Thanks for this honest critical feedback Lodewijk. It is refreshing to
have a straight-forward statement. Most emails from established
members of our community being critical about the WMF board or staff
seem to feel they need to wrap anything negative in so much cotton
wool and glib praise, that it looses any effect.
It would be great for a WMF to respond to the failures your email
identifies without writing about issues or successes that were not
mentioned, and without garnishing with lengthy caveats or tangents.
Fae
On 11 February 2014 17:58, Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org> wrote:
Hi,
I'm very sorry about these decisions. Not only because I disagree with them
on the content (although there are one or two aspects I can live with) and
because I think this is very bad for the volunteers, but also because the
board returned to a mode where they make decisions without involving the
stakeholders properly. The Affiliations Committee will probably come with a
more elaborate (and perhaps nuanced) reply as a committee later, but after
this email from Jan-Bart, I feel the need to emphasize that the Affiliation
Committee was not consulted by the board on this topic - despite the
suggestions being made now. Affcom was consulted on a different (but
related) proposal by a staff member, with very different arguments from
those that the board used in their discussion. In my feeling the board is
painting an unjust and unfair picture of the consultation that took place.
I'm strongly disappointed in /all/ board members for not consulting with
the stakeholders (Affcom, FDC, the existing affiliated, the candidate
affiliates and of course the community at large) on these strategy changing
decisions. From the votes it is clear that these decisions were of course
not unanimous, but the sole fact that a decision was taken at all without
proper consultation (in favor or not) strikes me as almost offensive
towards the volunteers involved. I feel this as a slap in the face and the
board becomes an unreliable body making unpredictable course changes
without allowing stakeholders to influence those.
I hope that the board will return on this decision, and take it again after
a proper consultation. But even more so, I hope that this situation will
not repeat itself. I have brought this up before on the topic of bylaw
changes, but similar arguments are of course valid here.
Lodewijk Gelauff
(While a member of the Affiliations Committee - I write this email entirely
in a personal capacity)
--
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http://j.mp/faewm
Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.