Risker, I don't think it's necessary for you to accuse Fae of bad faith from
anything he wrote that you quoted. Your paraphrase of him "very clearly implying that
there is something untoward about selecting the group tasked to make the recommendation
based on both volunteer and professional experience" is completely different from his
statement "a WMF employee make community decisions for us (such as appointing the
Jury that has our full authority for deciding where Wikimania will be held."
All below.
Trillium Corsage
Fae, I'm sorry, but I'm seeing a lot of bad
faith in your messaging here.
Everyone who is part of the jury is a longtime volunteer, with the
exception of the WMF staffer who has been intensively working on Wikimanias
for the last two years so has a great deal of experience with the actual
management of the Wikimania conference. Several of the jurors have very
deep experience in handling conferences, by dint of their real-world
experiences, which in some cases include holding roles on chapter staff. I
am having a really hard time understanding why you are very clearly
implying that there is something untoward about selecting the group tasked
to make the recommendation based on both volunteer and professional
experience. And yes, I think selecting a group that actually has these
attributes is considerably better than selecting a group with no particular
criteria, or what appeared to be the previous criteria of "has been to lots
of Wikimanias before". The latter has not been a particularly useful
criterion, since attending conferences does not give insight to
the managing of a conference.
People are appointed to other committees and groups based on factors that
are external to their attendance at certain conferences or their edit count
all the time. There is a need to have accountants on the Audit committee.
There is a need to have people experienced with checkuser on the Ombud
committee. The selection of the Wikimania jury based on actual skill and
experience instead of popularity or number of conferences attended is a
positive sign of a maturing organization recognizing the value of the
conference. It's never been an elected position, and there's no basis in
anything that anyone has said on this list that would indicate that making
it an elected position would lead to a somehow better process for
identifying the next Wikimania location.
Risker/Anne
On 10 October 2014 10:44, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 10 October 2014 14:58, Lodewijk
<lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org> wrote:
If you're interested in discussing the future
of Wikimania, perhaps it
makes sense to do that on the dedicated list? Just a wild thought.
Thanks for the thought. Itzik's general question was posted to
Wikimedia-l, so answering it here makes sense. No doubt most readers
of wikimedia-l are like myself and do not normally follow wikimania-l.
Governance and transparency issues for Wikimania are of more general
interest than a readership of "Wikimania attendees, presenters, and
fans", particularly when as a community of volunteers we have chosen
to let a WMF employee make community decisions for us (such as
appointing the Jury that has our full authority for deciding where
Wikimania will be held, along with the political and financial
implications of support contracts and investing significant money in a
chosen country).
Wikimania has become a big business with significant press attention
and associated significant risks. It benefits from having many
volunteers in our movement asking questions and ensuring that the main
body of unpaid volunteers are happy that it is directed by volunteers
and focused on our community, rather than the interests of partners,
other commerical rationales or indeed the interests of the WMF which
is not exactly the same as the interests of the wider Wikimedia
community/beneficiaries.
As an unpaid volunteer at Wikimania in London, I was very interested
in talking to other unpaid volunteers, some of whom were taking part
because they wanted to gain experience in event management for their
CVs but with no prior understanding of what Wikimania projects
actually were. I think that's okay, we welcome this sort of support,
but how these varied interests should be managed to meet our shared
open knowledge ethics and values is something to continue to ponder as
our movement continues to grow, particularly if measured by how many
tens of millions of dollars are donated to us each year -- which seems
to be the critical measure of success used by the WMF and the
international press.
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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