During the previous feedback and input cycles for the Movement Charter conversations there have been threads related to the process overall and how to ensure this is leading towards a Charter that is supporting the progress of the movement as well as is well received across the diverse range of contributors, communities, and organizations. While the feedback has been multifold, here are some key takeaways:
- The Movement Charter itself should be short and simple: there is a general consensus that a future Charter should not delve into too much detail. Such details would be better served by secondary policies, rules, regulations, and decision-making processes that are more adaptable to change, and could be formulated in a more decentralized manner by different entities governed by the Charter, in line with the Movement Strategy spirit.
- A clear and concise draft should be accompanied by a more extensive rationale and notes from the drafting process of the Charter in order to help readers understand the intent of the texts to better provide input and feedback.
- Some of the core questions regarding the future pathways have seemingly been left unanswered, which makes the discussion on the content difficult. There need to be clear answers to these questions to facilitate understanding and also ensure the decisions have been made intentionally and with reason.
- Some project community members are concerned that the community consultation has not adequately reached out to the individual contributors in the projects. There is a lack of awareness among project contributors from various projects and regions regarding the Movement Charter and the Global Council.
Some improvement steps in progress
- An effort has been made to make the Charter text shorter, while also producing reader’s notes. Shorter text means that some, more detailed questions will be pushed back in timeline to when the Global Council is established. At the same time an effort has been made to provide a sufficient level of clarity to the core questions and dynamics. During the next conversation cycle it needs to be validated whether the core questions have the sufficient answers for now.
- The next iteration of the draft will be published with reader’s notes to provide more insight into the thinking, consideration, and content creation process of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee. Hopefully, this will make the conversations more constructive by filling in some gaps that have existed for readers previously.
- There has been an intentional effort to work with the advisors who had signed up to support the process with their knowledge, insights, and experiences more intentionally to improve the quality of the drafts that will be brought to wider conversations. There has been an ongoing conversation and feedback period in February as the input will be integrated in the next published iteration of the Charter.
- The next conversation cycle is planned for the month of April 2024, leading up to the Wikimedia Summit 2024. While such an opportunity to discuss the Movement Charter and the future of the movement governance in-person will help to have deeper qualitative discussions with movement organizations, prior to that event an intentional effort will be made to also have ‘’’deeper and wider conversations with the project communities’’’.
Further process input
There is about a month until the next wider Charter conversation will kick off. As a result, there is still time to shape the process to be fitting to the needs and expectations of different stakeholders. It is worthwhile to share the feedback and suggestions for improvement, so they can be integrated into the process for April 2024 conversations. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions!