Movement Charter/Drafting Committee/Updates

The first community consultation on the draft Movement Charter is ongoing until 18 December 2022. The series of eight regional conversations has concluded, but you are still able to submit your feedback through the anonymous and multilingual survey or by joining one of the local conversations being held by our Movement Charter Ambassadors.

The Movement Charter Drafting Committee
Planning
Composition and set up process Diversity and expertise criteria
Elections & selection
Candidates Elections Results (detailed) Feedback (Lessons Learned)
Work
Frequently Asked Questions Updates Newsletter Principles Internal decision-making Internal Code of Conduct
Movement Charter content
Movement Charter Outline Preamble Values & Principles Roles & Responsibilities Drafting Methodology
Get involved
Community consultation Movement Charter Ambassadors Program Monthly newsletter Multilingual Movement Strategy Forum
Frequently Asked Questions For email enquiries: movementcharterwikimediaorg
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This page contains regular updates of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee's work, published at least once at the end of each month. These updates are meant to keep the community and the movement informed of the Committee's internal work, and they are separate from the calls for feedback that will be shared on other pages.

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November 2022[edit]

Meetings[edit]

• Open weekly meetings: every Thursday
• Regular Committee meetings: 13 and 27 November
• Preamble drafting group: 5 November
• Roles & responsibilities drafting group: 14 and 28 November
• Communications subcommittee: 2, 9 and 24 November

Completed work[edit]

• Movement Charter draft: Three draft Movement Charter chapters are published.
• Diff blog posting about the Charter onboarding and Community Consultations was published: Get prepared for the Movement Charter feedback sessions.
• Charter onboarding sessions: The MCDC had 3 sessions of “Ask Me Anything” about the Movement Charter’ sessions open to the community. The sessions introduced participants to the Movement Charter basics before starting the community consultations later in November.
• Frequently Asked Questions page: The Committee published a Frequently Asked Questions page for the Movement Charter. The questions are based on the recently-hosted “Ask Me Anything” sessions.

Ongoing work & discussion[edit]

• Community Consultations: The Committee is hosting 8 online regional conversations with the communities for different time zones. There is interpretation support for various languages. The Committee is using the conversations to collect feedback about the recently-published Movement Charter drafts.
• External facilitator hiring: The Committee is now in the last stage of interviews. The new facilitator will start in January.
• Ratification process outline: Aiming to publish a first draft for community review in January.
• Next in-person meeting: The Committee is planning for an upcoming in-person meeting, to make progress in drafting. The meeting will take place in early February.
• New drafting groups: New drafting groups are being formed to work on next chapters of the Movement Charter. Topics of the new chapters will be: Hubs, the Global Council, and Decision-making (see the Movement Charter outline for details). Work on the Roles and Responsibilities chapter is also continued.

October 2022[edit]

Meetings[edit]

• Open weekly meetings: every Thursday
• Regular Committee meetings: 2 and 16 October
• Preamble drafting group: 22 October
• Values & Principles drafting group: 10 October
• Roles & responsibilities drafting group: 3 and 17 October
• Communications subcommittee: 12 October

Completed work[edit]

• Movement Charter draft chapters: The Committee completed three draft chapters: The Preamble, Values & Principles and Roles & Responsibilities (purpose statement). The drafts will be published on Meta, along with a call for feedback, on November 14th. These drafts will be translated in the 15 priority languages.
• Community Consultation & Communication Plan: The Committee and  Movement Strategy and Governance team finalized an outreach and consultation plan for the Movement Charter drafts review. The consultation periods will follow the Movement Charter timeline.

• Participation at events: Committee members took part in several community events and presented sessions or panels about the Movement Charter. Events included: Wikidata Conference Istanbul, WikiArabia, and WikiIndaba. Upcoming events include WikiConNL and others.
• Decision on membership: The Committee decided not to add new members or replace those who step down after 1 January 2023, unless for exceptional reasons. For more details, please see this page.

Ongoing work & discussion[edit]

• Readability and legal reviews: The Committee is integrating feedback to the Movement Charter drafts based on a readability and translation review (by the Movement Strategy and Governance Team) and a legal review (by the Wikimedia Foundation’s Legal staff) before the drafts will be shared on Meta for a broader community review.
• Ratification methodology: The Committee is drafting an early, rough draft of a methodology for ratifying the Movement Charter.

• New drafting groups: New drafting groups are being formed to work on next chapters of the Movement Charter (besides the ones included in the upcoming community consultation). Topics of the new chapters will be: the Global Council, Decision-making and Amendments & Implementation (see the Movement Charter outline for details), while the work on the Roles and Responsibilities chapter is also continued.
• Facilitator hiring: The call for proposals for an MCDC facilitator is closed. Three representatives of the committee will be working with the MSG team to complete the new hiring process by the end of November.

September 2022[edit]

Meetings[edit]

• In-person meetings (Berlin): 7-12 September, including the Wikimedia Summit 2022
• Open weekly meetings: 4, 15, 22 and 29 September
• Regular Committee meetings: 18 September
• Preamble drafting group: 3 and 24 September
• Values & Principles drafting group: 1, 21 and 29 September
• Roles & responsibilities drafting group: 1, 26 and 29 September
• Communications subcommittee: 14 and 28 September

Completed work[edit]

• Presenting Movement Charter content at the Wikimedia Summit: The Committee presented their first drafts at the Wikimedia Summit 2022 (on 9-11 September). The drafts covered three sections: The Preamble, Values & Principles and Roles & Responsibilities. The Committee is currently integrating the feedback on those drafts.

Ongoing work & discussion[edit]

• Drafting Movement Charter sections: Drafting Groups of MCDC members have been developing multiple versions of draft sections. Drafts were presented and discussed at the Summit, and the Committee is currently revising them based on feedback. The drafts cover three sections: Preamble, Values & Principles and Roles & Responsibilities.
• Event attendance planning: The Committee is planning how to present and have outreach sessions at most major regional events, like WikiArabia, WikiConvention francophone, ESEAP conference and so on.
• Community Consultation & Communication Plan: The Committee is working on a plan for community outreach and consultation on the Movement Charter content. The Movement Strategy and Governance Team is helping produce the plan. The consultation periods will follow the Movement Charter timeline.
• Facilitator hiring: The Committee prepared a “statement of work” to hire a new facilitator to support its meetings and work. The search for a facilitator is ongoing.

August 2022 [edit]

Meetings[edit]

• Regular Committee meetings: 7th and 21st August
• Communications subcommittee: 3rd, 17th and 31st August
• Values & Principles drafting group: August 31st
• Roles & responsibilities drafting group: 29th August

Completed work[edit]

• Drafting Groups set up: Having finalized the Movement Charter outline, the Committee  formed drafting groups to start drafting content. Each MCDC member was asked to up for at least one (full membership is shown in the Drafting Committee page). The Drafting Groups are the following:
  • Preamble
  • Values & Principles
  • Roles & Responsibilities
• Summit deliverables planning: The Committee agreed that each of the three drafting groups will be submitting at least one draft introductory paragraph to be published and discussed at the upcoming Wikimedia Summit.
• Movement Charter video: The Committee and the MSG team created a short video (~8 minutes). The video briefly explains what the Movement Charter is, and introduces the Drafting Committee members. This video was streamed during Wikimania.
• Wikimania sessions: The Committee hosted two sessions at Wikimania to introduce the Movement Charter and answer questions. The sessions are summarized on Meta.
• In-person meeting summary (June 2022): The Committee published a short summary of its in-person meeting in June to openly share the results and outcomes.

