Q5: How would you like to see the role of affiliates change in the next five years?

Ensure Equity in Decision-Making Elections
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How would you like to see the role of affiliates change in the next five years?

This is one of the Affiliate questions selected for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election 2022. Only candidates can post their replies here. You can read this question on Meta.

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In the next five years, I would like to see the role of affiliates being inclusive and representative of the Wikimedia Foundation mission; abide by the Wikimedia Universal Code of Conduct. Affiliates effectively support the Wikimedia Foundation’s tasks and have the needed skills to contribute and share free knowledge on Wikimedia projects.

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I’d like to see the birth of regional or thematic hubs within the next five years, which will bring together affiliates. This will be especially beneficial to smaller affiliates with limited resources.

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I’d like to see:

  • Our Movement developing mechanisms to better support affiliates
  • WMF develop a clear strategy of working with affiliates, properly addressing their needs, and helping affiliates develop the necessary skills for better governance, both strategically and operationally
  • Affiliates further mature, participate more and share the responsibility of the governance of the movement
  • Affiliates taking on certain roles, traditionally considered WMF-realm but don’t really have to be, and actively participate in solving some of the bigger challenges we have been facing as a movement.
  • Younger affiliates mature and develop relevant skills and capabilities to help grow future movement leaders
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The affiliates will evolve in the next 5 by appropriating the new Technology and facilitating learning

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Reply by Mike Peel (Mike Peel)

I hope to see more affiliates becoming stable and established organisations with sufficient capacity to make significant changes in their focus geographies/topics to benefit Wikimedia globally, in partnership with the WMF. I would particularly like to see affiliates taking active roles with development and support of the sister projects.

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I would like to see more affiliate groups and greater inclusivity within the groups. Ideally, I think, it could be useful if every new editor or contributor could be invited to join an affiliate group.

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I would like to see Affiliates representing pure governance. They should be the closest representation of Wiki Governance to their immediate communities.

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In the next 5-8 years I will like to see the role of Affiliates becoming more equitable, inclusive and transparent. I will like to see Affiliates growing up to become larger collaborators of the Wikimedia Foundation especially younger affiliates developing the skills and capabilities needed to grow and expand their movement.

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Affiliate have to get more financial Independence and not following the way of the foundation how created a big staff company. The status of volunteer is the best one to assume our mission of sharing knowledge. The money coming in our movement create a lot of tasks that don’t have any concern with this mission. More we have to deal with money, more we have to deal with conflict of interest and risk of corruption. There is no need of a lot of money in a movement based on sharing.

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Within 5 years affiliates should be:
more active and widespread, serving a larger number of audiences
better resourced and supported by the ecosystem and themselves (WMF, hubs and peers)
fairly evaluated and developed
based on volunteers trained by the ecosystem thanks to the funding secured
bold to experiment
held accountable and more interconnected with the Movement, including the WMF, hubs, consortia etc. taking part in the network. More involved in shaping the governance model
commited to the Movement, values, strategy and audiences.

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I would like to see the role of affiliates continue to grow with more affiliates take on bigger leadership roles (e.g. as WMDE has taken on some technical leadership with Wikidata and the Technical Wishes project). I’d also like to see more already established groups become officially recognized affiliates (e.g. “functionaries”, IRC operators/users, etc.) to give them more visibility and suffrage.

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