Hello everyone, 

We are happy to share an important update regarding the drafts for the Wikimedia Movement Charter. Two weeks ago we released the Global Council draft for your review and feedback, now we are announcing that the Hubs draft and the Glossary is also open for your input. 

The Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) has put in significant effort to develop these drafts, and we now need your valuable feedback to help refine them further. Your feedback is crucial in shaping the future of the Wikimedia movement, and we encourage you to participate.

You can provide feedback by engaging in discussions on Meta and joining upcoming community conversations by September 1, 2023. 

We are hosting a live call on July 30 at 14.00 UTC, where you can engage with us. Please register here to join us on Zoom, or set a reminder on the Wikimedia Foundation YouTube channel for a livestream of the call!  Your active participation is highly valued as we work together to shape the future of our Movement. 

We thank you for your active participation and ongoing support. 

On behalf of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee,
Ciell (talk) 15:38, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

There is one open question from the MCDC to the Wikimedia communities, which is from the membership and composition section of the draft:

Should there be a limit to how many hubs an affiliate can join? (Please elaborate on your answer.)

Yes, an Affiliate should only be allowed to join a limited number of hubs, because...

• Members of a hub will play an important role in the governance of said hub. It is undesirable that one Affiliate has more influence in the movement because they are a member of more hubs than others are.
• Seeing some affiliates participating in a large number of hubs may create a perception that other hubs should be doing the same thing, even though they may not have comparable resources.

No, Affiliates should be free to decide on the number of Hubs they join, because...

• In the near future there will be both Thematic and Regional hubs, and most Affiliates work on more than one theme, and sometimes in more than one region.
• The affiliates with more experience or resources can more easily share those with other affiliates through multiple hubs if they are not limited in their hub memberships.

Please add your answers/questions/thoughts below. Thank you! RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 13:57, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

At this early stage, I believe we should not state anything. When the hub been live a few years we can look into this issue again, when we know if there is any problem related to this question. And to start limiting could mean we miss a productive way of working . Anders Wennersten (talk) 16:08, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment, Anders Wennersten. Part of the theory behind the charter is to (a) address known issues and (b) avoid comparable problems in the future. At the same time, the charter should not be the only method of addressing some of these issues. For example, it is proposed that hubs report to the Global Council, most likely through a committee comparable to the current Affiliation Committee. Both the Global Council and the "hubs committee" would be in a position to create rules about hub membership, in theory. Do you feel that would be sufficient to address this issue? (And yes, it's an issue that has already been raised in some regions.) I would look forward to your thoughts, and the thoughts of others, on this point. Risker (talk) 05:00, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that is my thought, that there will exist bodies that approve hubs and follow up on these. And that this (these) bodies can create best practice in issues like this. My concrete example is WMSE. I expect WMSE to be part of hub Europe and that they will be hub host for a GLAM hub. But they would also be interested to join a hub (hosted by WMNO) on the Sami language (WMNO, WMSE and WMFI). IF something should be written, it could be a limitation being hubhost Anders Wennersten (talk) 05:21, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

What does this proposal mean for affiliates who are not a part of any hub? Does this put them at some kind of disadvantage when it comes to funding, for instance? Barkeep49 (talk) 16:09, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Barkeep49, thanks for your question. Membership of a hub would not be mandatory and will not directly impact the funds that an affiliate receives. However, I can imagine a funds committee pointing out to an affiliate when there is duplicate of work between what the affiliate intends to do and a Hub does (is proposing to do), and where they both can join forces. That is, in essence, the "mutual support" that the hubs can provide in: to work in coordination and alongside each other (in a region, on a topic, in a language) when it comes to bigger projects or topics. Ciell (talk) 11:38, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

It would be great to get an explanation as to how these two organisational forms differ, considering that the purpose of both is very similar if not identical. Braveheart (talk) 14:54, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Hello, Braveheart. Thanks for letting us know that we have some work to do in explaining the difference. The definition of a thematic organization is present in the current draft glossary, but it may be worth putting a footnote into the hubs section as well.

The key difference is that a Thematic Organization is an "incorporated independent non-profit representing the Wikimedia movement and supporting work focused on a specific theme, topic, subject or issue within or across countries and regions." The key here is that it MUST be an incorporated and independent non-profit; this isn't optional. It is also a single organization, not a group of organizations. A Thematic Hub MUST have a minimum of two accredited Wikimedia affiliates as founding members, and it is NOT required to be an incorporated non-profit.

