Process feedback
As I have said at the SWAN meeting, I think this fit into the generic pattern of the the WMF setting itself up as the facilitator of movement strategy but then not investing the resources to actually facilitate well. The implementation phase started two and half years ago (or to put it another way, we are supposedly at 25% implementedness of the 2030 strategy); if these criteria are so important they should have been rolled out a long time ago. Let’s go for criteria that really are minimal (I don’t think the current ones do a good job at avoiding red tape) to minimize further delays (which are of course more problematic for the hub projects which are already in flight, but keeping the burden on volunteers low is also important for the hub projects which are not in the pilot phase yet. Also, maybe this is a good opportunity for a post-mortem and some re-thinking of what the future blockers are and how they can be dealt with before they actually block people.
(More generally, for initiatives other than hubs, I feel the WMF has set an expectation of being in leadership role by holding initial conversations and selecting priority initiatives, but then didn’t do anything whatsoever about them. The WMF is always the most successful when it is acting as a platform provider, not getting in the way, just making the necessary capabilities available. This forum is a great example of that: the WMF provides a good discussion platform to anyone working on the strategy, and builds its reach, but does not require any kind of coordination before using it. It would be great if in a similar vein the outreach and research needs for someone working on implementations could be considered, and then e.g. the MSG team would provide liaisons-as-a-service, with an easy way for anyone to get their own information included. Tech News is a great success story of this approach.)
Content feedback
- Needs assessment, Overlap Mitigation Plan and “Off-ramp” plan seem like important concerns that should be handled (mis-alignment with actual needs, conflict with another affiliate, and unwanted commitments arising from pilots are all plausible and significant risks).
- Clear plan, Endorsement and Monitoring and Evaluation framework are already included in the grant requirements. Some hubs might obtain funding in ways other than WMF grants and in that case consistently enforcing best practices might be useful, but it would be nice to avoid the duplicative work for the huge majority of hub pilots which do rely on WMF grants.
- Not sure how Success criteria is different from having an evaluation framework with key results. Or is this specifically about the success of the pilot? I don’t think it’s realistic to predict a pilot’s course well enough for setting good success criteria; and in any case, we are not probing here whether hubs are a good idea. We have already agreed they are needed. If a pilot doesn’t immediately succeed, it needs help, maybe a different approach, but not being declared a failure.
- Public documentation, Community engagement framework and Connection to the Movement Strategy implementation process are common sense. I guess it’s good to document them just in case, as long as they don’t add much to the planning burden (“designated representatives” for the MS events, for example, seems like an entirely unnecessary layer of bureaucracy).
- Shared governance model also seems like a common-sense good idea, except I find the phrasing confusing. Shared with whom?
- A stated goal – Clear explanation of the goal of the hub. Including why this goal needs a new structure or cannot be achieved with the current Wikimedia structures. – What is the point of these, given that we have a recommendation about the need for hubs? Are we going to relitigate it now? Maybe for thematic hubs there is some value in justifying which thematic area does or doesn’t need a hub, but for regional hubs this seems entirely pointless.
- Involved entities – List of entities involved in the set up and oversight of the project. – This seems to imply that hubs need to be “second-level” membership organizations where the members are entities. I don’t think that was intended so it should be rephrased.
- Inclusive leadership – The leadership of the pilot needs to be inclusive of diverse profiles (representation of gender, age, languages, regions…) – I don’t think this is a healthy aspiration for a pilot, given how small is our pool of volunteers with sufficient free time, interest in high-level movement strategy, and the necessary competencies and experience. Pilots which prove successful and gather resources and interest can then more easily diversify their leadership; it’s better for something to eventually be diverse than to not exist at all. (See also the Wikimedia Foundation’s board composition in its first few years - it’s always instructive to contrast the standards the WMF applies to others in the movement with the standards it applies to itself.)
- The approval process (review by the MSG team, AffCom and MCDC, and “general approval from the related communities” whatever that means) seems unnecessarily complex and heavy-handed. Why is it important to include AffCom in a pilot? How would general community approval look? And is this really a good use of the MCDC’s limited and valuable time (which could instead be spent on actually working on the movement charter)?
Feedback about the CEE hub specifically
Our timeline is (as has been in the previous years, and as has been discussed with the WMF) built around the CEE Meeting that’s happening in October and is the CEE community’s main discussion and governance forum. Since it’s very hard to get feedback from community members not heavily involved in movement governance without actually doing something that’s relevant for them, by that point, we would need to finish hiring and basic onboarding of hub staff, and have at least a vague outline of the actual programs. We have four months left, at least two of which will be seemingly taken up by this new roadblock in the process (after the transfer of the grants from one WMF department to the other already causing delay). That seems infeasible, so we will miss the feedback and oversight opportunity provided by the meeting, and will have to rely on the significantly less diverse and less rich feedback that we can get online. That would be an unfortunate outcome given that the new criteria’s stated main aim is ensuring community oversight.