To be honest, 25-30% of WMFR members is quite a lot.
And, don't
forget, include roughly half of the Wikimedia France Board elected at
the last General Assembly.
This isn't the first governance crisis in the Wikimedia movement (WMF
and other chapters have certainly had them) but it is probably the
biggest and most long-drawn-out.
Of course, it's quite a lot: that's why a special meeting is scheduled to
discuss of all that and the biggest part of the discussion will be driven
by the people who are not happy.
But still, 70-75% of the members are happy with the organisation and never
ask them anything, nobody tries to listen to them. We should try to include
everyone, even the shy ones, even those who just work and don't consider
themselves as potentiol bosses... not only the few who knows who to talk
to, where to write, to have their personal wills fulfilled
And you are totally right, this is not the first crisis; this is actually
the point.
Every two years, some people complain and ask question about the general
strategy: should the organisation grow or not, what should be the relations
between employees and members, what are the main goals, etc. Then everybody
work together to build a strategic plan, to take decisions ; the plan is
implemented... and two years after that those who weren't happy at that
time, some new members, etc. want to begin from scratch one more time. It's
very hard to have a long-term strategy and developpment if there is no
trust in what members have done before. And it's above all a real problem
for the employees who can never be sure their job won't be at risk a few
months after.
And those people refuse to acknowledge reality,
even when the
board explains everything, even when lawyers explains what can and
cannot be done
within a chapter.
To my mind the board's "explanations" are part of the problem. Reading
the statements from WMFR about the FDC process, or their emails to
members or their response to the timeline - it's all about how WMFR
has never been wrong about anything. All the criticism is wrong (and
probably a conspiracy). WMFR's board has been doing the only thing
they could possibly have done. All of this is repeated again and
again.
That is a dysfunctional response to the situation. A significant part
of the French Wikimedia community has lost confidence in WMFR. The
Board should be working to restore that confidence, and the more it
denies the problem is real, the worse the result will be.
Well, the problem is that... it's not really clear what the problem is...
They always talk about "what happens", "the situation"... but it's
very
hard to understand what specific problem there is. I mean, to have another
answer than "a gouvernance problem" and another ideas than "we should fire
the director, another employee and ask the board to resign".
The people organizing the next general meeting want an audit... but there
have been two in a few months, and we are waiting for the conclusion of the
Foundation (some people came in Paris a few weeks ago): what new can an
audit find?
They want to create a commission against conflits of interest... but it
already exist (within the board, it can be widened, I totally agree) and
some of their leaders precisely left because they wouldn't sign the conflit
of interest statement!
They want to reinstate not only the people whose admission have been
refused but all the members who have been excluded... but no member have
ever been excluded!
It's really hard to speak and be understood (once more, Anthere asks a
question about something she doesn't know, about a fact; I answer to her
with the very fact, and she says "I don't agree". What can you answer to
that?)
I think everybody counted on the Foundation mission to facilitate the
dialogue, we really hope it will happen.
And anyway, I think most of the board cannot deal with the harasment
anymore and will resign. This is just a terrible waste of energy, good will
and work. Back to 2008... with a lot of frustration from those who gave a
lot of free time and competence to the development of the chapter
R
Regards,
Chris
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