Would this explanation clarify things better? Risker (talk) 05:44, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

@Risker: That is the current status, yes - but are you saying that the current affiliate structure with the same requirements will stay the same? Why not clean up some of the historical mistakes and develop a new affiliate structure that removes the differences between a thematic organisation and a thematic hub? Braveheart (talk) 12:13, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

I think that it is indeed important to clean up the historical mistakes. Thematic organizations are nothing else than User Groups with a theme. Chapters are nothing else than user groups with a regional scope. + of course the legal entity, which is not precluded by the definition of user groups and in practice happens already. In any case, I do think the difference between a thematic hub and a thematic organization is super clear: what Risker said, ie. one org vs a group of orgs/organized groups. notafish }<';> 17:05, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Let me try to understand that: Hubs are the introduction of some kind of matrix structure? New entities at the knots of a mesh out of regional entities in one direction and thematic entities in a different dimension? Will hubs always have members from both the geographic and the thematic dimension or are there others? And can we please have an (hypothetical) example? I don't think I understand what hubs really are good for that can't be done already. --h-stt !? 17:31, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

H-stt I'm not sure I understand your question here: "New entities at the knots of a mesh out of regional entities in one direction and thematic entities in a different dimension?". But Hubs are not supposed to be governing bodies of any kind. As I understand them, they are the material a mesh is made of that allows existing user groups/chapters/communities to work better together, receive support in areas where an organization alone does not have the capacity to do things alone, a place where people can find peers to hack out problems together etc. This can be done without a hub in some circumstances, but often the hub will provide staff support for example where a single affiliate would not have the means to have that support, be it full time or part time. We don't need a hypothetical example, we already have the CEE Hub which has identified areas of support for the region, and is able to work with user groups/chapters/communities in those areas. There are two staff people which no entity by itself could afford to manage. Does that help? notafish }<';> 14:57, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

@Notafish Thanks, the CEE example helps a lot. So hubs can provide a "higher" level of cooperation for regional entities. I had assumed that hubs would be "lower" in a tree structure than existing organizations, closer to individual persons. Of course I'm spoiled by coming from deWP, being used to WMDE and writing from WikiMUC at this very moment. h-stt !? 15:08, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

I think it's actually both higher and lower, if that makes any sense. I think that it's lower in that it can bring support to individual members of some communities and higher in that it integrates also a level of support that brings entities together that might not otherwise have the capacity to manage joint projects. Such things as "CEE Spring" campaigns that involve a lot of people at all levels, or for example support for one person in a community wanting to approach GLAMs and needing ideas/templates/user stories that the hub can provide. notafish }<';> 22:37, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

@H-stt I think the name refers to the spoke–hub distribution paradigm; the spokes would be the smaller units of organizations we already have (chapters, user groups, wikis). Hubs/Ongoing#Ongoing hub projects might give you an idea of the intended granularity. Tgr (talk) 07:08, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

From community conversations that I have joined, I understood the major difference between hubs and the existing Wikimedia Movement Affiliates to be that hubs are zero-impact organizations which only serve administrative roles.

Briefly, the Wikimedia Foundation asks that Wikimedia Movement Affiliates report "impact metrics", perhaps best documented at Learning and Evaluation/Global metrics. I will repeat these here as out-of-scope activities for hubs.

1. Number of active editors involved
2. Number of new registered users
3. Number of individuals involved
4. Number of new images/media added to Wikimedia article pages
5. Number of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects
6. Number of bytes added to and/or deleted from Wikimedia projects
7. Learning question: Did your work increase the motivation of contributors, and how do you know?

As I understand, hubs will do none of these things. Instead, hubs serve whatever administrative roles are necessary to support Wikimedia Movement Affiliates in doing these things. The section Movement_Charter/Content/Hubs#Responsibilities lists "must, should, could" activities. In my view, none of those are directly the impact metrics, but all of those functions indirectly support wiki organizations in doing those things.

Does anyone disagree with my interpretation? Speak up if you do. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:15, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Bluerasberry, thank you for this question. I think you are correct in that Hubs will require different metrics than the ones you mention in the list. This however goes very much into the level of policy, and policies need to be changeable, to fit the movement's annual and multiyear plans. The Movement Charter, because of the whole process of drafting and ratification behind it, will not be flexible enough: we don't want to have to go through the whole process just because a metric standard for Hubs needs to be changed, right?

