Hi Varnet,
I have emailed Affcom or individual members on more than one occasion for an update about the Cascadia Wikimedians user group application. We finished our response to Affcom's last question on August 7, which was almost a month ago. We have projects that we would like to start that are waiting on Affcom's approval. Is the delay related to the call for new members and the change to an on-wiki process for user group applications?
Thanks,
Pine
On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 11:06 PM, Gregory Varnum gregory.varnum@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you everyone for your feedback and ideas. They're already being discussed internally by AffCom and may be reflected in our next call for candidates. There will not be any changes to the process for this call.
Some additional information folks may find helpful...
This call will add at least four people to fill some openings on the committee created by Cynthia's passing earlier this year, to replace a couple members transitioning into non-voting advisor roles (out of personal necessity), and expansion by one seat (to help with our growing workload and respond to concerns of response time).
This does not replace our usual annual call for members, which will be coming later this year. That call will fill vacancies left by members whose terms are expiring (or possibly re-elect those members) and another possible expansion of the committee, that call is also anticipated to fill at least four seats on the committee.
Before each annual call for members, we do a review of the process, and sometimes make slight tweaks. Prior to this email, we had committed to reviewing the process with our new, recently appointed, WMF board liaisons. This feedback is helpful and will be taken into consideration. For a variety of reasons, we decided not to delay this call for candidates any further (and risk having to delay or merge it with the next call) and instead use the process previously established.
As to the specific suggestions, I have heard compelling arguments for our existing approach, and for changes. I have not personally come to any final conclusions on what changes, if any, should be made, and I suspect the same is true for the rest of AffCom. In part, we wanted to fill the vacancies to help provide additional input on any changes to this process we may make. Keep in mind, we are also engaging in a much larger discussion internally and with affiliates, the WMF Board, and WMF staff about AffCom's activities, scope, processes, etc. This is done annually (and currently ongoing), and has resulted in some already visible changes this year (such as the liaisons, introduction of new resources for affiliates, etc.) with more to come, and may result in changes to things like the AffCom charter, which requires a WMF Board vote. I am not yet sure if that will happen, but I want to give you some sense of the overall scope of our current conversation and why this specific process was not changed this time around.
I generally try to avoid comparisons between the WMF committees as they are each rather unique in purpose and composition needs. Speaking specifically to AffCom, I can say that we look a great deal at the combined skills voting members will bring to the committee, which sometimes means qualified candidates are passed for a year to prevent too much overlap of any one existing skill area (such as legal or nonprofit capacity building) or consideration such as diversity or language. There have been concerns that a public process would discourage people from subjecting themselves to the process more than once, some candidates also fear retaliation given the complex politics within the affiliates world, and the current process is believed to have helped us with encouraging candidates to apply who can help us fill our diversity or skill gaps. I offer that not as a defense, but as some insight into how the process got to this point.
We recently finished the conversion of the Wikimedia user group application process from email based to an on-wiki based process and a faster approval process based on feedback we received (details are on-wiki and coming on-listserv soon). So that is certainly an option we are considering. Our last request for an additional committee mailing list took several weeks to process, and we try not to burden operations with urgent requests. That said, frankly, we have leaned towards convenience and the idea of moving it to a WMF hosted address simply has not come up recently and we will seek input from WMF operations on their preferences and ideas. I am personally intrigued by the suggestion of OTRS usage, but for for broader applications as well.
From just a few years ago as ChapCom to today as AffCom, this committee has consistently changed and evolved based on feedback and movement needs. I appreciate not always to some people's liking, but let's face it, it would be impossible for us to accommodate every idea and request, if for no other reason than we often receive conflicting ideas and requests with very compelling arguments behind them. So it is absolutely a possibility that we will find ways to address existing concerns and adopt a different approach. Keep in mind the committee is made up of volunteers that change fairly regularly (at least four new volunteers are about to join), so I think it is unfair to make claims or accusations about our possible actions based on personal biases toward all things related to WMF or resentments about one specific action (out of dozens each year) or perceived inaction taken by the committee that you do not like. I say this one note not wearing my AffCom "hat", but as a personal response to some people's assumptions in this thread.
I hope that helps offer some insight into our current thinking and helps explain how we are responding to feedback and why there will not be any changes to this call. If folks would like to offer additional feedback off this list, you are welcome to email me, any members of AffCom you happen to know, or our group email list: affcom@lists.wikimedia.org
-greg aka varnent Vice Chair, Affiliations Committee
On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 10:32 PM, Everton Zanella Alvarenga < everton.alvarenga@okfn.org> wrote:
2014-09-04 17:07 GMT-03:00 Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net:
Another option would be an open process on-wiki, along the same lines
as
the FDC board-selected seat nominations. Is there a need to keep applications confidential here?
That is a good idea. But that will not happen any time soon or ever.
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