Policies for experimentation with projects and policies for knowledge equity
In order to Innovate in Free Knowledge, we need to experiment with new projects and policies that support knowledge equity. According to the results of previous work, the policies and barriers that hinder knowledge equity on Wikimedia Projects have been identified. Solutions may include creating new projects that support content to cover underrepresented groups (for example: an encyclopedia that accepts oral historical sources). Solutions may also include refining policies (for example: allowing oral, non-Western sources in the “reliable sources” policy). Such changes would need to follow the formal process of editing and creating policies or projects.
Create pathways to new projects, create new functionalities, or encourage communities to create new policies that address these barriers. The goal is to allow the inclusion and preservation of all forms of human knowledge in all socio-cultural contexts (e.g. encourage refining reliability criteria to provide guidelines to identify reliable sources from oral or non-Western knowledge resources, encourage ensuring that notability criteria are relevant in all contexts).
please don’t. any new editing projects, efforts, group activities, etc, will be lost in the shuffle. I suggest that any such new ideas or efforts should arise from the community itself, not from the Movement Strategy group as a whole.
on the other hand, if anyone on the Movement Strategy team has a specific idea for an experiment, new approach, or new activity, that you want to try, then that’s fine. Simply please propose it here, and let’s discuss it.
In short, I don’t object to the Movement Strategy team trying out new ideas and approaches; I only object to them approving this proposal as a kind of generalized, non-specific concept, and then using this item as a carte blanche for any number of undefined new approaches, without having a specific discussion and group approval for each specific new idea, on its own, beforehand. thanks.
Thank you Steven. “Experimentation” by definition, is an “experiment”, and if we don’t experiment it’s difficult to ever make new things or even improve existing ones. This initiative is about encouraging that in the Wikimedia movement. It’s not, on the other hand, about the Movement Strategy & Governance team at all - the initiative was part of the Movement Strategy recommendations that were finalized in May 2020, and as their name suggest, they are “for the movement”.