But yes, in fact you are correct, and it will be up to the future Global Council (or a committee thereof - HubCom?) to decide on the reporting policy for Hubs and the metrics for this new form of entity in our movement. Ciell (talk) 08:46, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

I think the hubs definition should include a mandate to support Wikimedia Movement Affiliates with completing their annual reports, which come through bureaucratic forms at Wikimedia Affiliates Data Portal.

Annual reporting is the one existential requirement for sustaining good standing as a Wikimedia Movement Affiliate. Over the years various Wikimedia community groups have taken accusations of being insane, fraudulent, ineffective, violent, misguided, bad faith, or have any other flaw and still have "good standing", but the only certain way to get expelled from official status as Wikimedia movement affiliates is to fail to submit the annual report at Wikimedia Affiliates Data Portal. In the cases where affiliates have lost standing, so far as I know it has always been either because they failed to submit an annual report, or because in the process of completing their annual report somehow they got in a dispute about what they reported. Because submitting the report is the only existential requirement of a group, filling out the report is by far the most important thing groups have to do. So far as I know, all Wikimedia Movement Affiliates say that completing the report is stressful, confusing, happens without training, and is high stakes. More than any other factor, that report determines how much money anyone gets from from the Wikimedia Movement funds.

I think that because the report is so important, the definition of a hub should include a mandate to support all member Wikimedia Affiliates in submitting high quality reports. Hub staff should get training to support others in completing those reports, and hubs should be a peer-to-peer community advocate for Wikimedia Movement Affiliates submitting their reports to the Wikimedia Foundation. I would like for any organization who gets a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation to have access to a hub which will support them in completing their WMF reports.

The annual reports are the least supported link in the process chain of Wikimedia donors -> Wikimedia Foundation -> grants -> grant recipients -> annual reports -> determination of impact -> continued grant funding. Getting better annual reports is our best hope of getting community feedback at scale when globally sharing Wikimedia Movement funds. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:37, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

I support a requirement to create a report about the activities of a hub.--Hogü-456 (talk) 20:03, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Bluerasberry, @Hogü-456,

While I agree that we need reports from Hubs, in-line with my response on the topic above, I would be hesitant to include this in the text in the Movement Charter. The drafting group has spoken about this and decided to not include it, because we think it is best to leave this kind of policy level detail to the accountable body. Because maybe, we would for instance like to have a half year report for the first two years. Or a quarterly, as we did with chapters as well for many years. Annual and multi-year grants at the moment require a final report after a year, but also a mid-point report, though that is now in the process of being changed into a mid-point conversation with the WMF program officer. Only to show how our reporting guidelines are subject to change, and the Charter might not be the best place to prescribe them.

And yes, we think Hubs can help with writing applications and reports: this fits into the "...for example on capacity building and knowledge transfer" mentioned level of support in the Hubs definition and purpose, as long as there is not a conflict of interest (if they for instance also already have the role of fiscal sponsor or grant-giver for the grant that is reported on (Conflict of Interest, bullet point nr. 2).) Ciell (talk) 09:08, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Participants of the July 30 launch party share the following thoughts about the Hubs (YouTube stream recording):

• There is a broad agreement that there should be no limit imposed on how many Hubs a Wikimedia Affiliate could join.
• A proposed clarification was raised to the MCDC on whether all Wikimedia Affiliates, including those that are inactive, could become a founding entity of a Hub (currently two Affiliates are proposed as the requirement to launch a Hub).

-- RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 22:42, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

On August 2, more than 40 community members, including affiliate staff, from Latin America and the Caribbean reunited in the "Coordination and exchange of information meeting for LAC" to learn more about Hubs and Global Council, the new Movement Charter draft chapters, and discuss other priority topics for the region. During this meeting we shared regional updates about different topics, had presentations including research on a regional Hub concept conducted by Wikimedistas de Uruguay, and regionally-connected members of the MCDC presented their new drafts of the global council and hubs. There were moments to make questions around and what kind of feedback is request from the movement, about the size and composition of the MCDC and different models of Hubs across the movement. You can refer to the session notes in the Etherpad or watch the recording of the call on Commons. GBordoy (WMF) (talk) 15:57, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

The draft posits a number of requirements for the internal structure of hubs:

• A hub requires a minimum of two Wikimedia affiliates as founding members
• Wikimedia Affiliates can be members of more than one hub
• Individuals cannot become a member of a hub, but can receive support from a hub
• The Hub Host cannot be the host for more than one hub.

