Based on a prompt from Itzik, I checked the archives of wikimania-l
(which I was not subscribed to). There is a message from Stuart Prior
there with a very brief summary of background of jury members which I
was unaware of and it may have been intended as a response to my
question. Refer to
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimania-l/2014-October/006418.html>.

For those that do subscribe to wikimania-l, please keep in mind that
most readers of wikimedia-l do not see your responses unless you post
here, and that posts from non-subscribers to wikimania-l get bounced.

Thanks,
Fae

On 10 October 2014 11:48, Fæ <faewik@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 not elected, it was selected by a WMF employee against unpublished and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

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