Ongoing work & discussion[edit]

• Committee facilitation: The search for a facilitator continues. Meanwhile, Committee members are self-facilitating the meetings.
• Timeline: The Committee is in the process of updating its timeline to reflect recent changes.
• Summit survey: The Drafting Committee designed and is currently reviewing a survey to share with affiliates during the Wikimedia Summit, to collect feedback for the Movement Charter content and relevant processes.
• Future in-person meetings: The Committee is planning future in-person meetings further ahead with considerations of venues where visa processing is easier in an attempt to accommodate the numerous difficulties faced by some members.

July 2022 [edit]

Meetings[edit]

• Regular Committee meetings: 10th and 24th July
• Communications subcommittee: 6th and 20th July

Completed work[edit]

• Wikimedia Summit participation planning: Most of the Committee members will participate in the Wikimedia Summit, which will include dedicated sessions for the Movement Charter. The Committee also agreed to meet for two days before the Summit (7-11 September overall). This also includes attending two meetings of the Board of Trustees, to which two MCDC members are invited.
• Finalizing the drafting methodology: The Committee finished developing a rough methodology to use in drafting the Movement Charter, based on which drafting groups can start their work.

Ongoing work & discussion[edit]

• Facilitator replacement: Irene, the Committee’s previous facilitator, decided to step down from her role at the end of June 2022. The search for a replacement is ongoing. Committee members are taking turns in facilitating meetings, and also participating in the replacement process.
• Wikimania participation: The Committee is creating an introductory video about the Movement Charter to present at Wikimania.
• The Movement Charter outline: The Committee reached agreement on a rough outline for the content of the Movement Charter.
• Establishing drafting groups: The Committee agreed to start forming drafting groups for three chapters in the Movement Charter. Those chapters will be the following:
  • 1. The Preamble
  • 2. Values & Principles
  • 3. Roles & Responsibilities

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June 2022[edit]

Meetings[edit]

• In-person meeting in Berlin: 17-19 June
• Regular Committee meetings: 5th and 26th June
• Values & Preamble subcommittee: 9th June
• Communications subcommittee: 8th June

Completed work[edit]

• In-person meeting: The Movement Charter Drafting Committee met for the first time in Berlin in-person, on 17-19 June. A Diff blog post will be published soon with more details about this. The meeting had the following goals and outcomes:
  • Charter outline: There is progress made working on the outline of the Charter. The Committee is still discussing several options for how the outline (which is like a “table of contents”) may be organized.
  • Drafting methodology: There is progress made in agreeing on the methodology to draft the content of the Movement Charter. The methodology will be shared when ready.
  • Drafting subcommittees: The Committee is setting up the subcommittees to focus on drafting different parts of the outline.
• Replacing an MCDC member: Jamie Li-Yun Lin decided to leave the MCDC in May. Starting from June 26th, she has been officially replaced with Daria Cybulska. The replacement was made by the same group of selectors that selected Jamie, in accordance with the MCDC member replacement guidelines.
• Position towards the Hubs Minimum Piloting Criteria: During the in-person meeting, the MCDC discussed the Hubs Minimum Piloting Criteria. The Committee agreed that it does not see itself as a committee responsible for approving Hubs, and will not take this role. Hubs, though, will be defined in the Movement Charter (like other governance structures in the movement).
• Official email address: You can now be in contact with the Movement Charter Drafting Committee using the official email address: movementcharterwikimediaorg

Ongoing work & discussion[edit]

• Relationship with the Board: The MCDC decided to permanently invite two Board of Trustees liaisons to all the Committee’s meetings. One exception of this is when specific internal topics are being discussed, like Code of Conduct cases. From their side, the Board of Trustees invited two MCDC members to join their meeting on 23 June.
• Drafting methodology: Following the in-person meeting, the Committee continues to discuss the methodology for drafting the Movement Charter. The document will be publicly shared when completed.
• Finalizing the Movement Charter outline: Following the in-person meeting, the Committee continues to discuss the outline of the Movement Charter (almost like a “table of contents”).
• Establishing drafting subcommittees: Following the in-person meeting, the Committee continues to discuss setting up drafting subcommittees to start working on the content.

