Movement Charter Ambassadors Program/The Arabic Community Feedback

General Information

• Feedback channels: Mailing Lists, Live meetings on Jitsi and Google Meet, Google form, Mentimeter, The Arabic Wikipedia Village, The talk pages of the User Groups, the formal social media platforms; Facebook group and Telegram channel.

• Number of participants: N/A

Feedback

During our tenure as Charter AR Ambassadors in 2024, we conducted several meetings with various user groups within the Arab community.These meetings took place on multiple dates throughout (May, 2024), and involved engaging with representatives from different User Groups in the Arabic community.

Each meeting served as a valuable opportunity to exchange ideas, and collect valuable feedback about the Charter.

Our plan was to provide a space for the Arabic community to share their feedback and to help them understand the charter if they did not have much time to read. To do so, we conducted 6 online meetings targeting 11 recognized user groups in the Arabic speaking community, besides inviting all the community including the unorganised volunteers (people who do not belong to any user group) and unrecognised affiliates in the community to the last meeting.

We used mentimeter to ask about their agreement or disagreement in many points in the Movement Charter then asked them open questions for further discussions. During the online meeting and while showing each question on mentimeter, we were explaining some important points in the charter if the attendees were not able to read this specific part. We shared a google form with them to collect any further feedback.

Meetings List:

1. We started the First meeting on Saturday (11, May 2024) at (11:00 UTC) by using the Jitsi platform, we sent our email invitation to Egypt, Sudan and Arab user groups
2. The second meeting was on the same day (11, May 2024) at (13:00 UTC) on Jitsi,we sent our email invitation to Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia user groups.
3. The next meeting was on the same day (11, May 2024) at (18:00 UTC) on Jitsi',we sent our email invitation to Wikimedians of Levant user groups.
4. The next meeting was on Sunday (12, May 2024) at (16:00 UTC) on Google Meet. We sent our email invitation to UAE and Iraq user groups.
5. The next meeting was on the same day Sunday (12, May 2024) at (18:00 UTC) on Jitsi. We sent our email invitation to Libya and Wikimedians of Islamic Civilisation user groups.
6. The final meeting was on Monday on Jitsi (13, May 2024) at (17:00 UTC) on Jitsi, it was a general meeting for all members in the Arab community and announced it on the Arabic Wikipedia village and formal social media platforms (Facebook & Telegram).

Introduction

During a recent community feedback gathering facilitated by a statistical application (Mentimeter, Google forms), we identified low acceptance and engagement levels regarding the MC. While the Arabic translation of the materials was improved, a sense of exclusion remains within the Arabic-speaking community. This highlights the need for enhanced outreach and orientation specifically tailored to this large group.

Additionally, some ambiguities and misunderstandings were identified in the communication. Specific examples are detailed in the advanced sections.

Volunteers

Insights from Conversations

For the rights and responsibilities of volunteers, we gathered some results, which are:

The current framework appears to lack clear guidelines for resolving conflicts between communities. For instance, there is no defined process for reaching a resolution in such situations.

Furthermore, the recourse available to a user who feels aggrieved by a resolution, or by the community itself, remains unclear. This ambiguity suggests a need for amendments to the charter to address these shortcomings.

While seeing that the rights of the volunteers stated on the charter need more clarifications as mentioned above, some members in the community mentioned that they do not feel that they have those rights currently which emphasise on application of what written on the charter and not depend on the theoretical way to address the charter.

An analysis of the appropriation vote reveals that volunteer satisfaction scores averaged between five and six on a ten-point scale. While these scores exhibited some variation across different communities, feedback specifically from the Arabic community indicates a need for further charter refinement.

Feedback on Translation and Interpretation

Regarding the Arabic Community:

Positive Developments: We observed a significant improvement in translation quality for the Arabic community. Satisfaction scores have risen to a range of 8-9 out of 10, indicating a positive reception.

Volunteer Feedback: While the overall translation appears satisfactory, there are instances where the phrasing within certain sentences could be improved for clarity. These ambiguities may lead to misinterpretations or render the meaning entirely incomprehensible.

To address this, the Charter would benefit from revisions to enhance the clarity of specific sentences. Here are some examples:

• To allow for an open review process of the individual Wikimedia project, Wikimedia communities are responsible for providing truthful and honest information about the project’s state of governance.

Wikimedia Movement Bodies

There was feedback for needing more details and practical clarifications regarding the relationship between the Global Council and existing Movement bodies such as the Board of Trustees and the Affiliations Committee.

Some members in the community see that although it is important to include specific skills which can not be included except by appointment, it is unfair also to equalise between the work of the elected and selected persons and the appointed ones on the other side. Furthermore, some members see lack of clarifications about the stipend to the volunteer and others see that maybe there are token gifts or an in-person group meeting for the volunteers.

Amendment

Suggestions and Recommendations

Needs more clarification with roles like when mentioning UG, then mentioning Individuals, does that mean the same people could have multi-votes if they have different roles? Needs more easiness to be applicable. For WMF, the Arabic community is not really engaged in MC, and the ratification, so, from different views, there were suggestions to encourage and enhance community engagement in Wikimedia’s world.

Ratification

For the ratification, We asked the community about their suggestions to encourage the Arabic community to be active on the ratification process, and there was an agreement on the importance of increasing the awareness of the Wikimedia Movement as a whole even in the education of mentor-mentee programs while the volunteers passing their first steps on Wikimedia projects. And for now, they suggest encouraging the community by talking to them emotionally to enlarge their roles and responsibilities in these decisions and of course reaching them on different on-wiki and off-wiki platforms.

Glossary

There is a need for increased outreach activities and promotional efforts to inform volunteers about the movement, the charter, and other initiatives. Members in the community observe that many volunteers are unaware of these aspects, and their knowledge of Wikimedia groups or activities in the region is limited.

Supplementary documents

There is a need to include most of the supplementary documents on the ratification, especially documents of the Global council and amendment. Others see that the documents related to the hubs need a separate phase of ratification.

Miscellaneous feedback

As an overall feedback on the charter, we asked the Arabic community about if they found some points missing in the charter that must have been included and some of the opinions were that they felt that the charter focuses on the product more than the human beings who are the core of the Wikimedia Movement.