First, my ideas to reform the Board are not incompatible with a "senate-like" idea.
Second, I think that I see at least several reasons why a Senate for WIkimedia movement may not be the best way to go: 1) we already advance bureaucracy. Setting up yet another committee in a hope, that it will solve problems rarely works. It is better to improve the existing institutions. 2) Separating the movement's Senate from the WMF's Board will further advance the divide and disengagement. 3) We already have bodies, whose responsibility is oversight over the movement's resources (the FDC). After four years of lobbying for this idea, I'm really happy to see now that the WMF will be treated more like other organizations in the movement and will undergo a review. We DO NOT need more ideas to separate the WMF from the movement, we need just the opposite. In my view, the Board should gradually include oversight of the movement, rather than just the WMF. 4) The costs of having a 15-20 people Senate that meets in person twice a year match the costs of a small chapter. I don't think it makes sense, resource-wise. 5) Ultimately, Denny's proposal leads to polarizing the field into the WMF vs. everyone else. I would very much rather see a situation in which the WMF is primus inter pares.
cheers,
dj
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 8:48 AM, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
Denny, thanks for sharing your thoughts, and there's a lot I agree with and more I can empathize with.
What I will disagree on is with the notion that the board has to take the org's side against the movement by definition. It is my understanding that the board has the role of oversight of the org -- that is, it's the board's job to ensure that the Foundation is effectively accomplishing the goals it was created to perform.
WMF is not a for-profit company where that success boils down to shareholder price. It's a non-profit founded to improve the world's access to knowledge.
It's important for us to remember that the WMF is a tool, a means to an end, not an end of itself. That tool has cracks in it and needs to be repaired, and it is the board's unique responsibility to ensure that happens if the executive cannot.
-- brion On Feb 24, 2016 5:24 PM, "Denny Vrandecic" dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I disagree very much with Dariusz on this topic (as he knows). I think
that
a body that is able to speak for the movement as a whole would be
extremely
beneficial in order to relieve the current Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation from that role. It simply cannot - and indeed,
legally
must not - fulfill this role.
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that will be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation -
not
to the movement. If there is a decision to be made where there is a conflict between the Movement or one of the Communities with the Foundation, the Board members have to decide in favor of the Foundation. They are not only trained to so, they have actually pledged to do so.
- the Board members have fiduciary responsibilities. No, we cannot just
talk about what we are doing. As said, the loyalty of a Board member is towards the organization, not the movement.
- the Board members that are elected by the communities or through
chapters
represent the voice of the communities or the chapters. That's not the case. All Board members are equal, and have the same duties and rights.
Our
loyalty is towards the organization, not towards the constituency that voted for us.
These things are not like this because the Wikimedia Foundation has
decided
in a diabolic plan for world domination to write the rules in such a way. These things are so because US laws - either federal or state laws, I am not a lawyer and so I might be babbling nonsense here anyway, but this is my understanding - requires a Board of Trustees to have these legal obligations. This is nothing invented by the WMF in its early days, but rather the standard framework for US non-profits.
Now, sure, you may say that this doesn't really matter, the Foundation
and
the Movement should always be aligned. And where this is usually the
case,
in those few cases where it is not it will lead to a massive burn.
Once you are on the Board, you do not represent the Communities, the Chapters, your favourite Wikimedia project, you are not the
representative
and defender of Wikispecies or the avatar of Wiktionary - no, you are a Trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and your legal obligations and
duties
are defined by the Bylaws and the applicable state and federal laws.
So, whoever argues that the Board of Trustees is to be the representative of the communities has still to explain to me how to avoid this
conundrum.
Simply increasing the number of community elected seats won't change anything in a sustaining way.
This is why I very much sympathize with the introduction of a new body
that
indeed represents the communities, and whose loyalty is undivided to the Movement as a whole. I currently do not see any body that in the
Wikimedia
movement that would have the moral authority to discuss e.g. whether Wikiversity should be set up as a project independent of the Wikimedia movement, whether Wikisource would deserve much more resources, whether Stewards have sufficient authority, whether the German Wikimedia chapter has to submit itself to the FDC proposal, whether a restart of the
Croatian
Wikipedia is warranted, etc. I am quite sure that none of these questions are appropriate for the Board of Trustees, but I would love to hear the opinion of others on this.
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 4:35 PM, Denny Vrandecic <
dvrandecic@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Thank you for the diverse input. A few points to Razmy's proposal.
I have trouble with suggestions that state "we can ensure diversity by creating regional seats". First, why these regions? What does each
region
seat represent? Potential readers? Actual readers? Human population at large? Why not number of active editors? Without deciding that we do
not
know whether the regions you suggest make any sense.
Second, why regions at all? How do regions ensure that we have a
diversity
in age? Sex? Gender? Wealth? Religion? Cultural background? Educational background? Diversity has not only the aspect of being from a specific region, there is so much more to that.
Also, the increase in number of Trustees makes the Board more expensive and more ineffective. I would be rather unhappy with such an increase.
It
is hard enough to get anything done at the current size. I would
appreciate
any proposal that reduces the number of Trustees, not increases it.
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 1:45 AM, Ramzy Muliawan <
ramzymuliawan14@gmail.com
wrote:
This proposal did not attempt to create a developing world-dominated Board, nor is a developing world-dominated.
"Nor is a developed world-dominated."
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