I don't think this is a good idea, not necessarily because these are bad rules, but because it is too early for us to be deciding such details. The Movement Charter is the constitutional document of the movement; to have legitimacy, it will have to come with a ratification process, both for the initial version and for later amendments, that requires a high level of consensus. This also means that the amendment process will be costly in terms of both movement resources and volunteer time. We should be careful to minimize the number of details that require a Charter amendment to change.

The Charter will have to specify in detail how its own ratification and amendment process works, who interprets and enforces the Charter, where the highest institutional powers within the movement reside, and how that body is elected and operated. The fundamental nature of these questions means it's not possible to delegate them to a lower-level policy, and they need to be agreed upon with the same level of legitimacy as the Charter itself. But everything else can and should be delegated and only included in the Charter at the level of principles.

This is especially true of hubs which are a new concept (technically we don't even have any hubs at this point, only hub pilots, and not many of those either); we have very limited experience in what works (and what works in some places but not others), or what needs and local constraints hubs need to meet. So the MCDC is not in a good position to predict what will be the ideal rules for hubs; if it tries to do so anyway, we might end with rules which are not optimal but too costly to change. I think the correct position to take here is that the Global Council (or some body the Council delegates this responsibility to) should develop a hub recognition policy that includes details like who are the members of a hub; if the policy turns out to be less than ideal, it can be changed with the much more practical and less costly decisionmaking process of the Global Council, instead of a Charter amendment.

(To give just one specific example: a hub whose members are affiliates vs. a hub whose members are individuals would be implemented by fairly different legal structures, one or the other of which can be more advantageous in a given jurisdiction. In some jurisdictions, a hub whose members are affiliates might only be feasible when those affiliates are themselves formally registered organizations, which can be a significant barrier to entry, and might even lead to safety concerns in unfriendly regimes. More generally, I think this requirement pushes hubs to be support structures primarily for affiliates, as opposed to e.g. editor communities, which I don't think we should insist on.) Tgr (talk) 07:12, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

This also goes for the Should and Could sections; I think those are good ideas and should probably be in the hub recognition and oversight policy that the Global Council will create and oversee; but I don't think they belong to the Charter.

(With the possible exception of These structures will work toward standards of diversity, inclusion, accountability, and equity in decision-making as per the Movement Charter which is an important high-level principle that does not go into unnecessary detail; that does belong to the Charter, but it basically just repeats what's already stated by the last sentence of Set-up and governance process.) Tgr (talk) 07:14, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Comparing the core responsibilities listed in the Must section to the ones in the recommendation, two are notably absent:

• Providing legal support to community members and organizations, and evaluating safety and security guidelines and procedures adapted to local contexts;
• Developing appropriate technologies to better serve communities.

Is there a reason for that? They seem like reasonable responsibilities around which hubs could be built. Given that nearly half of all movement funds is spent on software development, excluding the second one seems especially limiting. Tgr (talk) 07:18, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to interpret this:

• Regional hubs may fundraise locally.
• Thematic hubs can apply for or receive grants, and they can support others in managing their grants (Fiscal Sponsorship).

Does it imply that regional hubs can't apply for grants, and thematic hubs can't fundraise locally (ie. in the country where they are registered)? Those are both meaningful activities: some grants have a regional focus (EU funding most notably) and regional hubs seem like the perfect candidates for such grants; there is no reason a donor interested in some specific topic shouldn't be able to donate to the relevant hub if that hub happens to be local for tax purposes (maybe even if it isn't, if that makes the donor more willing to donate - the WMF also collects donations in areas where it isn't registered). Tgr (talk) 07:19, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Hubs involved in funds dissemination need to coordinate with regional fund committees.

This is a good principle but it would be better to avoid unnecessary detail (for the reasons I mentioned above) and say something like "need to coordinate with other fund dissemination bodies". Regional commities is a relatively recent structure, maybe it will not work out well or we'll want to experiment with alternatives (e.g. thematic committees, which would be more relevant for thematic hubs). Tgr (talk) 07:19, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

• Movement Charter