2019:Partnerships

Partnerships Space

Welcome to the landing page for the Partnerships Space at Wikimania 2019 in Stockholm!

Space Leaders for this space are: Nicola Zeuner & Alek Tarkowski (Centrum Cyfrowe)

Short description

Our aim for this space is to learn from existing partnerships, strengthen them, and design future partnerships. We want to work on partnerships in partnership - this space will be collectively created with Wikimedia partner organizations and movements.

(1) explore the opportunities of new partnerships with movements and organizations working in areas of Sustainable Development (whether or not they subscribe to the SDG framework). We want to explore how the Wikimedia movement and the Wikimedia projects can use their potential to support and collaborate with NGOs and people working to build joint knowledge about SDG-related issues and to achieve the SDGs themselves.

(2) develop the vision of stronger "Big Open" partnerships: a shared strategy for free knowledge / open movement organisations that would allow us to achieve greater collective impact in the face of an increasingly commercialised and morally compromised internet. We will look at changing approaches to open - the core value behind our activities, and how it can be filled with new meaning.

Background

Working together as partners within our movement and outside of it is key to achieving the Wikimedia vision. Partnerships have been defined as one of core structural themes in the Wikimedia 2030 Strategy Process and a dedicated Partnerships Working Group is currently working on this issue (you can review the Scoping Document on Partnerships, which is an effect of this first phase of this group's work). The outcomes of our theme will support the work of this Working Group.

The importance of partnerships is also acknowledged in the SDG process, in which a dedicated goal has been defined to support Partnerships for the SDG Process. We see this goal as directly related to the theme of partnerships within the Wikimedia Movement.

Topics

Topics recommended by space leaders

We will build our two-day program to combine learning from existing partnerships with discussions about new partnerships, and new approaches to partnership. In particular, we want to understand how the SDG framework can be used to build partnerships for the Wikimedia Movement. We are also keen to explore how a partnerships framework can be designed to support future partnerships, in a long-term perspective.

We are in particular interested in following sessions and topics:

Experiences and lessons learned from existing partnerships in the Wikimedia Movement and the larger knowledge ecosystem
Examples of partnerships from other organisations, in particular those from the free knowledge / open movement
Approaches to using Sustainable Development Goals as the basis for developing partnerships
Training sessions and peer-exchanges on partnerships
"Big Open" Movement and ways to build it - from strategic vision to practical examples
Examples for existing or ideas for new partnerships (Open Street Maps, Open Data for SDGs, Wikipedia/Wikidata and First Response, Wikidata / Wikibase and human rights)

We are in particular interested in sessions that organized in cooperation with partners from outside of the Wikimedia movement. Please invite your partners to Wikimania!

Topics the community wants

Please add topics as you see fit!

Discussion

Questions? Comments? Write them here!

How to capitalize on the growing awareness that elite-controlled social media threaten democracy and civilization?

General background:

A growing body of research has documented the problems with "antisocial media".^[1]
Major philanthropies have called for proposals on how to counter "the disinformation/propaganda problem".^[2]
I believe that leading youth activist groups could be convinced to switch to a social media platform that was designed to build bridges over the walls created by mainstream media, including Facebook and other commercial media.
Erica Chenoweth says that any change effort that gets the support of over 3.5 percent of the population is virtually certain of success.^[3]
The "threats to civilization" mentioned in the title to this discussion was inspired by Ellsberg (2017) The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (Q63862699), which led me to write Wikiversity:Time to the extinction of civilization, in which I cite the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge in England for an estimate of 21 percent of a nuclear war in the next 40 years, with the most likely outcome of such a war being a w:nuclear winter generating a world-wide famine lasting over 5 years during which 98 percent of humanity would starve to death if they did not die of something else sooner.

