Talk:Movement Charter

This page is for discussions related to Movement Charter.   Please remember to: Sign posts using the four tildes (~~~~) Remain civil and polite during discussions. Place new comments below in existing sections or start a new section.   Discussion navigation: For general discussion of the Movement Charter: Talk:Movement Charter For general enquiries to the Movement Charter Drafting Committee: Talk:Movement Charter/Drafting Committee For general dicussion about the Movement Charter ratification vote in June-July 2024: Talk:Movement Charter/Ratification/Voting For specific enquiries to the Charter Electoral Commission, send an e-mail to cecwikimediaorg For other enquiries, send an e-mail to movementcharterwikimediaorg

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Archives

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• Archive 1: December 2020 - August 2022
• Archive 2: September 2022 - March 2023
• Archive 3: March - September 2023
• Archive 4: September 2023 - March 2024
• Archive 5: March - June 2024

Movement Charter Drafting Committee perspectives

• MCDC members Ciell and Daria Cybulska explain what the Movement Charter is
• MCDC members Anass and Ciell talk about what the Global Council is
• MCDC member Georges talks about what the Hubs are
• Recording of the MCDC open community call on April 4, 2024

Announcement - Final Charter text to be released June 10, 2024

In response to some requests, the MCDC has decided to release the final version of the Wikimedia Movement Charter as early as possible. The trade-off is that the text will only be available in English on June 10, as it is being translated, which is expected to be completed by June 18, 2024.

The text will be translated into the following languages: Arabic, Czech, Farsi, French, German, Hausa, Hindi, Igbo, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. Community members are invited to translate into languages not listed above.

The supplementary documents will be updated by June 18, 2024, but they will not receive translation support because they are not part of the ratification vote. Community members are invited to translate the supplementary documents if they choose.

On behalf of the MCDC, Risker (talk) 01:11, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, this gives us more time to look at it (it wasn't really justified to ask a tangentially-related technical-focused affiliate audience to spend much time on the drafts, considering the Charter's non-technical focus). GreenReaper (talk) 06:52, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

The final version of the Wikimedia Movement Charter

Thank you for thorough work in producing this excellent text for the proposed charter. I find it stronger and more solid than I had hoped for and look forward to a successful ratification and implementation Yger (talk) 16:18, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

• Agreed this is an improvement. I am sad to see a carve out for affiliate seats on the Global Council. Members of affiliates are already members of the community; 8 seats reserved for double representation of people involved in certain activities does not sound ideal to me. – Ajraddatz (talk) 14:46, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

  @Ajraddatz Absolutely. Quite frankly, only that reason alone is enough to wish this text gets rejected in the coming vote. Another one is the Charter making the Wikimedia community policies subject to it, but not those of Affiliates and the WMF, which is quite unacceptable. And undefined, vague terms such as "community leadership". And the WMF getting a special place out and at the same level as the Global Council. And... - Darwin ^Ahoy! 10:59, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

• I have numerous comments both for and against; I have placed them in a report to my affiliate. If anyone else is interested, that report can be found at Cascadia Wikimedians/Joe Mabel's comments on the proposed Global Charter. - Jmabel (talk) 18:32, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks @Jmabel!

  Per requests we are now publishing the core text two weeks earlier than in our initial timeline, and this does mean that all accompanying materials are not yet ready. WMF staff is helping us (MCDC) to create additional information materials, as for instance to answer the "what is changing?" question, but we really do need the extra time to produce these. They should become available before the voting commences. Ciell (talk) 00:43, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

No accountability to community

I wrote before on the charter being the doorway to abuse here.

Section "Governance"

Although it has been revised, the 10 June 2024 version still does not have explicit and assertive mandate of Wikimedia Movement Bodies to the community. The wording delegates that via

Guided by Movement Values, Principles of Decision-Making ...

but at the end of the passage it still has

The decision-maker in a Wikimedia Movement Organization is an organization’s board or a similar body and is accountable to the group that such board or similar body represents—for example, its membership body.

Notice that although there is no mention of the word "only" in the second quote but there is no "also". This separation of where the mandate of accountability to community with accountability "to the group" and the addition of "its membership body" (regardless of "for example") is dangerous. It can very well be interpreted that since the accountability to the community is elsewhere, and accountability to the closed membership body—which as I mentioned in my previous post that it can be cliques or behind money barrier—is here in the same passage, the movement body then is only accountable to the membership body. Abusers use semantics.