Please subscribe to the newsletter to get the monthly summary delivered to your personal talk page!

May 2022[edit]

Meetings[edit]

• Regular Committee meetings: 8th and 22nd May
• Communications subcommittee: 4th, 11th and 25th May
• Values & Principles: 12th and 30th May.

Completed work[edit]

• In-person meeting planning: The Committee members prepared, in collaboration with their facilitator (Irene Laochaisri), a full program for their in-person meeting. The meeting will take place in Berlin, Germany between 17-19 June. The main objective is creating a draft outline of the Movement Charter, and agreeing on a methodology to draft the content of this outline.
• The Committee's newsletter subscription is open. Subscribers will receive monthly updates and announcements about upcoming consultations or public sessions regarding the Movement charter. It can be delivered to your talk page on your project of choice.
• Replacing a resigned member: The group of affiliate selectors decided on replacement for a member who left the Committee. An official announcement will be made soon about the new member.

Ongoing work & discussion[edit]

• Wikimedia Summit: The Committee is in touch with Wikimedia Deutschland and is expected to be involved in planning the Wikimedia Summit. The Committee will further discuss this with Wikimedia Deutschland during the Berlin meeting, between 17-19 June.
• Relationship with the Board of Trustees: Until the end of April, as a pilot, two liaisons from the Board were attending 30 minutes during Committee’s meetings once a month. This proved unsatisfactory for both sides. As an alternative, the Committee offered the Board of Trustees one seat on the committee. The Committee perceived that this seat would add diversity in perspectives, and give the Board its desired voice. The Board, however, wishes to keep working through liaisons and not voting members. Discussions on the engagement with the Wikimedia Foundation’s Board of Trustees therefore still continue.
• Staff support: The Committee presented its projected needs for support from staff in the near future. Those needs include support in: Documenting meetings, facilitation, logistical and project management support, communications planning, outreach, translations, and conducting research. The Wikimedia Foundation is reviewing the needs and evaluating if the current support staff can meet them.

April 2022[edit]

Meetings[edit]

Regular MCDC meetings (more frequent this month due to an experiment with weekly meetings):

• 3 April: 120 minutes.
• 10 April : 90 minutes
• 18 April: 60 minutes. Joined for the first 30 minutes by two Board of Trustees liaisons.
• 24 April: 90 minutes.

Other meetings:

• Communications subcommittee: 13, 22 and 27 April
• Research subcommittee: 15 and 28 April
• Values/preamble subcommittee: 14 April

Completed work[edit]

• Code of Conduct: The Committee’s internal code of conduct was finalized and is available on Meta.

Ongoing work & discussion[edit]

• Drafting the Movement Charter: The drafting work will partly be prepared and carried out by subcommittees, each focusing on one particular topic. Each subcommittee will draft several outlines or “seed options” and present them to the community for review in the future. The initial topics that the Committee has identified are: Values & Principles (as an introduction), in addition to 1. Governance, 2. Resources and 3. Community.
  • Values & Principles: There is now a subcommittee working on the first topic (Values & Principles). The subcommittee’s work may need to be first informed by the research.
  • Ratification: Committee discussed the need to wait and learn from the results of the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines ratification vote, a model which could be similar to the future ratification vote for the Movement Charter.
• June in-person meeting: The Drafting Committee will meet in Berlin from 17-19 June. The meeting’s agenda will focus on the committee in general, and better defining the Movement Charter’s outline.
• Research & documentation: The Committee is discussing research to help inform or prepare for its work. The scope is being discussed, the following are possible options for it: 1. Survey data collection and analysis (in the Wikimedia movement), 2. Summarizing previous documents about Wikimedia governance, 3. Finding and comparing “Charters” of other non-profit organizations, and/or 4. Consulting and engaging with experts.
• Communications & stakeholder engagement: The communications subcommittee has finalized  a strategic communications plan. As a part of this, the subcommittee is now working on a “stakeholder engagement plan”, which defines the desired level of engagement on Movement Charter according to three levels: 1. Informed, 2. Consulted and 3. Extensively engaged.

