We publish weekly reports to cover the Movement Strategy Forum community review (May 24 - July 24). Moving forward, we will figure out a regular cadence for this reports. If you have questions or suggestions, you can comment below or on Meta.
Do you think this forum can improve Movement Strategy discussions and collaboration?
35 replies, 732 views, 19 users, and 137 reactions.
Sentiment - Overall positive, especially given the automatic translation feature of the forum. Volunteers have already brought cross-wiki conversations outside of the wikis, and this platform has a chance to bring Movement Strategy conversations to one place. Criticism focuses on the risk of confusion and lack of adoption by adding yet another platform, and that we should invest in bringing the good features of this forum to Meta-Wiki instead.
What do you think about the proposed name and domain?
46 replies, 601 views, 17 users, 38 reactions.
Sentiment - General agreement to move away from the current domain to an alternative containing “Wikimedia”. Technical considerations i.e. around security are important. No alternative names have been proposed so far.
Are there other channels that you would prefer to use in addition to or instead of this forum for Movement Strategy updates and feedback? Why?
33 replies, 615 views, 11 users, 52 reactions.
Sentiment - Some channels have been suggested but we still need more discussion about what kind of updates are expected in which channels. One factor to take into account is in which languages we can send updates. There are also opportunities for technical integration, saving some manual work.
Do you think this forum can improve Movement Strategy discussions and collaboration?
21 replies, 284 views, 14 users, and 90 reactions.
Sentiment - Overall positive, especially given the automatic translation feature of the forum and how easy it is for newcomers to participate. Volunteers have already brought cross-wiki conversations outside of the wikis, and this platform has a chance to bring Movement Strategy conversations to one place. Criticism focuses on the risk of confusion and lack of adoption by adding yet another platform. People opposing the forum sustain that we should invest in bringing the good features of this forum to Meta-Wiki instead (most of this discussion is happening on Meta).
What do you think about the proposed name and domain?
32 replies, 264 views, 13 users, 29 reactions.
Sentiment: General agreement to move away from the current domain to an alternative containing “Wikimedia”. Technical considerations i.e. around security are important, and this is relevant for *.wikimedia.org options. We are still in the brainstorming phase. No alternative names have been proposed so far.
Are there other channels that you would prefer to use in addition to or instead of this forum for Movement Strategy updates and feedback? Why?
17 replies, 238 views, 8 users, 25 reactions.
Sentiment - Some channels have been suggested but we still need more discussion about what kind of updates are expected in which channels. One factor to take into account is in which languages we can send updates. There are also opportunities for technical integration, saving some manual work. Specific discussions have started for Meta and other wikis, Telegram, and Diff.
These days the most intense discussion about the Forum is happening on Wikimedia-l. There are also new thoughts on the Meta talk page. Some of the feedback is directly applicable to the community review. A lot of the discussion is more strategic and long-term, which is related to the community review but also goes well beyond its scope and possibilities. Related or not, the #forum-community-review has been relatively quiet here. We welcome more opinions!
Do you think this forum can improve Movement Strategy discussions and collaboration?
24 replies, 364 views, 16 users, and 97 reactions.
Sentiment - Overall positive, especially given the automatic translation feature of the forum and how easy it is for newcomers to participate. Volunteers have already brought cross-wiki conversations outside of the wikis, and this platform has a chance to bring Movement Strategy conversations to one place, especially because it is designed for conversation and discussion. Criticism focuses on the risk of confusion and lack of adoption by adding yet another platform. People opposing the forum sustain that we should invest in bringing the good features of this forum to Meta-Wiki instead (most of this discussion is happening on Meta).
What do you think about the proposed name and domain?
34 replies, 322 views, 14 users, 31 reactions.
Sentiment: General agreement to move away from the current domain to an alternative containing “Wikimedia”. Technical considerations i.e. around security are important, and this is relevant for *.wikimedia.org options. We are still in the brainstorming phase. No alternative names have been proposed so far.
What do you think about the proposed process for new moderators and administrators?
