“We love our charter, Oh Lord, we love our charter...”

[Randy from Boise]

The WMF Kumbaya Klub has a new "Movement Charter" to shove down the community's throat to go with their brand-spankin'-new Code of Conduct. Chief author is an account named RamzyM (WMF), with a first edit May 18, 2023.

link

The Wikimedia Movement Charter (“the Charter”) states the values, rights, relationships, and mutual responsibilities of all participants in the shared mission of this movement. The Charter applies to all individual and institutional participants, movement entities, projects, and online and offline spaces officially associated with the Wikimedia Movement.

By defining the Wikimedia Movement and its values, the Charter aims to make it easier for movement stakeholders to collaborate with each other. This will help:

• provide a sense of belonging,
• produce shared strategy for growth, expansion, and future possibilities to secure continued creation and availability of free knowledge,
• safeguard donor rights, and financial interests of the movement,
• guide decision-making, and reduce conflict between movement stakeholders.

Unlike the immutable CoC, the Movement Charter is subject to amendment via a specified process: link

I see a "Global Council" with its "Global Council Assembly" and "Global Council Board" added to the careerists' junket docket. I'm gonna stop reading now, I need to go barf.

Discuss.

t

[Vigilant]

Only one sentence in this minifesto is relevant.

• safeguard donor rights, and financial interests of the movement,

[Randy from Boise]

I'm not exactly sure how "donor rights" are being protected. I don't doubt that there's some angle I am missing.

It seems to me that this is an attempt to create an elected House of Lords, with about as much power. Visions of Dennis the Peasant with his elaborate system of governance for the anarcho-syndicalist commune coordinating the mucking of filth jump to mind.

This is about expanding the number of plane tickets to seminars for self-important huffing and puffing by diverse and representative delegates from around the world, quite surely.

t

[Midsize Jake]

I'm not exactly sure how "donor rights" are being protected. I don't doubt that there's some angle I am missing.

What's interesting to me is that making it easier for "stakeholders" to collaborate with each other will actually jeopardize "donor rights" rather than safeguard them. Presumably, the "rights" they're referring to consist mainly of each donor's right to anonymity, i.e., the right to never be mentioned (or thanked) by name in any Wikimedia publication. After all, the last thing the WMF wants is for anyone to get the idea that donating money to them could give the donor the "rights" to have some sort of influence over their actions and policies, whether or not it actually does give them such rights. So why would they want people in the "movement" to "collaborate" on anything related to that?

[rnu]

It always irritates me when large organizations try to brand themselves as "a movement", or as we would say in Germany "eine Bewegung".

[lonza leggiera]

It always irritates me when large organizations try to brand themselves as "a movement", or as we would say in Germany "eine Bewegung".

It always reminds me of the riddle "What was the brown object Beethoven left behind on his piano stool?" (Ans: His last movement.)

[Kraken]

Could donor rights be an expectation that now the community has ratified the movement strategy and its deliverables, the Foundation is empowered to overide the volunteers where they might try to stop things actually being delivered? Obviously this didn't matter when people were giving the price of a cup of coffee and Wikipedia had fewer and vaguer objectives.

[Randy from Boise]

It always irritates me when large organizations try to brand themselves as "a movement", or as we would say in Germany "eine Bewegung".

It always reminds me of the riddle "What was the brown object Beethoven left behind on his piano stool?" (Ans: His last movement.)

Whydoya think they call it a "stool," anyway?

t