Next 25/A proposal to frame Next 25

Next25: building a path to change in public

Status: Draft proposal

Proposed duration: Six months, subject to monthly public review

Statement: Next25 is a six-month public experiment to help the Wikimedia Movement build consent for change and turn it into action, beginning by using that same process to collectively define how Next25 itself should work.

tl;dr: to be able to address our challenge we need to build a lasting consent creation engine, Next25 could be the endeavor to build that. If successful the initiative may stop to be to let the result process continue autonomously.

Guiding principles :

Build by doing: We develop the process by applying it to real questions, including Next25 itself.
Make disagreement useful: Objections should clarify risks, improve proposals, and help create alternatives.
Move through experiments: When enough consent exists, do the best to make it become a credible next step.
Share power and learning: Work in public, relinquish ownership, and make the process easily adoptable by anyone.

Summary

The chronic decline of Wikimedia readership is becoming increasingly severe, editorship remains declining. These trends cannot be considered episodic drops, but a clear decline. At this rate, they will fundamentally alter fundraising, contributor recruitment, partnerships, and our own environment. And in the end, it will, at best, limit our ability to fulfill Wikimedia’s mission. At worse, makes us irrelevant.

At the same time, the Wikimedia Movement has been unable to engage in major collective strategy and governance conversations following the Movement Charter process.

The Movement now needs to do several difficult things at once:

respond to immediate challenges;
experiment faster;
discuss long-term strategic choices;
include communities across languages and regions;
build and support partnerships with aligned actors;
rebuild trust through practical cooperation;
avoid creating another centralized governance process.

Next25 goal is to help the Wikimedia Movement build consent for change in public, then turn those consents into experiments and action.

Next25 would not make decisions for the Movement, but foster the space, processes and tools to make it possible.

It would help communities, affiliates, the Wikimedia Foundation, funders, and other existing bodies understand:

where agreement exists;
where material objections remain;
what alternatives are available;
what can be tested now;
what resources are required;
what is the portfolio of imapctful actions to be taken (by various actors)
who holds the authority to decide what happens next.

The first consent process

Next25 will build its process by practicing it. Its first consent process will be used to define how Next25 itself should work.

The initial process described below is therefore a starting point. It will be tested, reviewed and improved through use.

What consent means

Consent does not mean unanimity.

It means that material objections have been heard and addressed sufficiently for a responsible next step to become possible.

Silence or absence will not be treated as consent. Objections will not automatically become vetoes. Formal decisions will remain with the communities, organizations or bodies that hold the relevant authority.

Frame the question

Through open discussions, work and debate, the goal is to identify statement that feel like they may have consent.

Each process will begin with a clearly framed question or proposal describing:

the issue being addressed;
why it matters;
what is inside and outside its scope;
who may be affected;
who has the authority to act;
what outcome or experiment could follow.

Participants will be able to challenge and improve the framing before being asked to take a position.

Gather evidence and affected perspectives

The process will bring together available evidence, relevant experience and the perspectives of people who may be affected.

Missing information, uncertainties and groups that are not yet represented should be made visible rather than concealed.

Discussions may take place across different spaces and formats, but Meta-Wiki will remain the canonical public record.

Develop statements and alternatives

Through open discussion and debate, participants will develop statements that may attract workable consent. The objective is not to defend an initial proposal, but to improve it through amendments, mitigations and alternative proposals.

Make support, objections and alternatives visible

For each statement or proposal, participants will be invited to respond:

I support this.
I can live with this.
I cannot live with this because…
I need more information before taking a position.

Participants may also propose an amendment, mitigation or alternative, regardless of the position they select.

Willingness to contribute will be recorded separately from agreement with the proposal.

The purpose is not to reduce a complex discussion to a vote. It is to make clear:

where support and acceptance exist;
which concerns are material;
which concerns can be mitigated;
which alternatives deserve consideration;
what information is still missing;
who is willing to contribute;
whether a bounded experiment is possible.

Identifying and highlighting disagreement is core to consent building.

Address material objections

A material objection should identify a concrete concern, such as:

harm or exclusion;
conflict with policy or existing responsibilities;
technical, financial or legal risk;
insufficient evidence;
an irreversible commitment;
disproportionate impact on an affected community.

Participants should be encouraged to propose mitigations or alternatives, but they will not be required to solve a problem before being allowed to identify it.

The weight of an objection should take into account both the seriousness of the concern and who would bear its consequences using the multiple level of expressing consent and dissent.