11 replies, 189 views, 7 users, 16 reactions.
Sentiment - Overall positive comments about the proposal so far, with a particular call out around the implication of the sentence “You maybe not be banned or blocked from any Wikimedia project for a period of 30 days or longer.” Because different wiki projects have different regulations and until UCoC is implemented globally, there’s no uniformity around decisions to ban users. Another comment is critical of the entire forum proposal.
Are there other channels that you would prefer to use in addition to or instead of this forum for Movement Strategy updates and feedback? Why?
24 replies, 325 views, 10 users, 32 reactions.
Sentiment - Some channels have been suggested but we still need more discussion about what kind of updates are expected in which channels. There are some expressed views that the Forum is an additional tool for communicating with communities. One factor to take into account is in which languages we can send updates. There are also opportunities for technical integration, saving some manual work. Specific discussions have started for Meta and other wikis, Telegram, and Diff.
Just a minor comment about the format of this topic—since each weekly update is an accumulation of statistics from the full timeline of the forum, it contains a lot of redundant information for which the historical comparison isn’t very useful. For example, “What goals should be set to consider this forum successful?” is summarized three times with slightly different but overlapping content. It’s a bit confusing and exhausting to try reading through the entire topic. I would recommend overwriting a single top-post with all of the information consolidated in one place, and if there are important details about the evolution of sentiment for example, then break that out in prose (ie., “sentiment was positive at first, then became …”).
thanks for this update. i think that at some point, we should open some thread to jointly discuss or strategize some methods and some ways to present this forum to the meta community, in a persuasive manner, to truly advocate for the full acceptance and recognition of this forum, as a resource of genuine value to the community.
for now, I am holding off on creating a new thread for that purpose. either someone else can set up a new thread now if they wish; or alternately, I may set up a new thread for this topic myself, if noone else does so in the near future.
Last week (June 14-20), the most intense activity in the forum happened in a private space for affiliate representatives, who proposed and voted on Affiliate questions selected for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election 2022. You can check the results on a new category dedicated to Elections. Other people involved in committees and events are exploring possibilities to experiment with private spaces in the forum.
This forum is almost one month old. The #forum-commmunity-review is almost half-way. There have been many discussions, and it starts to be the time to converge on a plan.
Proposal: MS Forum moderation and administration - There was a suggestion to remove the requirement for candidates to not be sanctioned in any project, given that these sanctions might be controversial sometimes. The suggestion has been accepted and the requirement has been removed.
We are halfway through this community review ending on July 24! Last week was calmer in the forum. The Movement Strategy and Governance team had our first face-to-face meeting ever and we were quite away from the keyboard. Many people participated in the Hubs events and we are curious to see whether follow-up conversations will continue here.
If you’re in the northern hemisphere, summer - and summer holidays - are upon us! Activities on the Forum are leveling out.
The most significant update relates to the discussion around the proposed name and domain: The Wikimedia Site Reliability Engineering team prefers not to use the wikimedia.org domain for any new service (MediaWiki or not) that is not directly under their supervision. For third party services especially, the use of any other domain is usually a better option, or the only one.
@NPhan_WMF , thank you for your helpful statistics and data above.
as you can see, there is a noticeable leveling-off in forum activity. I would like to try to explore posssible ways or possible ideas to improve or increase engagement with the community in general, and to enhance the usefulness of this forum, and its engagement with the community in general.
in connection with that,we should try to look at
(a) what kind of topics would benefit the community if discussed here;
(b) any methods we might use to make this forum more visible and prominent to the community, in order to allow community members to find it;
(c) any resources or new topics we can offer, or any refinements, or any new processes that we might introduce, which might give community members an easier way to find this forum, and also reach wider segments of the community, in order to: (a) induce them and motivate them to want to actively use this forum, and (b) induce them to actually feel there is some benefit to reading the ideas expressed by others here.,
if possible, I hope to try to explore these areas, and develop some ideas, in the weeks ahead. Thanks
if I may, I would like to tactfully suggest that the thread that you linked to above is not an ideal or optimal place to discuss ways to enahnce the usefulness of this forum to the community at large, as a general topic. yes, that thread’s topic has some sigificance and validity; however, it relates only to one specific topic; namely the best ways to find a good formulation for the domain name for these forums.
if we wish to truly develop these forums as a resource, then i would like to suggest that we should look for ways to approach that goal in a much more broad-based and wide-ranging manner.I hope you don’t mind my suggestion. I appreciate all of your amazing work and efforts. thanks.