"Care Responsibility" and "Principles of Decision-Making"

It remains to be seen how these two would be, supposed to be released in 18 June 2024.

"Wikimedia Movement Principles and Values" section "Accountability"

I don't know whether I missed this one on my last post. This one says:

The Wikimedia Movement holds itself accountable through community leadership as represented within Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia Movement Bodies.

It is unclear what "community leadership" here means, is it "leadership by community" (the community leads) or "leadership in community" (the leaders in the community). If it is the second, if you are a plain old contributor with no advanced rights, it doesn't seem you will get to talk.

“Wikimedia Movement” is defined in the Movement Charter/Glossary due to be updated on 18 June 2024.

RXerself (talk) 11:39, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

To me that just represents the truth - the community cannot hold a third-party to account, only its own membership. The most that can be done for many is for the WMF to limit or revoke their affiliation and maybe claw back grant money if provided for by a contract. GreenReaper (talk) 14:00, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think this is true. The community has the ability to choose how it spends its time, and not supplying that time to the movement is a way to hold bodies accountable. It might make sense to make that explicit. TomDotGov (talk) 18:54, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

What would be a "Wikipedia project" leadership? The librarians/administrators? They do not have that role, AFAIK. - Darwin ^Ahoy! 11:09, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

That's the thing. I don't get it either. RXerself (talk) 00:58, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Request reactions to Charter for Signpost newsletter

Request feedback by 25 June

Hello! I am an editor for The Signpost, which is English Wikipedia's community newsletter. I am writing to encourage wiki community members to publish their reactions to the Movement Charter anywhere, then inform us so that we can include and link to them in the next issue.

One example of comments is Cascadia Wikimedians/Joe Mabel's comments on the proposed Global Charter. This is great! But also, even if you have brief comments, post them here or to any talk page and we will try to include them.

We can accept -

• Comments from Wikimedia community organizations
• Comments from wiki community individuals
• Talk page discussions with various people discussing an aspect of the Charter
• Actual recommendations advising people to vote in a certain way

We are hoping to get a range of perspectives. From the perspective of The Signpost, our goal is to get people to read enough to make a decision then to encourage them to vote. Thanks.

If anyone wants to talk to the news editors, message en:Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom. Thanks.

Bluerasberry (talk) 15:30, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry thanks for your highly useful message on this. i look forward to further discussions, in connection with your message here. thanks! Sm8900 (talk) 18:13, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

This could use some work

I feel like there are a few things that should be stated explicitly, but aren't. For example, how will we elect the twelve community representatives for the Global Council at-large? Will the movement as a whole vote on all twelve? Where will we have the vote? Can affiliate members vote in both elections, or just the affiliate election? (should probably be the latter) And that is just the election process. I have some other concerns too, like how people active on several projects will be counted for the ten project requirement for community amendments, and how we will enforce the statement that the Global Council should not be dominated by one type of user. Overall, some of these things, especially the election process, should be figured out before we ratify the charter. I would appreciate an explanation for how this would work. QuicoleJR (talk) 16:12, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

@QuicoleJR: hi, thanks for your question. Alongside the final charter text, MCDC also posted the supplementary documents to provide further context on the Charter provisions. Some of the questions that you are asking are addressed there. Cheers, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 14:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

@RamzyM (WMF): Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it would appear that the specifics of the elections will be decided after ratification. I'm not sure what to think of that. QuicoleJR (talk) 14:53, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Grumpy comments

All contributors and other volunteers must follow Wikimedia Movement policies applicable to them while contributing and undertaking volunteer activities.

“policies applicable to them” is as open a loophole for the W?F to ban a few people they happen to not like for whatever reason as I've yet seen. How about

All contributors and other volunteers must follow the policies of the Wikimedia community (e.g. English Wikisource, French Wiktionary) they are contributing to.

