WikiJournal participation in Wikimedia Strategy 2030
Thomas Shafee
Hello all,
The 2019 WikiMedia Summit in Berlin is coming up on the 29th of March. The scoping documents have just been released (links below) to guide the 3-day-long discussion on the Wikimedia Movement strategy for the next 10 years. There will be >200 representatives there from the different national chapters, user groups, affiliates, trustees, WMF staff and specialist invitees. I'll be representing the WikiJournal User Group at the summit and aiming to focus on what WikiJournals can offer, as well as their preferences. I'll also try to convey the interests of the academic community as a whole where possible. If there are any ideas or feedback on the scoping documents, please let me know at this link and I'll make sure to raise them during the summit.
All the best,
Thomas
Thomas Shafee
"Strategy Liaisons appointed by Organized Groups will act as a conduit for ideas, questions, and updates. This will enable Organized Groups to participate effectively in the Movement Strategy Process and ensure that voices and perspectives of organizations and collaboratives are well heard and considered. The Liaison will be engaged in (pro)active communication with the Working Groups and the Core Team to ensure that their organization is up to date with the overall process and its internal conversations are synchronous and well connected to global discussions."
Thomas Shafee
Summary of WM 2030 Strategy Summit (Berlin)[edit source]
This is my brief summary of the 2019 WikiMedia Summit in Berlin. I think that the Wikimedia Strategy Summit was very valuable - hopefully for both the WikiJournals and for the movement as a whole. There was a very intense and productive atmosphere amongst the delegates. Below are some of the items relevant to the WikiJournal User Group.
- Resource allocation
- Based on our experiences, I raised the point that although money can be requested via rapid grant, other assistance is currently difficult to request / requisition, e.g.:
- Advocacy by WMF on a specific issue
- PR / advertising
- Press release
- Social media post/repost
- Legal advice
- Official contact when making new partnerships
- Partnerhips
- We have useful experience in forming partnerships, as well as inviting external auditing and oversight that could be potentially relevant to other user groups
- I recommended that the successes of the WikiJourals could be used by the WMF as PR
- example of quality and auditability
- as example link to wider 'big open' knowledge ecosystem
- Community health
- Several other usergroups expressed interest in the code of conduct that we're drafting. There is potential for it be useful as a template CoCs for other user groups (or even projects).
- Other relevant discussions
Several attendees suggested using WikiJHum as an avenue for gathering oral histories in a systematic fashion, i.e. covering a gap in wikisource and commons for recording information to generate reliable sources for topics that currently lack them.
It was recommended that we update the sister project application and re-submit it
- Gather updated user stats and contribs
- Notify all relevant Wikiprojects (and other relevant locations)
- Possible platform for other journals to join (e.g. PLOS, Gene, RNA biol etc.)
- Write a new opinion editorial on what we think WikiJournals could be by 2030 (concrete goals, stretch goals, speculative ideas)
- Wikimedia Foundation boar of trustees election
This is the first year where Affiliate groups (like us) are able to vote in a candidate to the WMF board of trustees. (see #Update_on_the_Affiliate-selected_Board_seats_2019_processbelow for more details). The two relevant points:
- If anyone wishes to put themself forward as a candidate, the criteria and process are here.
- Once candidates are all announced, we can discuss and vote on which we want the WikiJournal User Group to support. Our user group then casts a single vote in the election (183 affiliate groups will be voting).