Framing the consent

When a statement reaches sufficient consent, it will be documented as a public “consent card”. The card is not intended to reduce the discussion to a single sentence. It records both the agreement reached and the context, conditions and unresolved concerns that give it meaning. Each consent card should include:

the agreed statement;
the question or problem it addresses;
the scope of the consent and what remains outside it;
the main evidence and perspectives considered;
the level and distribution of support;
the material objections raised;
the amendments, mitigations and alternatives considered;
how the statement changed during the process;
any unresolved concerns or uncertainties;
what actions or experiments the consent could support;
which communities, organizations or bodies have the authority to act;
links to the underlying discussions and documentation;
the date of the consent and when it should be reviewed;
examples / ideas of how that consent could turn into actions.

The card should clearly distinguish between broad support, conditional acceptance and unresolved dissent. It must not imply that people or groups who did not participate gave their consent.

Its purpose is to make the outcome understandable and reusable without separating it from the discussion that produced it. Anyone reading the card should be able to understand not only what was agreed, but also why, under which conditions, and with which limits.

Learn and improve the process

Each process will conclude with a public account of:

what changed during the discussion;
how objections and amendments affected the outcome;
what could or could not move forward;
what was learned;
what should change in the next iteration of the process.

What would increase odds of success

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees endorsement of a six-month experimentation for Next25;
some staff time support for documentation, translation and organizing;
Stakeholders, including Foundation BoT, participation in monthly public reviews of the process;

Each month, the stakeholders should use the consent system to express their positions regarding the process itself.

What Next25 is

Next25 is an open and multilingual space for building consent around difficult Movement questions. It will:

frame questions and choices clearly;
bring together evidence, experience and affected perspectives;
make support, objections, amendments and alternatives visible;
help turn sufficient consent into bounded experiments through existing Movement structures;
document the process and its results so others can learn from and reuse it.

Next25, as a process, should provide facilitation, documentation and coordination. It will not decide substantive outcomes.

What the experiment will test

During six months, Next25 will test whether the process can:

make disagreement and material objections clearer;
help participants develop amendments and workable alternatives;
broaden participation beyond the initial group;
move at least one credible proposal toward a bounded experiment;
produce methods and documentation that others can reuse;
identify what prevents consent or action when progress is not possible.

At the end of the experiment, Next25 will publish its results and recommend whether the work should stop, transfer elsewhere, continue in a limited form or receive a new mandate.

What Next25 is not

Next25 is not:

a governing body;
a representative council;
another Movement Charter process;
a grant program;
a new permanent institution;
a replacement for communities, affiliates, committees, the Foundation, or its Board;
a body authorized to speak for the Wikimedia Movement;
a mechanism for declaring consent by authority;
a vehicle for former trustees or its founders to regain institutional control.

Next25 would not:

make binding decisions;
direct Wikimedia Foundation staff;
allocate grants;
control budgets;
impose recommendations;
decide which strategic position is correct;
continue automatically after six months.

Technology support

For such initiatives to be effective it needs to be inclusive of all our movement communities. High output chat discussions are the starting point but they do not meet the constraints of everyone. English is not the native tongue of most our movement, parents can’t spend hours reading hundreds of messages every day, some people like the calmness of summaries, and other thrive is the chaos of high speed instant discussions.

To be able to build a space that allow to build consent, we need the capacity to aggregate, summarize, nurture eveyone’s output. This is not work that can be efficiently done by volunteers.

Use of AI

With the deployment of a Qwen Model in Wikimedia Infrastructure, AI will be used to help craft summaries of discussion and allow everyone to stay up to date.

Data collection and analysis will be done using user:NellieBly Bot

Public oversight

The purpose of the review would be to maintain urgency, public scrutiny, and institutional confidence.

Before each review, Next25 would publish:

progress against the mandate;
participation and inclusion data;
public feedback received;
changes made to the process;
unresolved procedural concerns;
use of staff and other resources;
conflicts of interest;
risks;
planned work for the following month.

Each review would:

be open to the public;
by design wiki first, any online meeting will have to be documented;
conclude with a decision to continue, continue with conditions, pause, or stop.

Meeting materials, recordings, minutes, corrective actions, and unresolved concerns must be published on Meta-Wiki.

Initial outputs

During the next six months, Next25 would aim to produce:

test a public process for framing disagreement, developing alternatives, and growing workable consent;
apply it to issues chosen through the process, without setting a fixed number in advance;
demonstrate measurable movement in at least one significant area of disagreement;
make visible how objections, amendments, and counterproposals changed the outcome;
identify where consent cannot yet grow and why;
vet practical initiatives through the innovation marketplace;
move credible initiatives toward delivery and launch bounded experiments where appropriate;
publish reusable methods and evidence about what helps or blocks consent;
recommend whether the work should stop, transfer, continue, or expand.

Origin is not ownership

The group that inititated Next25 must not retain long term ownership. They should make it a goal to create space for new participants, perspectives, and forms of leadership.

The clearest sign of success would be that the Movement no longer needs Next25 in its original form because its methods, processes, capacities and results have been absorbed elsewhere and become the new normal.