Movement Charter/Community Consultation/July–September 2023/MCDC responses

Movement Charter

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This is the Movement Charter Drafting Committee’s reactions and next steps based on the community feedback from the July-September 2023 community consultation.

Response to the feedback

The Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) has reviewed all the feedback from the previous rounds of consultations and is integrating the feedback in the next iteration of draft chapters. To close the feedback loop for now, we are currently providing a high level response with the next step action items to the general feedback received.

The MCDC and its supporting staff are committed to providing further context regarding the integration of the content on particular chapters (i.e. Global Council, Hubs, Roles and Responsibilities) when the next iteration of drafts is published.

High Level Responses

• Rooting the Charter in Movement Strategy: The Movement Charter drafting process is initiated by the Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy recommendations, grounded in the recommendation #4 “Ensure Equity in Decision-Making”. In the early stages of the work, the MCDC agreed upon their core working principles, published in January 2022. Article 2 in these principles states: “The MCDC will consider the decisions and definitions made during previous discussions in the Movement Strategy process. When changing these is necessary, the MCDC will share this clearly, for transparency and awareness of the process.”
  • The MCDC is closely following the text of Movement Strategy recommendations and principles when drafting the text of the Charter.
  • The Movement Strategy recommendations are written on a high level and leave room for interpretation, which needs to be considered while drafting.
  • Action item: The MCDC is committed to providing further context to the community when publishing its next drafts of the content decisions made in the committee while drafting the Charter to make the connections more visible and understandable.
• Keeping the Charter short and simple: Various members of the movement have expressed different levels of need for details to be included in the Charter, also related to particular content areas of the Charter (e.g. Map vs Compass exercise from 2021). The MCDC is trying to carefully balance these differing needs to ensure that the Charter can function as a high level agreement across the movement while also creating sufficient clarity regarding some of the key areas.
  • Action item: The MCDC continues consultations and discussions regarding the leveling of the content of different topic areas of the Charter to strike this balance right.
• Ensuring the longevity of the Charter: The MCDC intends the final Movement Charter to be a document that will be as timeless as possible in our ever-evolving movement. This means that some of the more time-sensitive items might need to live elsewhere.
  • Action item: As with the leveling of the Charter, the MCDC will continue conversations with the movement to clearly define what needs to be included in the Charter.
• Reforms needed for the success of the movement: The Charter is expected to define the future roles and responsibilities in the Wikimedia movement. Some of the topics, however, are highly complicated and need to be addressed on several levels before they all can come together in one final charter for the movement.
  • The MCDC is aware that the drafts recently published did not yet cover in depth all topics that emerged as a priority for the Charter in the previous Movement Strategy process.

Timeline for publishing next drafts

As currently shared on Meta, a full Movement Charter draft will be published in April 2024.

The MCDC and the support staff are planning for the next round of conversations across the movement by April 2024, including, yet not limited to in-person discussions at the Wikimedia Summit 2024. As noted above, the MCDC is committed to provide more detail on integration of particular feedback on chapters and context around the decisions made with the publication of the next drafts.