I, for one, will be voting against this W?F nonsense. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 16:41, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Why is requiring someone contributing to the English Wikipedia follow English Wikipedia policies nonsense? Thryduulf (talk: meta · en.wp · wikidata) 19:41, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

That's not what I'm proposing. "policies applicable to them" is too vague, and gives room for the WMF to make up some arbitrary global rules for everyone. The charter should make it clear that volunteers have to follow local policies: if you're editing French Wiktionary, you follow French Wiktionary's policies. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 20:46, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

There are also global policies, i.e. friendly space policy, etc. that apply globally, or terms of services sections on paid editing. 1233 （T / C） 19:58, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Special note on affiliate voting eligibility and participation

(Cross-posted from Talk:Movement Charter/Ratification/Voting)

Affiliates are reminded that they are to submit the information about their designated voter by end of day 24 June 2024. If there are not enough affiliates who have identified their designated voters, it will not be possible to meet the quorum required for the affiliate vote to ratify the Charter.

The Charter Election Commission, in its meeting of 17 June 2024, has decided to modify the eligibility requirement for affiliates. Affiliates who are not listed as "compliant" on the Wikimedia Affiliate Data Portal may instead provide the Charter Election Commission with a link to a published online version of their current annual report.

For the Charter Election Commission, Risker (talk) 18:28, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

@Risker: Movement_Charter/Ratification/Voting/Eligibility_criteria#Affiliates_vote shows different date: affiliates are urged to provide this information as soon as possible, at the latest by 24 June 2024. Gdarin | talk 18:57, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

You are correct, Gdarin. I have made the correction of my typographic error above and on the original post. Risker (talk) 19:02, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Hello, @Risker. Our affiliate submitted our designated voter, following procedure, a couple of days ago, and I don't think we got any confirmation. Is the Charter Election Commission keeping track of affiliates that have submitted the information and are good to vote somewhere public? Thanks! Joalpe (talk) 00:34, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Hello @User:Joalpe. The response from your affiliate has been received, and a response has been sent, according to the confidential tracking document. If you have some concerns about this, please contact the Charter Election Commission at [email protected]. Hope this is helpful. Risker (talk) 04:07, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, @Risker. It is indeed all set for our designated voter! Joalpe (talk) 16:10, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

one answer

hey guys, i wrote a little poem collaboratively to add a little literary comment to this endeavor. i had some help from a cyber-friend whom I'm sure many of you know somewhat. enjoy!

In a quiet room, by candle's gleam,
An elder sits, lost in a dream.
At a small academy, wise and old,
A new idea begins to unfold.

With careful strokes of ink and quill,
They write a vision, calm and still.
A plan, a hope, a guiding light,
To lead their world through darkest night.

The scroll is sealed, with wax and crest,
A message sent on this bold quest.
Across the lands, it travels far,
Guided by the northern star.

To distant provinces it flies,
To eager hearts and curious eyes.
The elders read with furrowed brow,
This novel thought, this daring vow.

In candlelit rooms, they gather round,
Discuss the ideas newly found.
"What does this mean? Could this be right?
Shall we embrace this vision bright?"

Debates ensue, with voices strong,
They ponder deep, they question long.
For in this plan, they see the spark,
But also shadows, deep and dark.

They gather trusted friends once more,
To sift through thoughts, to deeply explore.
"Will this idea stand the test?
Shall it be known, shall it be blessed?"

In village squares and fields of green,
The people meet, their minds keen.
They voice their hopes, their fears, their dreams,
In every heart, the future gleams.

The scrolls are read, the words discussed,
With every voice, a growing trust.
The elder's plan, now widely known,
Begins to take a life its own.

In letters sent both near and far,
Responses come, like guiding stars.
The elder reads with bated breath,
Each word a bridge, a narrow breadth.

"Dear friend," they write, "your vision bold,
Has stirred our hearts, has made us bold.
But questions rise, and doubts remain,
We seek more light, to ease the strain."

The process turns, in cycles grand,
Of written words from hand to hand.
Each elder adds their voice, their thought,
In unity, the plan is wrought.

The elder at the academy,
Reads every scroll with clarity.
They see the doubts, the hopes, the fears,
And write anew with patient ears.

"Together, we shall find the way,
Through night to dawn, to brightest day.
For in our minds, a world will grow,
Of shared ideas, in ebb and flow."

And so the vision, once a spark,
Now lights the way through shadows dark.
A single thought, from one small room,
Becomes a beacon in the gloom.

For in the hearts of all who seek,
A future bright begins to speak.
And through the scrolls, the words, the ink,
The world is changed by thoughts that link.

