Overview

The Wikimedia Movement has grown into a global community with close to two hundred affiliates and over three hundred language projects over its 20 years of existence. One of the priorities of its developed Wikimedia 2030 strategy is to create a single document that defines the roles and responsibilities of expanding range  of communities and entities as well as new governance structured to be formed based on the strategy (i.e. Global Council, regional and thematic hubs).

When looking to design and facilitate open discussions across the whole movement regarding the future of movement governance and especially the set up for drafting the Movement Charter, the Wikimedia Foundation turned to InsightPact.

InsightPact was chosen to create a space for fair, inclusive, and open dialogue to support Wikimedians in the process of moving towards convergence in complex conversations of global significance. Even if the ongoing discussions were energetic, they had become repetitive and somewhat stuck in echo chambers. We worked hand-in-hand with the organizing team to design the conversations in a way that  ensured reaching a better  understanding of each other’s perspectives and clarity on next steps.

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The Challenge

This project presented a wide range of challenges mainly due to the number and diversity of the involved stakeholders and overall complexity of the topic. These challenges included:

• Ensuring that non-English speaking Wikimedians and traditionally underrepresented communities participate in the conversations meaningfully and aren’t excluded by monolingual exchange.
• Moving towards convergence on the criteria for selecting a Movement Charter Drafting Committee with the right expertise, diversity, and one that avoids bias.
• Resolving  points of divergence with participation of a wide range of stakeholders to ensure that the conversations kept moving forward.

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The Results

After the series of conversations, there was a more clear understanding among the participants and also the organizing team on how to move forward in order to reach a consensus, ensure that no one feels left out, and define clear next steps for setting up the Movement Charter Drafting Committee.

The discussions yielded the following results:

• The community continued online discussions after the event to overcome  final points of divergence.
• The proposal of Wikimedia Foundation was amended to reflect the needs of the collective and has become the official process to set up the Movement Charter Drafting Committee.
• A  multilingual call for candidates for the Drafting Committee was set up with candidates nominated from all the regions of the global movement .

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