Here’s an example in Dutch of a recent outreach.

• Email management: The Committee agreed on a process to manage and respond to emails. A public email address will be announced soon.
• Training: Some Committee members are joining a training in “nonviolent communication”. The training is provided by the Brazilian organization Sinergia Comunicativa in partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation. Other communications training is being discussed.
• Staff support: The Committee is discussing the possible needs of additional support from staff for subcommittees, especially for the communications and research subcommittees.
• Project management: The Movement Strategy and Governance Team will be providing support to MCDC members in managing and following up on tasks.

March 2022[edit]

Meetings[edit]

Regular MCDC meetings:

• 6 March: 120 minutes.
• 20 March: 120 minutes (joined for the first 30 minutes by two Board of Trustees liaisons).

Other meetings:

• 17 March: onboarding Irene, the Committee’s new facilitator.
• 20, 21, 29 March: weekly check-in with Irene.
• 9, 16, 23 and 30 March: Communications subcommittee meeting.
• 31 March: Charter categorization subcommittee meeting
• 31 March: Values subcommittee meeting

Completed work[edit]

• Onboarding the facilitator: The Committee welcomed Irene from InsightPact, who will be serving as its facilitator. Some members took part in onboarding her and agreeing on how they will work together.
• Communications strategy and plan: The communications subcommittee created, with the Movement Strategy & Governance Team, a communications strategy and plan. The communications strategy will be published on Meta later.
• In-person meeting decision: Berlin was decided to be the preferred location for the Committee’s in-person meetings. New York City is a possible secondary location (only if needed). Wikimedia Germany will be hosting the event, probably from 17-19 June. The event’s agenda is currently being discussed.

Ongoing work & discussion[edit]

• Drafting the Movement Charter: The drafting subcommittee agreed on four main themes and topics (“buckets”) of the Movement Charter: “Values & Principles”, “Governance”,  “Community” and “Resources”. This takes into consideration previous feedback from the movement, like the June 2021 Global Conversations. The board liaisons also provided feedback about the themes, stating that the “Values & Principles” are an essential foundation for all other “buckets”.
• Email address: The Committee is planning to announce an official email address, through which anyone can send questions and feedback. The communications subcommittee is working on the final details considering flow, response time, and responsibilities of those involved, and plans to bring these back to the full MCDC in the April meeting for a final decision.
• Working with the WMF Board of Trustees: The planned 12 weeks of experimental collaboration with the Board of Trustees are nearly coming to an end. The Committee and the Board will be discussing if the current set up is productive, in which they meet together for 30 minutes once every four weeks.
• MCDC Code of Conduct: The Committee is currently considering a draft version for an internal Code of Conduct. There was an extended discussion regarding articles about the suspension of inactive members and other sanctions. A newer or final draft may be shared in April.
• Progress Review + Committee Check-in: The committee members assessed themselves and their collective progress. There was agreement that a lot of time is being spent on doing preparatory work, so the committee is not working at a fast pace as committee members would want. Cumulatively, though, the committee believes that the thorough review and discussions at this stage are important, and will be helpful in countering challenges in the drafting stage.

February 2022[edit]

Meetings[edit]

Regular MCDC meetings:

• 6 February: 120 minutes.
• 20 February: 120 minutes (joined for the last 30 minutes by two Board of Trustees liaisons).

Communications subcommittee meetings:

• 1 February: 60 minutes
• 9 February: 60 minutes
• 16 February: 60 minutes
• 18 February: 30 minutes
• 23 February: 60 minutes

Completed work[edit]

• Contracting a professional facilitator: Several MCDC members joined interviews to select a professional to support the group meetings. The group decided to choose InsightPact, based on reasons including:
  • 1. Their capacity to flex and iterate in their facilitation method,
  • 2. Demonstrating willingness to take in feedback from all Committee members,
  • 3. The prior experience of their designated facilitator, Irene, with the Wikimedia Global Conversations.
• Publishing the internal decision-making: After finalizing it earlier, the Committee published a detailed decision-making document.

