2023 talk:Program/Wild Ideas/WBHT9B-Let’s disagree together! Exploring a controversial topic

Looking for topics

As I said in my proposal, now I have to choose a conflict to be used as a topic. I would welcome suggestions!

Ideally, a good conflict would be something that:

• People care about. Not necessarily everyone in the movement; the entire movement doesn't fit in a room at Wikimania anyway! But there should be at least enough people that care about it to fill that room.
• There are strong feelings about it. That often happens when people perceive things as connected to values, or to their personal experiences.
• Is divisive inside the movement: not everyone thinks in the same way. Doesn't need to be half and half, it's ok if 90% of the people are on one side and 10% are on the other side, but there should be real people on each side.

I'm listing some options below. Some are ideas I came up with, while others have been suggested to me. They are not in a final form, but should give an idea. I will wait a few days, probably until July 16 (unlikely more than that, there isn't much time until Wikimania!), for more suggestions, and then I will create a shortlist (likely 5 to 10 items) and then ask around what people feel more relevant in order to prioritize (and then I'll make a decision). Feel free to directly add more points to the list or comment below. - Laurentius (talk) 11:08, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

List of potential topics

This is a list of potential topics for conflict. It's a raw list, and they are not written in a consistent way. Some are expressed as a question, some as a statement, some as two opposing statements. More thoughtful phrasing will take place later.

The fact that a position is listed here does not mean that the organizer of the session, or anyone else, endorses it or any related position.

• What should the Foundation own? Should it be a small, focused organization, with other parts of the movement taking on more roles; or should it broaden its scope, with more direct action?
• Should the movement be much more political (for instance fighting for the right to knowledge, potentially against governments), or stay as far as possible from it?
• How we run the fundraising, and the tensions around banners
• Should non-commercial licenses be allowed on Wikimedia projects?
• Should we run ads on Wikimedia projects?
• Should we implement affirmative actions? (For instance, enforcing that 50% of all scholarships for events should be assigned to women)
• Should we establish regional quotas for the Wikimedia Foundation board?
• Is Wikipedia biased against women?
• Is volunteering an essential part of our way, or should we rely mostly on paid work (for organizing, but maybe even for editing) in some regions of the world (e.g., Africa)?
• Our job, in Wikimedia projects, is describing the world as it is, with all its biases; vs we should use them as a tool to fight for a more equitable world.
• Should we relax notability criteria and requirements for sources for subjects that are related to regions and cultures that do not have a strong written tradition (e.g., Africa)?
• We should focus our attention and resources on supporting the most active editors and volunteers, who are doing most of the work, or on attracting and retaining new editors, who are our future
• Communities with more people (like Wikipedia, Europe, North America, etc.) deserve more attention and resources vs we should focus our attention and resources on emerging communities (like sister projects, Africa, etc.)
• Should we close smaller wiki projects (Wikinews, Wikispecies, etc.) or provide more support to them?
• How much credit and recognition should be given to volunteers vs staff?

Shortlisted topics

In order to get a feeling of what are the hot topics, I had a poll on a shortlist of six topics (with two opposing hypothetical points of view in each). For documentation, I'm listing them here with the result, ranked by interest:

1. Political role of the movement (67% interest, but with less data)
   • Wikimedia should be a much more political movement, potentially going against governments (fighting for the right of knowledge, but not necessarily limited to it)
   • We should focus on our mission and avoid taking political stances that go beyond that.
2. Credit and recognition (65% interest)
   • Volunteers are the people who make this movement alive, and staff should not overshadow them. Whenever both staff and volunteers are working on something, we should highlight in the first place the contribution of volunteers.
   • Staff is doing a lot of work in the movement, which is often overlooked. The fact that they are not volunteers does not make it less worthy.
3. Role of volunteering (53% interest)
   • Volunteering is an essential part of the wiki way, and should always be at the core.
   • In some parts of the world (e.g., in Africa), we should go beyond the volunteer approach, and rely on paid work, both for organizing and potentially even for editing the wiki projects.
4. Our role in describing the world (47% interest)
   • Our job, on wiki projects, is describing the world as it is, including all its biases.
   • Wiki projects are a great opportunity for reshaping the narrative of our world, and we should take it.
5. Veterans and new editors (41% interest)
   • We should focus our attention and resources on supporting the most active editors and volunteers, who are doing most of the work and have often been neglected
   • We should focus our attention and resources on attracting and retaining new editors, who bring new life and are essential to increase our global reach
6. Notability criteria and requirements for sources (29% interest)
   • We should relax notability criteria and requirements for sources for subjects that are related to regions and cultures that do not have a strong written tradition (e.g., Sub-Saharan Africa)
   • Notability criteria and verifiability are the cornerstones of Wikipedia, and we must never stray away from them

The numbers are based on 17 responses. Because of a mistake, the initial survey didn't include the first topic, so the data for that one is less reliable. Taking that into account, the final choice was the "Credit and recognition" topic. - Laurentius (talk) 14:00, 20 July 2024 (UTC)