [chapters] don’t publish activity reports or share information, they don’t participate in movement-wide discussions such as the strategy project and the Movement Roles project, and they don’t comply with the requirements of chapter agreements and fundraising agreements that they willingly signed. This past winter, a chapter board member told me his chapter has no obligation to report lack of compliance to the Wikimedia Foundation: that “if you wish to enforce the contract, it is up to you to monitor it.” That kind of talk baffles me. | ” |
(At the time of writing, most chapters appear to have not yet submitted an English-language activity report since the beginning of the year, with the Dutch, Indian, Swedish, Hungarian, French – see below – and Italian chapters among the exceptions.)
At the chapters meeting, such questions were the topic of a session of the movement roles working group, and a session about accountability and legitimacy. According to the notes, representatives from the German and Polish chapters reported good experiences with full transparency (with the exception of matters such as staff salaries): "We don't have anything to hide. Be sure that you spend your money wisely." However, "WMDE has had a pretty rough year with their community. At one point there was an attempt to basically demote the Board. If there is a lesson learned, it is that the Board didn't communicate efficiently. Put simply: There are people out there to get you. Transparency is a difficult learning process". The Indonesian chapter, whose funding initially included other donors such as private companies, recalled "disappointment ... that the WMF wanted to know what we did with all of the money, although they only gave roughly half of it", and issued separate reports for separate donors. The Swedish and Australian chapters reported good experiences with communicating over their blogs. The French chapter recalled difficulties with the different audiences in French and English, but found a good solution to inform the latter one: "The one place that is most read is the Signpost. So we connect with the Signpost, if we want to spread things."
The chapters meeting was reportedly funded with €50,000 from Wikimedia Germany and a few other chapters.
The Wikimedia Foundation have published the annual report for 2009–2010. It is available as a PDF or on Meta-Wiki as a text article.
In an "introductory photo-essay", four double-page images illustrate the Foundation's vision statement ("Imagine a world ...", slightly modifying "can freely share in the sum of all knowledge" to "is given free access to ..."), selected after an earlier search for such images.
The report includes discussion of the production of the strategic plan (see previous Signpost coverage). The report also notes the importance of the GLAM collaborations, highlighting the work with the British Museum, illustrated with the example of Hoxne Hoard, a Featured Article on a significant find of Roman gold and silver found in Suffolk that is displayed in the British Museum ("if details are of interest to the British Museum, they are also important to Wikipedians").
As "case studies", the report documents the Wikimedia Usability Initiative, a small grant to the Wikimedia Czech Republic chapter which enabled them to photograph everyday life in the country, the significant donation of images of former Dutch colonies from the TropenmuseuminAmsterdam, and the Public Policy Initiative in the United States (see previous Signpost coverage).
In the design notes, the Foundation's Head of Communications Jay Walsh encouraged reuse and translation and explained that "this year we opted for a journalistic style treatment and voice for the report", working with writer David Weir on the "overall narrative", and with design firm Exbrook, which also designed the previous annual report and other WMF publications. The report will see a print run of 1000 copies. Walsh said that "we are releasing a bit later than preferred, but as we pull resources together for future design projects in the coming year we're poised for a 2011 'anniversary' year report to be released by November 2011." (The annual reports cover the Foundation's fiscal year from June to July. The 2007–2008 report, the first of its kind, was released in November 2008 – Signpost coverage -, the 2008–2009 report came out in January 2010.)
Right. So, I intended initially to not insist, but I do not really see how we can seriously discuss this on Twitter. So, here is my opinion:
In my view, this is a biaised report of the past 3 days. I am not saying that this report is reporting false things (though I object on some points, see below), however, I regret that it chose to report on only one aspect of a three days long work and in the same time, cast a light which is seriously unfavorable to chapters which participates to the negative light already shed by two people.
Essentially, this report allocates 2/3 of the space on statements made by 2 people from one organization, whilst this meeting was attended by 30 organizations. It only provides opinions of these two people, essentially to criticize and questions the other organizations present at the meeting. Some of the accusations are poorly supported, with no actual data or references being provided (such as Moller outlining that chapters are increasingly questionned by communities. Where does that come from ? What is this "increasing" all about ? Any such statements on wikipedia would be either supported by facts and studies or the statement would be carefully balanced with other opinions. In this case, the statement is carefully balanced with the same opinion).
Also, it only outlines the problems related to chapters inability to handle everything perfectly and on time. This is seriously forgetting that chapters are still essentially volunteer based. Even less than a year ago, WMF was MONTHS late in providing its reports, even though it had over 50 staff members. So the criticism is easy to make but not very fair.
What about the "warning of the so-far hypothetical case that "a chapter [could] set for itself goals that were fundamentally out of alignment with the goals of the Wikimedia movement". This is a very hypothetical case to say the least, given that no chapter is declared a chapter without the chapcom having reviewed the bylaws and without the board of WMF approved them. It is so hypothetical that whilst I understand that Sue may be worried about such a situation where chapters do not respect their own bylaws, I fail to understand how such an hypothetical situation should be given more light than any of the very cool and exciting conversations we had together such as in the "accountability workshop". Also, reading that the situation where a chapter would decide to put its energy towards housing homeless people would create a "quite serious risk to the mouvement" is a bit funny to me. I fear that the case that WMF would decide to put its energy toward housing homeless people would actually create a MUCH larger risk to the mouvement. How more or less likely is that to happen ? Also, why "not providing a report in English" automatically means "not being transparent" ?
This report also interpretates quite liberally some statements made during the meeting. For example, it says The French chapter recalled difficulties with the different audiences in French and English, but found a good solution to inform the latter one: "The one place that is most read is the Signpost. So we connect with the Signpost, if we want to spread things. Since I actually said that, I know for a fact that we started publishing in the SignPost not so much to improve our relationship with the English speaking community, but actually to have somewhere an English based report of our activity that would be easily available to everyone and could be linked from other places... in particular to the WMF staff, since we discovered the WMF staff had either no idea what the French chapter was doing, or attributed the work done by the Chapter... to WMF staff or other unrelated people (uh !). As far as I know, we have not had any particular trouble with the English speaking community. I certainly said no such thing. Still, the SignPost report hints at some difficulties due to an interpretation of what I said. In short, it creates an official report on a difficulty that was not ever reported in the first place. The casual reader will now be aware of some problems between the French Chapter and the English and French community.... but without the ability to cite the problems ...
Since this is outlined in a report largely about Chapters legitimacy and accountability, this comes handy. In a few months time, when one will be looking for references where chapters have problems with the communities, one will be able to cite this report....
It looks like the entire report was crafted around this controversy related to the problems met with chapters. I am not saying there are no problems with chapters, there are problems. Obviously there are problems. I am not necessarily happy about all of it myself. But how come there is no or little mention of all the great things done by chapters in the last year ? About all the planned partnerships between chapters for the future ? And of some of the difficulties chapters met with the WMF, due to the WMF still being young, sometimes disorganized or poorly responding to chapters concerns ? Some of this was also heavily discussed in the 3 days in Berlin. Where did it go ? Why is not mentionned ? Why does this report give the feeling that there are two sides, the WMF very successful, legitimate and accountable on one hand and on the other side, the chapters, to be questionned and looked at with suspicion ? Why does it feel that only one side is represented here ? We also tried hard at the meeting to avoid seeing sides amongst ourselves. This is not helping.
Sure enough, the SignPost makes great articles and is keen on regularly reporting regularly about Chapter activities. And I love you guys. I really do. But why is it so that when I read the report about a meeting I spent 3 days attending, I feel like we, somehow, were not at the same meeting ???? Anthere (talk)
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