Hi @Sm8900 , I don’t mind at all – when I noted that, it was in reference to specifically the domain discussions; that’s why I linked it out to that specific thread
@NPhan_WMF , I think that perhaps it might be somewhat valid for me to ask, based upon the data above, what is thge current outlook, approach, general feeling, etc within the Wikimedia Foundation in regards to helping to foster this forum, or to help it to become a useful and viable community resource., what exactly is the goal here?? I am truly open to any answer on this. If the WMF has not currently made an intrinsic decision to necessarily proceed with this forum, then that is fine. However, I thought the whole point of the weekly data, was to help those of us who do seek to foster and promote this forum as a real resource for the community.
I truly appreciate all of your amazing work and efforts. Thanks.
My objective for posting these update is to provide the community with transparency and visibility into how things are going on the Forum; some of this data is not accessible to non-admins.
As for the Foundation’s stance regarding this Forum: it is my understanding at this time is that as long as this Forum adds value to the global discussions of Movement Strategy among communities, then we are supported in keeping it going. If there are “red flags” that the community raises that we cannot address or reconcile - primarily around privacy and safety issues - then we should pause until we can fix them. If participation languishes or diminishes, then we will also re-evaluate the Forum’s usefulness. However, if it continues to be a place where people can collaborate across regions and languages - even if it’s not everyone - and advance the Movement Strategy together, then we have a good basis for the Foundation’s continued support.
Before the end of the community review (probably some time next week), my colleague @RMaung_WMF will share a proposal for evaluating the success of the Forum based on some measurable outcomes. She’ll be sharing it in this topic and we welcome feedback and suggestions/ideas in response to her post.
We are nearing the end of the community review period for the Forum - please continue to offer your feedback and thoughts on these review prompts. In particular, feedback is welcomed for the theory of change and evaluation plan for the MS Forum.
I’d like to highlight certain updates that might be of interest to you:
The report from the Hubs global conversations in June was published. Learn more and offer your comments here.
The Technical Decision Making Forum is seeking community representatives. Learn more and express your interest here.
There was a change in MCDC membership this month. Learn more and share comments here.
The Human Rights Impact Assessment was published recently. Learn more and share feedback here.
The 7th issue of the MSG Newsletter was published. You can find the previous three issues here.
Engage with some of the podcasts discussing Movement Strategy on the Forum. Check out the list here.
Learn about some of the Movement Strategy Implementation Grants here, and join us in congratulating the grantees!
The community review period (May 24 - July 24) has just wrapped up; thank you to everyone for participating - for asking questions, offering suggestions, giving us your feedback (both positive and constructive)! And just because the review period has closed doesn’t mean you can’t continue giving us feedback and suggestions for improvement – we will always welcome those as we seek to co-create, co-own and collaborate with all Movement actors on the Forum!
Our team is working to pull together a report of the community review period to summarize the feedback and learnings during these two months. We are aiming to share it here in early August for your comments.
In the meantime, check out what’s happening around the Forum:
There’s an interesting conversation about Wikischool happening within the Central Asia and Central/Eastern Europe region here – check it out! (One of the goals of the Forum is to collaborate across regional and linguistic silos, allowing all Movement actors to learn about the cool activities happening from their peers, and this is a great example of that!)
The Movement Strategy initiative Meta pages are being updated or in some cases, created! We’ll be rolling them out, initiative by initiative, on the Forum and we invite you to give us feedback (there are prompts to guide you), ask us questions, or discuss the initiative on their respective topics.
