Last weekend the board of the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind the free onlince encyclopedia Wikipedia, met in Berlin to decide on recommendations for restructuring (see “Wikimedia Governance: Showdown on the Board” and “Redrawing the Borders of Wikimedia Governance“). Three important things happened at and around the board meeting.

First, Wikimedia executive director Sue Gardner’s recommendation to centralize fundraising and funds dissemination was largely followed. Only four local Wikimedia chapter organizations – Germany, France, UK and Switzerland – will be allowed to process donations on their own when received via the main Wikimedia project pages such as Wikipedia language versions. A new funds dissemination committee (FDC) will decide on how the funds will be distributed and the whole process will be evaluated in 2015.

Second and probably more importantly, the Wikimedia foundation increases the diversity of potential models of affiliation, previously discussed under the label “movement roles”:

  • Movement Partners: Like-minded organizations that actively support the Wikimedia movement’s work. They are listed publicly and granted limited use of the marks for publicity indicating their support of and collaboration with Wikimedia.
  • National or Sub-national Chapters: Incorporated independent non-profits representing the Wikimedia movement and supporting movement work globally, focused within a geography. Chapters or national/sub-national organizations use a name clearly linking them to Wikimedia and are granted use of Wikimedia trademarks for their work, publicity, and fundraising.
  • Thematic Organizations: Incorporated independent non-profits representing the Wikimedia movement and supporting work focused on a specific theme, topic, subject or issue within or across countries and regions. Thematic or focused organizations use a name clearly linking them to Wikimedia and are granted use of Wikimedia trademarks for their work, publicity and fundraising.
  • User Groups: Open membership groups with an established contact person and history of projects, designed to be easy to form. User groups may or may not choose to incorporate and are granted limited use of the Wikimedia marks for publicity related to events and projects.

Third, the several Wikimedia chapters publicly signed the Berlin Agreement to formally initiate the formation of a Chapter Association. Not without a sense for pathos, the founding chapter representatives put online a scan of the founding document (see Figure). As described earlier on this blog, the Chapter Association is obviously created by the formally independent Wikimedia chapters as a counterweight to the focal Wikimedia Foundation.

It will be interesting to see, how this new set of organizational bodies will work in praxis – and whether the greater diversity of potential Wikimedia affiliate models will help to solve the most pressing problem of the flagship Wikipedia project: increase editor diversity.

(leonhard)