Hi Pine,

We are actively following the case of Cascadia Wikimedians to see whether we can facilitate the signing of the user group agreement between the user group and WMFLegal (the group's recognition has been approved by AffCom in September -- apologies in any delays you have experienced up to that point). 

Also, thank you for your helpful suggestions in general.
Without repeating Lodewijk's letter, I feel it important to point out that despite a few hiccups, and a higher than usual turnover in volunteers, AffCom has been very active this year in seeking and responding to feedback, communicating and improving our processes (including the launch of the liaison programme, a Twitter feed, simplified user group recognition). There are still ways to go, and the changing processes, services and expectations do bring new challenges, andoccassional mistakes as we have to relearn the way we do things, and adjust to an increasing/changing workload.

Please do e-mail the AffCom list directly to ask for an update, or to ping us with regard to your specific application. The high reply time you experience is an outlier, and there might be an easily to solve misunderstanding that could be cleared up through the regular channels.

Best regards,
Bence
(personal view)



On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 10:05 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Lodewijk,

Let me make a few points:

1. I appreciate that Affcom is working to make its outputs more timely, especially for user group decisions.

2. I hear you say that you are under-resourced with volunteers and staff support. I appreciate that serving on Affcom is probably one of the more thankless jobs in the Wikimedia movement, and I understand that there is a Wikimedia-wide shortage of volunteers, particularly volunteers who do their jobs skillfully, who avoid conflicts of interest, and who volunteer in less visible roles in order to keep the Wikimedia movement functioning.

3. I don't hear of a need for more staff support for Affcom from the most recent Grantmaking quarterly review [1], so I am not sure if and when this is going to happen. This may be a point that Asaf can address.

4. We in Cascadia Wikimedians (and I imagine other thematic organizations) have our own timelines that we need to deal with, and needing to wait indefinitely for Affcom and Legal to make decisions makes planning difficult on our end. Also, we are losing organizational momentum while we wait. Momentum is important for the creation of organizations, and possibly for their survival. It would be a disappointment to have groups such as ours lose volunteer interest and partnership opportunities because of delays such as those that we are experiencing.

5. Prior to this discussion on Wikimedia-l, I sent emails to the liaisons and/or Affcom and/or Legal that went unanswered. Regarding our most recent subjects of discussion, we did not even hear a simple "we'll get back to you by early next week" until taking this matter to Wikimedia-l and Geoff. In the meantime during the past few weeks, I have received multiple communications from Cascadians asking what is happening, and I can only tell them that we are still waiting for Affcom and WMF Legal.

6. From my perspective as a "client" of Affcom, I continue to believe that a 14-day timeline is reasonable for most decisions or for further substantive questions to be asked. There may need to be process tweaks in order to make that happen, for example Affcom members may be given fixed deadlines by which to vote in consensus processes. Perhaps this is a discussion that Affcom should have with Asaf once it has onboarded new members with fresh energy and ideas, and perhaps Affcom could ask Anna Stillwell for ideas as well. There are trade-offs to be made between the comprehensiveness of internal discussions and timely outcomes for those discussions, and from recent experience I would say that more weight should be given to the value of timely outcomes, in addition to more transparency and frequent communication.

7. I appreciate that you are giving attention to this matter and that Affcom is making efforts to improve the situation that will achieve benefits over the next few months. I hope that Affcom will provide updates to the community and affiliates.

Thank you,

Pine

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Grantmaking/September_2014








On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 2:55 AM, Lodewijk <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org> wrote:
Hi Pine,

I think nobody wants to say that questions should take longer to get
answered - we all would like your inquiries to be answered sooner rather
than later. To accomplish this, the Committee has made changes in its
workflow several times in the past year, to especially make user group
applications less time consuming. Previously, decisions on User Groups had
to be taken by a formal committee vote, after a period of consensus
building. Recently this process has been delegated mostly to the liaisons,
who have some liberty to decide on behalf of the Committee.

However, I also feel a need to mention that it is unreasonable to compare
two such very different committees and expect similar response times
because of it. While I am not familiar with how discussions in the
IEG-committee go, I can say that the AffCom often has ''in camera''
discussions, which are not visible to the outside world. We're working hard
to come to a good *Committee decision* rather than a simple up/down vote of
individuals. We need to combine our experiences and skills rather than make
a choice all for ourselves. Unfortunately we don't have frequent meetings,
so these discussions mostly drag on via email - something to improve.
Especially when a new type of application (or an application with a new
component) comes in, that requires some discussion among the Committee
members - this unfortunately takes time.

This combined with the fact that there is little staff support (something
being worked on to improve as well) and that the number of members has been
low for some time (selections currently ongoing), I can confidently say
that the situation can be expected to improve over the coming months even
further. Will that solve all problems, and get all response times as we
would like to see them? Probably not. But improvement would already be a
big win, I'd say.

A last, general word of advice: if you don't get a reply to your question a
week after your email, feel free to poke again. Please do it genty, but
feel free. No need to get agressive, angry or insulted because it takes
long. It might well be that your liaison is busy at work, or even that it
ended up in their spam filter. A friendly reminder goes a long way.

Best regards,

Lodewijk
(outgoing AffCom member, not speaking on behalf of anyone else)

2014-10-11 10:23 GMT+02:00 Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com>:

> Thank you for that information, Asaf, Kirill, and James.
>
> James: my point still stands that somehow at IEGCom we are able to respond
> substantively to almost 100% if inquiries within 7 days. It seems to me
> that if we can do this at IEGCom, then asking Legal and Affcom to commit to
> substantively responding to all inquiries within 14 days is reasonable.
> There may be an exceptional case from time to time, but explanations for
> delays and regular updates should still be forthcoming. Users generally
> shouldn't need to go to Geoff or Wikimedia-l to get progress, nor should
> there be multiple weeks of silence from Affcom and/or Legal, especially
> when updates have been requested during that time.
>
> I would like to ask that the communication and timeliness issues discussed
> in this thread be addressed thoroughly, and that the specific actions taken
> be made transparent.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Pine
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 4:04 PM, Asaf Bartov <abartov@wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
>> That's correct. And for completeness, I am the primary staff liaison to
>> AffCom, with Stephen LaPorte providing support on legal matters.
>>
>>    A.
>> On Oct 10, 2014 3:40 PM, "Kirill Lokshin" <kirill.lokshin@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 6:24 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Hi Kirill, my understanding is that Affcom functions under the Legal
>> >> department, much like the Individual Engagement Grants Committee
>> functions
>> >> under the Grantmaking department. Is that so, and if not, which
>> department
>> >> is responsible for Affcom?
>> >>
>> >
>> > Hi Pine,
>> >
>> > That's not the case.  AffCom reports directly to the Board of Trustees
>> [1]
>> > rather than to any staff department.
>> >
>> > Kirill
>> >
>> > [1]
>> >
>> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Affiliations_Committee_Charter
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Affiliations Committee mailing list
>> > AffCom@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/affcom
>> >
>> >
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