Article: 4. Governance Model

Created: Jun 11, 2008
Updated: Jul 24, 2008
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4. Governance Model

Return to Working Plan for Taking WiserEarth in Multiple Languages

Instruction: Discuss in the comment section and summarize here. Upon saving edits, copy the summary to the appropriate section of the main page linked above. This ensure that the main document contains the most updated info.

We need to define here the governance model for each international site

4.1 Community Building

Partner org(s) who sponsor the project locally

Admins - minimum number at start (5?)

Editor community - minimum number at start (20?)

Representation from all sectors - especially social, conservation, indigenous

Outreach through associations and professional groups

4.2 Commitee creation

What is this?

4.3 Content Commitee (to monitor content)

Start small: i.e., culture, ecology, economy

Aren't these editors?

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bowo about 1 year ago

Note: Have just copied JP's edits in the main document here.

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angusparker about 1 year ago

@ Roger: Like you points. Especially 7. From what I understand it's technically feasible to do what you are suggesting. The key is keeping the user interface simple enough to make it workable from the user perspective. We also have language cues based on the language setting of the browser - so it doesn't all have to be based on a user profile setting.

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RogerEaton about 1 year ago

I agree with Bowo that having all the languages handled under one roof rather than on separate sites is strategic. If the languages are separated onto different sites, then wisdom cannot be shared across language divides.

How it would look:

1) Each participant will tell us a) what languages they are fluent in and b) what is their preferred language for reading, listening and separately for writing and speaking.

2) For as many languages as possible, starting with the more widespread languages, there would be a WiserEarth presentation layer in that language, with all help, buttons, and instructions etc for each language.

3) Whatever a participant writes would be presumed to be in the preferred language for that participant, including comments where the item is in another language. This means that the same page has to support multiple languages. However there would be a way for participants to indicate that for this page, they want to write in a different language.

4) There would always be an option for the author to provide one or more translations of an item.

5) There would be facilities for translation teams to provide translations.

6) There would be automatic translation available.

7) The translation would be displayed instead of the original item according to the preferences of the reader. The type of translation (by author, by team or automatic) would be clear and a button would be available to see the item in the original or in another language.

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bowo about 1 year ago

Here are some thoughts on the advantages of having a single international site (from What does it mean to Internationalize?):

Camilla asked: does the community set up different sites for each country, or region?

For true connectivity and collaboration, I think it would be better if WE in different languages be hosted in a single www.wiserearth.org site. This would have the advantage of:

minimizing technical development cost, simplifying the process, and maintaining consistency of the user interface and experience across different language versions of WE.
some people are multilingual already and having content and people of all languages in a site would simplify the process of connecting content, and facilitating collaboration people/orgs/groups. WE of course need to determine English as the working language. Cross-language communication would be carried out via English (perhaps with the help of volunteer interpreters/translators).
funding would I guess be concentrated and minimized, as there will only be one site to maintain. This does not mean that data center should only reside in one place (the US currently), mirror sites can be set up in Europe or Asia as Peggy hinted to make access from regions far from the US faster.
not sure how the governance model will look like, but the need for country representatives forming the core governance body will be there. A more democratic and powerful General Assembly minus the Security Council (modeled after the UN) perhaps?

Other steps that seems necessary to accommodate diversity:

Working groups for each language/country should be created to lead the effort in community building, outreach, content building, translation effort and other needed efforts. Identified leaders for each working group should be made of the core WiserEarth governance body.
Customization should be made possible for the homepage and the hub pages (local, national and regional. Will this be implemented sometime in the future?)
Don't think the areas of focus should be different between languages/countries, as they are conceptualized from the beginning as the common thread running through NGOs around the world. They need to be more comprehensive for sure and the translation need to be understandable to each language community.
Specific issues relevant to each language/country can still be facilitated by the creation of groups.
Powerful filters to show only content and people in each language should be developed (think Google's search in "the web" or "only from the [country name]).

These are only the pluses, are there minuses of this approach? Would love to hear them for further discussions.

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bowo about 1 year ago

Commenting on revision #4:

It seems that the assumption is that there will be one separate site for each language/country site (each with its own installation of WiserPlatform software and database system) and thus, each will have a governance structure of its own (partners, admins, code-developers, editors, representatives, etc.).

Will this be the best approach to achieve true internationalization? Wouldn't we be replicating the nation states structure of the real world with this approach? Shouldn't we be approaching a more egalitarion/democratic version of United Nations kind-of-governance instead? Or perhaps a United Peoples kind-of-governance?
What are the best practices out there for international community sites? (Wikipedia, Encyclopedia of Earth, etc.)?
I do think that a supporting structure for each languange/nation should be cultivated. The question is, do we grow such structure behind a language or a country? or a mix of both where languages are used across countries?
It needs to be noted that to effectively monitor, manage and moderate content in a language, we'll certainly need editors and admins who are fluent in that language.

Thus, I think we should try to explore first what the advantages and disadvantages are of having a single international site vs. multiple national/language sites.

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4. Governance Model

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