What do we agree on: Advocacy TF recommendations

Philippe mentioned that we could search for some low-hanging fruit at this stage in the process. With regard to net neutrality, as Pharos says, there's already some major players on board. So what about Wikimedia simply publically voicing its support of net neutrality (release a statement, allow net neutrality campaigners to list Wikimedia as official supporters with appropriate use of [a perhaps modified] Wikipedia logo to put on relevant websites) but not actually devoting any funding or resources to it? That seems valuable, easily accomplished and something that needn't take up much time.

I agree with Pharos that the public domain should be a higher priority. It has a direct and profound impact on Wikimedia projects and although there are campaigners the movement could really do with a high profile voice.

Unfortunately I seem to recall that Sue Gardner's letter/memo has already stated that Wikimedia are not going to prioritise advocacy, which I think is a grave shame. Wikimedia now has such a profile that it could really make a difference in certain campaigns.

Environmentalism has always been anathema to me, I'm afraid. I don't know why; it is, after all, about saving the planet. I've just never been drawn to the issues.

Bodnotbod17:49, 16 February 2010

Hi Bodnotbod,

Yes, the Wikimedia Foundation isn't going to prioritize advocacy in the immediate future. Here's how I would like to see "advocacy" play out for Wikimedia:

  • Advocacy is mostly engaged in on a geographical basis, since generally it's an attempt to influence public policy. So, I believe the natural main advocates will be the chapters. I think the Dutch chapter has been beginning to lead some advocacy work inside the EU, and I applaud that: I think it makes sense and they are well-suited to do it. As I've said elsewhere, this is an argument for accelerating chapter development in countries where chapters don't yet exist.
  • The Wikimedia Foundation does not intend to direct any particular resources towards advocacy inside the United States, for two primary reasons: 1) Because the Wikimedia Foundation is international in scope, and any energy it directs towards Washington is energy it doesn't have for international work, and 2) because there are lots of organizations which share many of our beliefs and interests inside the United States, and which have large lobbying divisions that will protect our ability to do our work as well as their own. That doesn't mean we will never engage in advocacy inside the United States: it just means that it's not a high priority for us. Meaning, unlike many top internet properties, we will not begin hiring a phalanx of lawyers to work in DC.
  • The Wikimedia Foundation intends to strengthen its relationships with international organizations that share many or all of our values, and we will join them in advocacy work, judiciously, where & when we think our voice can add some value. We have all kinds of friends and partners who will help us decide when to do that -- e.g., chapters, industry partners such as Google, civil liberties groups such as the EFF, and individual volunteers around the world.
  • It's worth pointing out that there is very little documentation of Wikimedia's core beliefs. Some of the work here is a good start (e.g., on net neutrality), and I would love to see volunteers collaboratively develop a large set of core position statements -- ending up with something like this, from eBay: http://www.ebaymainstreet.com/policy-papers. eBay's general counsel has told me that eBay's goal with its Main Street initiative is is to equip ordinary people (i.e., eBay buyers and sellers) with information and arguments to help them advocate in their own self-interest. I think it would be a service to Wikimedia project readers, to provide them with something similar. It is not easy for people to find accessible, non-industry-perspective information about a whole range of internet-related issues including e.g., privacy, censorship, copyright, etc. --- in my view to develop and offer it would be a huge public service. And it's something Wikimedia editors are perhaps uniquely well-positioned to do :-)
Sue Gardner19:32, 2 March 2010
 

Exactly.

There are a number of different parties in the wiki movement and they have different roles.

The national chapters are organised within particular legal jurisdictions and so it makes sense they should take the lead in advocacy. The lack of a USA chapter could lead to some confusion here but I really would not like to see the Foundation acting as a surrogate US chapter. On the other hand I don't want a US chapter acting as a surrogate Wikimedia board either.

Beside the chapters are the projects, organised by language and by topic (Encyclopedia, dictionary, Source document archive etc.) The projects editors are more inward looking, concentrating on improving that project.

The Foundation has two sides The Trustees represent the editors in the chapters and projects. The need to be the public face of Wikipedia to the world but they also act as the users interface to the staff deciding the long term direction and core objectives towards which we are working.

The staff role is more technical, keeping the wheels oiled and the train rolling.

For core beliefs I think a good start is to look at where we are and what we are doing. See my comment on Milosh's post just below.