Conclusions:

I believe the Wikimedia Foundation is ideally placed counter the threat of nuclear Armageddon and the lesser threats to democracy by developing social media that activist groups like w:Extinction Rebellion and the w:Sunrise Movement will use to build a movement that goes far beyond the 3.5 percent that Chenoweth says is needed. Other groups like the w:International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons would likely follow if groups like w:Extinction Rebellion find success with some noncommercial meta:WikiSocial.
Major philanthropies like the w:Hewlett Foundation and the w:Omidyar Network have called for proposals to counter the threats posed by the increasing Balkanization and exploitation of the international body politic to benefit populist, xenophobic leaders.
I'm willing to write grant proposals and approach major philanthropists on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation if the Foundation would support such efforts. I believe if we did that, it could make a major contribution to increasing the prospects for peace and prosperity for all of humanity, consistent with the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation and the goal of this "Partnership" space.

Questions:

What can I do between now and June 9 and after to maximize the chances for success of an effort like just described?

Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 04:07, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Background:

I've posted several discussions related to this under Wikiversity:Category:Freedom and abundance.

In particular, two years ago I posted a discussion of Wikiversity:Everyone's favorite news site, which included suggestions regarding meta:WikiSocial. I volunteered to talk about this at Wikimania 2017 but was too late and not sufficiently well focused on the themes for that conference. I gave a related lightning talk at Wikimania 2018.

I've been trying to follow the planning for Wikimania 2019 without devoting a lot of time to it and only recently found an invitation to propose activities for "spaces". However, I've also had great difficulties understanding what the organizing committee was requesting.

On 2019-06-02 I posted: Inviting major philanthropies to fund WikiSocial and social movement groups to drive increased usage. I've not seen a response to that so far.
Yesterday, 2019-06-05 I asked User:Saitfevrier about a proposal she had made early this year for a space on "Social Activism and Wikipedia". See: Wikisocial to reduce the risk of nuclear Armageddon. She kindly replied that her proposal was rejected.

I'm confused about what spaces were accepted, how to find out, and how to conceptualize a conference activity that the conference organizers would like and that would actually produce useful follow-on after the conference.

Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 04:07, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

↑ E.g., Siva Vaidhyanathan (12 June 2018), Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-084118-8, Wikidata Q56027099. I've seen reports of more recent work that seems similar, but I haven't checked kept notes on that work.
↑ Anmitra Deb; Stacy Donohue; Tom Glaisyer (1 October 2017), Is Social Media a Threat to Democracy?, Omidyar Group, Wikidata Q55674332; Kelly Born; Nell Edgington (2 November 2017), Analysis of philanthropic opportunities to mitigate the disinformation/propaganda problem, Hewlett Foundation, Wikidata Q55673421.
↑ This is one of the results of her work with Maria Stephan, who identified all the major violent and nonviolent governmental change efforts of the twentieth century, over 200 violent revolutions and over 100 nonviolent campaigns. Every campaign in their data base that got the support of over 3.5 percent of the population was successful. All of those were nonviolent. See "My Talk at TEDxBoulder: Civil Resistance and the 3.5% Rule" (Q62223350).

[1] E.g., Siva Vaidhyanathan (12 June 2018), Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-084118-8, Wikidata Q56027099. I've seen reports of more recent work that seems similar, but I haven't checked kept notes on that work.

[2] Anmitra Deb; Stacy Donohue; Tom Glaisyer (1 October 2017), Is Social Media a Threat to Democracy?, Omidyar Group, Wikidata Q55674332; Kelly Born; Nell Edgington (2 November 2017), Analysis of philanthropic opportunities to mitigate the disinformation/propaganda problem, Hewlett Foundation, Wikidata Q55673421.

[3] This is one of the results of her work with Maria Stephan, who identified all the major violent and nonviolent governmental change efforts of the twentieth century, over 200 violent revolutions and over 100 nonviolent campaigns. Every campaign in their data base that got the support of over 3.5 percent of the population was successful. All of those were nonviolent. See "My Talk at TEDxBoulder: Civil Resistance and the 3.5% Rule" (Q62223350).

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