Hi all,
On 11 Feb 2014, at 17:58, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
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 want to +1 on everything that Lodewijk says here.
The WMF board has done a really bad job here with involving its stakeholders. Both of these decisions should really have been prefaced with online discussion with the community, and also in-person discussion at the Wikimedia Conference in a couple of months time. Additionally, these two decisions relate specifically to topics that the WMF board has committees for - as such, ideally it should have asked the committees for clear recommendations about what could be done in both of these issues. That none of these took place is very disappointing.
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.
I share that hope.
Thanks, Mike (As per Lodewijk, this is sent in my personal capacity, although I am a member of the FDC.)