Filceolaire13:51, 5 March 2010
 

Hi Filceolaire,

I agree with most of what you say here, but there is one piece that I disagree with. And I think it's an important issue, and that a lot of people share your view --- so I'd like to take this opportunity to argue for a different perspective that I think is more correct.

I don't believe the Foundation has "two sides," and I don't believe that the Board's role is to represent the interests of editors to the staff. The Board's job is governance: it is supposed to oversee the work of the staff, ensure the sustainability of the organization, and maintain a sharp focus on the advancement of the mission. That's its fiduciary responsibility: it's a moral commitment and a legal obligation.

That's because the Wikimedia Foundation is not a professional association, nor a union, nor a membership organization. Like all mission-driven organizations, we have a responsibility to the recipients/beneficiaries of the mission, which in our case are the readers of the Wikimedia projects, as well as prospective readers. Essentially, serving information seekers is why we exist.

I should also explicitly state the obvious: the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation focuses a large proportion of its energy on supporting and facilitating the work of editors. That is only reasonable and correct, because editors are the people who create educational materials for readers. In other words, the Wikimedia Foundation is here to serve readers, and we do that largely by supporting editors.

So, upshot, our world looks like this: we are all here to serve readers. The editors do that by creating educational materials. The staff does that by maintaining the platform, helping ensure readers' needs get met, and that the editing community is appropriately supported so it can do its work. The Board does it by overseeing the work of the staff and keeping everyone focused on the mission that we all share.

Sue Gardner01:37, 11 March 2010

Our mission is to empower and engage people to organize and develop information in an educational way, and then to distribute it to every person in the world. The second part -- distributing it to everyone -- is a daunting but known problem; if we don't manage to get it to everyone, the nature of the licenses we use empowers the rest of the world to carry knowledge the last hundred kilometers. It is the first part of the mission, empowering and engaging creators and organizers, that we do better than anyone else -- but that is still a bit of a mystery.

As a Trustee, my fiduciary responsibility is to the advancement of the mission, which in our case means not losing sight of what we do best: expanding our community of creators, organizers, and developers; empowering them and amplifying their work where possible. It also means improving how we serve information seekers, but that task is better-distributed: there are dozens of major reusers and redistributers of Wikimedia content who are helping us serve information seekers, innovating interfaces and visualizations, providing read-only mobile versions of Wikipedia.

If we fail to effectively understand and support and expand our editing community (which should ideally grow to encompass every reader -- the hundreds of millions of facebook users could all just as easily have made a few dozen edits and image uploads to articles they care about), noone else will do it, and our Projects will fail. We are all hear to serve not readers but creators, and to make every reader into a creator, to remind the world that everyone has something to teach.

Sue is right that it is the Board's job to keep everyone focused on the mission that we share; and we need to restore our traditional focus on what matters most: making resources that everyone can edit.

Sj02:29, 19 March 2010
 

Very interesting. The board are (mostly) elected by editors but are there to protect the aims of the Foundation and the interests of the readers and the future readers - the beneficiaries of the foundation projects - rather than the editors and staff - the foundation's paid and unpaid helpers. The corollary of this is that the board have a duty to close down any group of editors who try and steer a project in a direction which does not serve the aims of the foundation.

The other side of the mission of the board, as I saw it, was an outward facing role, representing the foundation to the rest of the world, including future readers. This is a role that, till now, has largely been carried out by Jimmy Wales. Thinking about it in the light of the comment above maybe public relations/publicity isn't a different role after all but is rather just another aspect of the general work of the Foundation to be shared by the board, the chapters, the staff and others who share our aim but never have a formal connection to the foundation; different from editing the content but as important to achievement of the the foundation's aim. We need to bring the strategy proposals back to that aim:

  1. To make all of human knowledge
  2. available to everyone.
Filceolaire19:22, 14 March 2010

The current and future editors (including all of the readers who would make excellent editors but don't currently see themselves that way) are a primary beneficiary of the Foundation and its mission.

"The sum of all knowledge" is a synthesized summary that does not exist in the void, to be gathered and distributed. One of our major successes has been sketching a scope for that summation, and starting to fill in the details. This would not be possible without a diverse, motivated, and talented community driving the Projects forward, and to the extent that we have not yet succeeded, it is often a reflection of imbalance or incompleteness in our editing community.

Sj02:42, 19 March 2010