I do agree that it should be great to have a transparent way to elect the jury, but people, let's at least take the word or the people who commented here. The ones who come here and said "I do work for a wikimedia org, but I'm in the jury as a volunteer". Why do not believe in then? Most of then (the ones I know about) are long standing volunteers so it IS possible that was because of that they were chosen. If the criteria were open would be better and we wouldnt have that questions, yes. But let's try to keep civil with the people who DID volunteer to be members of the jury.

_____ *​Béria L​. de Rodríguez*

*Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. Ajude-nos a construir esse sonho.*

2014-10-10 7:48 GMT-03:00 Fæ faewik@gmail.com:

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jury was elected and by who", is that the Wikimania jury is not elected, it was selected by a WMF employee against unpublished and presumably undefined criteria.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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