Ongoing work & discussion[edit]

• Drafting the Movement Charter: A group of MCDC members started brainstorming the main themes and topics that they expect to see in the Movement Charter. The results are expected, later on, to identify 3-5 first topics for content.
• Working with the Board of Trustees: After several phases of deliberation, the MCDC and the liaisons of the Board of Trustees agreed that the liaisons will attend some of the regular MCDC meetings. The two Board liaisons will both attend the last 30 minutes in one of each two regular meetings. This format will be tested for a period of three months. Shani and Natalia first joined the Committee’s meeting on 20 February, where they introduced themselves and offered support.
• Communications: The Movement Strategy and Governance Team created and presented a first draft of a communications plan for the Movement Charter process to the communications subcommittee. There seems to have been a mismatch, however, in expectations from both sides, both in terms of the content of the plan and in the available support from the Wikimedia Foundation. This led to a frustrating situation. The subcommittee is now working with the Foundation to seek alternative options for support in communications, and work on a new plan was started.
• In-person meeting: The Committee believes that an in-person meeting may help them achieve progress. Several locations for the meeting were compared according to their COVID-19 restrictions, travel distance/time and the availability of staff support. As a result, the meeting is likely to take place in Berlin in June 2022.

January 2022[edit]

Group meetings[edit]

• 9 January: 120 minutes.
• 23 January: 120 minutes.

Completed work[edit]

• Timeline: The Committee has updated the Movement Charter drafting timeline on Meta.
• Principles: The Committee finalized and published a Principles document to define and guide its work.
• New MCDC page: The MCDC Meta page is now fully-updated with more information about members, ongoing work and recent documents.
• Internal decision-making: The Committee created a document that defines how its internal decisions are made. The document is available on Meta.

Ongoing work & discussion[edit]

• Member replacement: Alice Wiegand (user:Lyzzy) stepped down from her role in the Movement Charter Drafting Committee. Because she was an elected member, she was replaced with the next ranking, eligible candidate: Reda Kerbouche (user:Reda Kerbouche). For more details, see the replacement announcement.
• Communications plan: Members of the MCDC “communications subcommittee” are collaborating with the Movement Strategy & Governance team to prepare a plan for communications.
• Communication channels: The Committee is setting up an official mailing address to use in communications.
• Hiring a facilitator: Members of the MCDC are collaborating with the Movement Strategy & Governance team to select a proper facilitator for the group’s meetings. Meanwhile, Committee members continue to self-facilitate.
• Engaging with the Board of Trustees: The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees requested, in December 2021, to have two liaisons attending the MCDC meetings. This request came as a surprise to the MCDC members. The Board’s request has led to proposals for attendance from both sides, but has yet to be concluded.
• Conference participation: There was an invitation to an MCDC member to submit a proposal for the RightsCon Summit. The Committee is taking this as an opportunity to bring the Charter discussion to non-Wikimedia stakeholders with similar interest.
• Charter content: Some members are starting to brainstorm their ideas of the main “outline” and sections that the Movement Charter may include.

December 2021[edit]

The Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) is preparing and planning its upcoming work. The Committee met on 5 and 19 December (each meeting is two hours). The first results of the meetings are expected to be shared soon, please see the summary below.

Ongoing work[edit]

The Drafting Committee is working on the following:

• Principles: The Committee is still working on guiding principles to define its work (for example, the Committee’s mandate, the duration of its work, and so on). Those principles are expected to be finalized and published on Meta by the end of January.
• Internal decision-making: In a related topic, the Committee is also defining how to make its internal decisions (for example: when is consensus needed on a decision?).  
• Communications: The Committee is putting together a communications plan, to ensure that its work will include proper outreach and dissemination of information. The Committee is collaborating to create this plan with the Wikimedia Foundation’s Movement Strategy & Governance Team, who will provide support in executing it.
• Timeline: The preliminary timeline for the Movement Charter process is being discussed. It will be published as an update to the Movement Charter Meta page in January. This timeline is not expected to be final, since it will need to be flexible with the consultation and ratification periods.

