The conclusion in response to Itzik's original question "how the
current jury was elected and by who", is that the Wikimania jury is
not elected, it was selected by a WMF employee against unpublished and
presumably undefined criteria. Sadly, there are no plans or commitment
by the WMF to change or improve this process to make it transparent or
volunteer-centric.

We also know that at least 5 out of 7 members of the jury have been
employees. It may be more, but there has been no reply to this
question.

It is disturbing that asking questions of governance is being parodied
as referring to jury members as "second class citizens". Nobody apart
from a member of the jury has made such a ridiculous statement.

Being an employee is not something that should be hidden or kept
secret. The community should be free to ask questions about the
balance of volunteers in an important jury with responsibility for how
several hundred thousand dollars of donated funds gets spent in order
to ensure a healthy balance of viewpoints. Having basic governance
questions marginalized and parodied by the jury is a disappointing
demonstration of how transparency and accountability will be handled
for future Wikimania events.

It is obvious that improvement is needed. It would be great to see
commitment to change, rather than just defence of the status quo.

Fae

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>