Hm, for quite a while, the board agenda's were published before the
meetings took place. At least, for the well in advance-scheduled meetings
(the regular ones). I didn't see any recently though. I think it would
indeed be good to put on the list of 'possible transparency topics' to
discuss...
Lodewijk
On Sat, Mar 5, 2016 at 9:25 AM, Ariel Glenn WMF <ariel(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
I'd like to see more complete minutes that get
published more frequently; I
suspect the members of the Board would love it if they could make it happen
by waving a wand and have it be so.
I was once a public observer taking notes for a Board meeting for a
different organization, and there was no way to get notes out the door with
universal agreement except to redact large parts. A lot of it involved "I
did not say that" or "I did not mean that" or "That's out of
context".
Controversial topic discussions will be even harder to cover fairly without
being content-free.
And, as others have said on this list, recording meetings often has the
side effect of moving real discussions out of the limelight back into the
shadows. If you don't believe me, check out your respective legislative
bodies ;-)
So, given that, as Risker and others point out, "it's complicated",
perhaps
we could start with a smaller step: get the agenda published within 5 days
after any meeting. This would mean publishing: the items brought into the
meeting for discussion, marking those that were actually discussed, and
those that were dropped or alternatively held over for a future meeting.
Even this document will not be controversy free and will need to be vetted
before being released, but a 5 day period (let's say) seems manageable.
Once we have that going smoothly we can take what's been learned from it
and apply it to summaries with a bit more detail, etc.
Ariel
On Fri, Mar 4, 2016 at 1:19 AM, Craig Franklin <cfranklin(a)halonetwork.net>
wrote:
This sounds like an excellent strategy if
you're looking to have the
board
meetings turn into a rubber stamp for issues that
have been discussed and
decided elsewhere.
Rather than solving the transparency problem through gimmicks like
wheeling
a video camera into the board room, we should
look at reasons why the
Board
of Trustees might not feel comfortable being
transparent. The only real
solution will involve cultural change, not just on the WMF side, but also
from the community. What can *we* as community members do to assist the
WMF in being transparent?
Although, I most certainly agree that the official minutes of meetings
could do with a little more detail. If brevity is wit, then the existing
minutes are positively Wildean.
Cheers,
Craig
On 3 March 2016 at 16:31, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Having WMF Board meetings be open and recorded by
default would be
a wonderful step in aligning the Board with the value of transparency.
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