Hi @Nehaoua!
This is really amazing that people like you are coming forward to make this place better and more inclusive.
I support your application and I can’t wait to have you with me here as a category moderator.
I just have some requests for you.
This forum is good not just for its technical features, I know it has a lot of cool features which can be added to meta tho that will take a lot of time. But the thing that I like most about this platform is its happy and welcoming environment. Meta and mailing lists are becoming war zones day by day and you hear some common harsh voices over and over, which may make you feel that they are the only people in the movement and the movement is always rough and tough and merciless which is not of course the reality. This very thing is diminishing the inclusion of those places, people from the underrepresented countries fear posting anything on those platforms publicly. Especially, people whose first language is not English feel low about themselves. We don’t want to see our movement like this. We want inclusion.
I don’t know what other people think about it, but I believe that the high schooler, who uses Wikipedia to understand his school curriculum, is an essential part of our movement. The teacher, who applies the learnings from “Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom Program” in his/her classroom is a part of our movement. The granny, who searches for the meaning of “LOL” in Wikipedia, is a part of our movement. The African youngster, who goes to distant schools with low-cost tabs with Kiwix installed with the whole Wikipedia downloaded, where people didn’t even hear of the internet, is a part of our movement. The UN peacekeeper who are fighting for world peace in South Sudan and searches Wikipedia occasionally to know about something (this is a real story, I heard some of the peacekeepers from my country use Wikipedia when they get internet coverage while they are on their peacekeeping mission), is a part of our movement. The boy from an ethnic minority group, who thinks that the whole world is trying to remove their existence but enjoys browsing articles from Wikipedia, is a part of our movement. And most importantly, they have the right to take part in the movement’s governance process, they are not outsiders.
These people should have a strong voice in the movement, they shouldn’t be afraid to express their feelings, and they shouldn’t be afraid of watching harsh attacks and counterattacks, where no love and respect prevail. They don’t need to know mediawiki syntaxes to be a part of the movement; you know browsing facebook is even tough for a lot of people in the world, let alone mediawiki syntaxes. As an outreach organizer and trainer, the toughest job for me is to teach the mediawiki syntaxes to the newcomer high schoolers, we know the syntax very well but those very syntaxes are responsible for volunteer burnout and higher drop rate for any outreach event. If somehow, they can learn the syntax, our moral police, the defenders of the movement kill their slightest interest they have to contribute to the movement. I know a lot of new people are joining the movement daily but I’ll say those incidents are more of luck than a healthy organic phenomenon. I’m unhappy and don’t think that the movement is newcomer friendly.
I dream of a place in the movement where no one will be afraid to say anything (vandalism or other type of indiscipline are exceptions of “anthing” here, I believe in keeping good faith), where no one will be able to share their dreams and new ideas for the movement. This forum is solely dedicated to movement strategy, but we need this type of platform in other fields of the movement too. I’m not a fanatic supporter of this forum or anything like that, I just want an inclusive place for all, whether that be the mailing or the meta talk pages. I believe that if the current friendly environment of this platform can be continued, we can include more and more people from diverse backgrounds, especially from underrepresented communities in the movement strategy process.
I just request that you will take care of this place so that this place doesn’t become a warzone.
Wishing you all the best and sorry for soooooooooo long text XDD