Task force/Movement Roles

The task force process is completed. Some task forces may be reconstituted to discuss incomplete issues. Please discuss on the Village Pump.

Relevant Wikimedia-pedia Articles

Participants should be sure they're familiar with the relevant background material. They should also work to identify gaps and collect and summarize more information as it becomes available.

• Movement roles

Recommendations

Recommendations should be based upon Template:Recommendations. The following are stub pages for this task force's recommendations:

• Task force/Recommendations/Movement roles 1
  
• Task force/Recommendations/Movement roles 2
  
• Task force/Recommendations/Movement roles 3
  

Members

• User:Lyzzy
• User:Sue Gardner
• User:JimboWales
• Arne Klempert
• Pharos

This task force is supported by Philippe Beaudette and Tyler Thornton from Bridgespan.

The Movement Roles Task Force is one of the Task Forces to work on ESP 5 Optimize Wikimedia's operations.

Mandate

Within the Wikimedia community, there are currently three major groups working to advance the vision: individual volunteers, Wikimedia Chapters, and the Wikimedia Foundation. Much of the work on Wikimedia projects is done by self-organizing volunteers, however, the chapters and Wikimedia Foundation were established to fill specific needs that the volunteers were not capable or focused on addressing. However, roles and inter-relationships between these groups and among these groups is not always clear leading to both overlap and gaps. The goal of this task force is to determine how the different entities within the Wikimedia movement today - volunteers, chapters, and the Foundation - should work together to advance the mission. It will also identify whether there are additional structures that are needed to support the movement. The task force should consider roles across the following areas:

• Wikimedia movement strategy
• Governance and legal
• Brand management, marketing and communications
• Community growth and health
• Project development and management
• Financial sustainability: cost alignment, fundraising, revenue generation
• Alliance and partnerships for expanding reach, increasing content and content quality, technology, and advocacy
• Technology infrastructure maintenance and development
• Technology innovation
• Advocacy

The task force should develop answers to these questions to help guide their work:

1. What roles are volunteers best positioned to play within the movement and what support do they need from the Foundation, Chapters, or other structures within the movement in order to do so?
2. What are current and future roles and expectations of Chapters? How might roles vary in different country contexts? What policies would support/enhance Chapter roles?
3. What roles should the Foundation continue to play in supporting the movement? What roles should it start playing? What roles should it stop playing?
4. What costs should each group - chapters and the Foundation - be responsible for covering?
5. What additional structures could be developed to connect volunteers to the movement and what would it take to develop these structures?