Summary of meetings[edit]

Major topics discussed during the Committee meetings:

• Meetings: The MCDC members agreed to meet once every two weeks on Sundays, except for during the holidays break. The next meeting will be on 9 January.
• Facilitation: The MCDC members will be facilitating the meetings themselves until a professional facilitator is hired (a process also overseen by the MCDC, and supported by the Movement Strategy & Governance Team). Professional facilitation is expected to start in February 2022.
• Diversity & expertise: According to the set up process, the Committee has the option to add “up to three additional candidates by consensus”. While there does not seem to be an immediate gap in diversity, the Committee may request expert advice or add “observer” members in the future.
• Board meeting: Members from the Committee met with two members from the Board of Trustees (BoT) for the first time on 22 December 2021. Besides introductions from both sides, the main talking points were about the form of the collaboration between the MCDC and the BoT, and what type of communication/meetings will be happening to shape this collaboration.
• Task management: The Committee is testing Asana, an online software, to assign and manage its tasks. This service will be provided by the Wikimedia Foundation.

November 2021[edit]

The Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) was appointed on 1 November 2021. Since then, the group met twice (on 10 November and 18 November), and started working on several tasks between these two meetings and afterwards. Currently, the Committee is in the process of starting to set up a system to work together, and will continue to meet once every two weeks and to provide updates to the community at least once a month. Below is a summary of the discussions that the group has had so far, and the work items that they are handling.

Ongoing work[edit]

The Committee is currently working on the following things:

• The Drafting Committee is in the process of setting up its internal operations and systems, including: Facilitation, communication, workflows, responsibilities and mandate, principles (see below), timeline and others. Due to the holiday’s break between December and January, these various tasks are expected to take until early 2022.
• The Committee is creating the principles that will guide its future work, including how decisions are made, to whom the Committee reports, what is its mandate, and so on. These principles are projected to be finalized and shared after the Committee’s fourth meeting on 19 December.
• The group is creating a list of roles to clarify the expected responsibilities of the Drafting Committee members and the support that they need from the Wikimedia Foundation, or an external facilitator. Overall, the Foundation is expected to provide operational support so that the MCDC members can focus on collecting and drafting content.

Discussion[edit]

Topics of discussion from meetings:

• Transparency was a popular request from the community. The Committee members agreed to address it by adopting the Chatham House Rule: “anyone who comes to a meeting is free to use information from the discussion, but is not allowed to reveal who made any particular comment”.
• There needs to be a balance between this transparency and the amount of information shared from the MCDC meetings. The main updates will be shared once per month until the Committee is ready to start collecting community feedback and input, hopefully in early 2022.
• The “power” and/or mandate of the MCDC should be clarified: both to the Committee and to the movement. A suggestion was made to use a DARCI matrix to define the committee’s exact role. Regarding who the MCDC “reports to”, there was some support for reporting “to the movement”.
• Ratification of the Movement Charter draft(s) is an open question. Some of the suggestions were:
  • 1. Presenting a complete draft to the community with the possibility of approval or rejection,
  • 2. Iterative process where the community reviews separate parts of the Movement Charter draft at predefined “milestones”.
• Before drafting, it is expected that the group needs to agree on the main topics or outline of the Movement Charter. Since brainstorming topics with 15 people takes a lot of time, it was suggested that members can brainstorm in smaller “sub-groups” and reconvene later to agree (much like the Global Conversations).
• The timeline of the MCDC work is initially expected to take anywhere from 12 to 18 months. Creating a more detailed timeline for this period is one of the Committee’s next steps and responsibilities.