Sm8900 (talk) 21:17, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, Sm8900 - that's sort of how things feel from this side of the computer screen. Risker (talk) 12:52, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

free license

I'm afraid I might be a bit too late to voice this, but here it is: in the charter, there is a reference to "under a free license or in the public domain", which made me follow the 'free license' link in order to figure out what is the charter's definition of it. I expected to be led towards the glossary (like what happens to "free knowledge"). Unfortunately, the text "free license" points not to the charter's glossary, but to a different body of work: the English Wikipedia's page for "free content". Unfortunately this makes the charter not self-contained: what happens once the page gets edited (it happened three times just past May)? Is the new version and the definition wherein binding?

The existing problem is even recognized by the translations - I only checked the Portuguese translation and in there they simply removed the link - after all who can guarantee that the Portuguese and English pages are in agreement? On the other hand, the link removal makes it worse, in a way: without a definition, the reader is left to interpretation on what might a "free license" be.

The solution to this, of course, would be to work on a definition to be added to the glossary. Mind Booster Noori (talk) 19:41, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I second @Mind Booster Noori suggestion. - Darwin ^Ahoy! 18:52, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

+1 Yger (talk) 19:14, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Inconsistency about maximum number of GCB members

Hi, according to the Movement Charter itself,

The Global Council selects twenty-percent (20%) of its members to serve on the Global Council Board.

Howevere, in one of the supplements (GC Ways oof Working) we read

The GC Board is composed of at least 5 and at most 15 members.

In another supplement (GC Rules of Procedures) we read:

The Wikimedia Movement Charter designates that the Global Council will select ⅕ (20%) of its members, up to a maximum of 15 members, to sit on the Global Council Board (GC Board).

While obviously, the intention seems to for for a maximum number of 15 members, the Movement Charter itself leaves space up to 20 people (20% out of a maximum number of 100 GC members). However, there will be no vote about the supplments, as far as I understand. Therefore, I suggest to clarify the section in the final version of the Movement Charter as well. Thanks, —DerHexer (Talk) 11:41, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Who will announce the results of the ratification?

According to Movement Charter/Supplementary_Document/Ratification Methodology there is a Charter Electoral Commission (CEC) which is responsible for the ratification. It was selected by the MCDC and holds members of the MCDC (current composition of the CEC). However, why don't they have the task to announce the result? As of now, I read

One member of the MCDC will be selected by a majority vote within the MCDC, prior to the commencement of the election, to be responsible for unlocking the voting results when the election is closed.

Is that a copy & paste mistake from an earlier MCDC election? Why would the MCDC announce the result when we have a dedicated CEC (and I know about the duties of the MCDC even after the ratification)? Thanks for clarifications! —DerHexer (Talk) 11:46, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

The MCDC will not announce the result; the Charter Electoral Commission will do so. SecurePoll results are released by the "insertion" of a decryption key. We chose to have an MCDC member who is not a CEC liaison to hold the code for those decryption keys. The decryption key is applied after the scrutineers have done all their work and have advised the CEC that the SecurePolls are ready for unlocking. In the last multiple SecurePoll votes, that decryption key has been held by a WMF staff member; we thought it better to have someone who is not from the WMF being the one holding the decryption key. In the distant past, the decryption key was held by an independent third party, but there were sometimes challenges in contacting that party when it was time to unlock the results. We thought this was the best solution - someone who could be counted on to be available but was not involved in the vote administration. Risker (talk) 15:31, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Can you provide examples for Tier X Groups, please?

Hi, I like your proposal for different “tiers” (levels of maturity) of affiliates as per this supplement. For one of the user group I'm holding extra duties (the WMSUG), I would classify them in tier 1 (we are beginners, no doubt!). However, it feels difficult for me to find good examples for tier 2 and 3 (well, tier 3 likely would be my employer WMDE ;D). Maybe it can help other affiliates, too, if you could give some examples of current affiliates, please. I'm pretty sure that “my” WMSUG would be open for being named as an example. :) Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 11:50, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Board liaisons reflections on final Movement charter draft

Originally published on a separate page for translations

Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/Board liaisons reflections on final Movement charter draft NTymkiv (WMF) (talk) 23:04, 20 June 2024 (UTC)