On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 1:49 PM, Asaf Bartov abartov@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 8:54 AM, Sydney Poore sydney.poore@gmail.com wrote:
I find the WMF staff who I interact with to be an inspiration to me with their dedication to the mission to the global wikimedia movement.
So do I. :)
Perhaps the reason that many of them are not volunteering as on site contributors is because they are too busy with a day job that is solely focused on the mission of the movement.
Eh, no, that's not a valid argument. Everybody is busy, most Wikimedians have day jobs or demanding schoolwork of some sort. People manage to contribute to the projects if they want to. It's a matter of prioritization, as always in life. So we mustn't accept "maybe they're just too busy" as an excuse for why staffers purportedly "can't" edit. Many staffers do. Some don't. In both cases, it's by choice and preference.
I respect the decision of WMF staff to go home and take care of their personal business, or be involved in other outside activities, and then come back to work refreshed and ready to work on issues related to WMF and wikimedia movement.
I fully support allowing our talented and dedicated WMF staff to have the opportunity to choose the people who guide the direction of the WMF.
Meeting the suffrage bar as a community member is not difficult. Those (few) staffers who aren't already eligible to vote as either developers or content contributors, further filtered by the criterion "cares sufficiently to read about candidates and figure out voting" -- which I guesstimate to be under 20, and probably under 10 -- could have, and therefore should have, simply edited a bit, on any of the projects, to get suffrage. I don't think there's any disenfranchisement if they don't get an automatic vote.
A.
At a time in our movement when we are reaching out to partner organization (GLAM, universities, etc) to engage them in activities that are outside of making on wiki edits, I think we need to expand our ideas about who is a member of our movement with the standing to select the BoT.
A good start to recognizing a broadening of the movement roles is to include WMF staff and affiliate staff who do not make onsite edits.
Additionally, I'm not keen on having people go through the motion of making just enough edits to get the right to vote as a volunteer when their true value to the wikimedia movement is through their staff work.
Sydney
-- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation http://www.wikimediafoundation.org
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