Pete,


I live in Europe and am not familiar with the US rules. In the UK, spoilt ballots, equivalent to the neutral vote, are counted in the tally.



Chris,


>This whole process is commissioned by the WMF. The MCDC is a >committee established by the WMF. The electoral commission >overseeing the MCDC is appointed by the WMF. 


It sounds like you deny the independence of operations and autonomy of the decisions of both MCDC and the Election Committee composed of the volunteer wikimedians. 


You are welcome to design and implement a process completely independent of WMF; in fact, I have already seen it happening.  Unfortunately, I cannot at the moment find the “ The Charter Lite” proposed by SJ. Hopefully, somebody will provide a link.


> Given all of that, it is neither appropriate, not helpful, for you to now >launch into some kind of public critique of this process based on your >own views. 

The community-elected trustees were repeatedly demonised and asked for their opinion. Now that I’m expressing my opinion, it is suddenly inappropriate. Is it because I’m a woman or because the opinion that the Charter and the process of its' ratification are not fit for purpose should be silenced by any means?


>It is not appropriate for you to be accusing 'the affiliates' , who are the 

>  WMF's strategic partners in delivering its mission, of some kind of >conspiracy.

Please don't try to twist my words, I didn't mention a conspiracy: their opinion is quite public - you can look at the link in my original email.


Dear all,


I regret to see that the communication in this thread fractured. People are now asking who am I to use the wikimedia.org email address.


Thank you to everybody who participated in this conversation so far, especially those who were not afraid to publicly express their support for my opinion and those who wrote private letters of support.


As I was politely asked to shut up like a good girl, so that’s what I will do. This is my last email in this thread.


You should also understand that this is why the trustees mostly remain silent beyond the official WMF communications—the conversations inevitably devolve into personal attacks.


I’ll see some of you at Wikimania, where I hope to continue the conversation in person.


       Kind regards, Victoria   
                  
                          Victoria Doronina
                          Trustee
                             Sister Projects Taskforce Lead

Wikimedia Foundation 

Imagine a world in which everyone can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Please help us make it a




On Fri, Jul 19, 2024 at 11:58 PM Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth@gmail.com> wrote:
Victoria:

On Fri, Jul 19, 2024 at 6:10 AM Victoria Doronina <vdoronina@wikimedia.org> wrote:
I'm shocked that "the neutral votes don’t count towards the total number of votes cast", which contradicts the rules of any other referendum I know.
It is how referenda in the U.S. state of Oregon work. The choices are "yes", "no", or leaving the question blank. Leaving the question blank is tallied as an "undervote" and is not counted toward the percentage; only "yes" or "no" votes count towards the deciding percentage. (The state defines this term differently from how English Wikipedia defines it, something I'll try to improve now that I've noticed. Undervotes are recorded, if I recall correctly, in relation to the race on the ballot that had the highest participation. E.g. if the race for governor had 10000 votes for candidates and Measure 5 on the same ballot had 9000 votes for yes or no, that would be described as "Measure 5 had an undervote of 1000.") Oregon was the first U.S. state to adopt this form of popular democracy, and was the model for many other states. So I would be somewhat surprised to learn that any other U.S. state tallied it differently. (Of course, many races for *candidates* do require a majority of all votes cast, which would include write-ins; so in electoral votes, it is indeed typical to include votes (actual write-in votes, as opposed to undervotes) that are neutral in terms of the candidates presented. Perhaps a point of confusion?

Everything was done to get the vote past an arbitrary line,
Sorry, this reads to me as an incorrect and escalatory attack on the integrity of the system, as Chris Keating described eloquently. I'd like to add that as a reader who is somewhat distant from these matters, it is especially disconcerting to have a message attacking the system created and administered by the Wikimedia Foundation come from a wikimedia.org email address. It only compounds that confusion that you have chosen (quite strangely to my eye, though I recognize that it's common practice) not to include a signature indicating your job title or role, nor to explain how much you were involved in the project you are now criticizing.
 
first reducing the number of the votes required for the quorum from 4% to 2%, and now this. It would be interesting to recalculate the real percentage.
Thankfully, the raw data was presented by the committee in the very email you're responding to, and the math is pretty straightforward. 

Individual:
1,710 / (1710 + 623 + 113) 69.91% (vs. 73.30% reported by, presumably, the correct calculation)

Affiliates:

93 / (93 + 18 + 18) = 72.90% (vs. 83.78% reported by, presumably, the correct calculation)


Philip,
I'm happy that my irony didn't escape you - the revolutions are not done via convening a bureaucratic body. I think that what we see is the protest vote of the people unhappy with WMF for whatever reason + affiliates who want not just the slice of the pie, but the pie itself + the usual suspects.
Same reasoning as above, I am very curious to know whether your strong questioning of the integrity of the process is something that reflects whatever your role is at the Wikimedia Foundation, and if not, why you have pursued it in a public channel where I surely am not the only one confused on that point, and trying to process a whole bunch of heated claims and counterclaims about a complex process. 

-Pete
--
Pete Forsyth
Editor of English Wikisource, Wikipedia, Commons, Wikidata, etc.

 

On Fri, Jul 19, 2024 at 12:56 PM Gnangarra <gnangarra@gmail.com> wrote:
Eva

A couple of issue yes there was just 3 days to write the outcomes, fair there wasnt the time to polish it. The Movement Charter had how many years? Yet the word is vague, incomplete, and insufficient for what it was going to be. 

According to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_Charter#Quorums_for_current_SecurePoll_votes a quorum was 2346 individual votes (2% of 117,275 eligible accounts). this was not met as stated in this email because the neutral votes don’t count towards the total number of votes cast, 73.30% voted to approve the Charter (1710/2333) , while 26.70% voted to reject the Charter (623/2333). The total number of votes cast were 2333, which was 13 short of the required amount
 

On Fri, 19 Jul 2024 at 19:09, Victoria Doronina <vdoronina@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hello Paulo,

Thank you for your kind words and your support. It's one thing to believe that at least a few of my voters support my actions and quite another to hear from someone.

I believe that the contrarian voices were silenced from the start of this process, so it's vital to hear that the BoT did not act utterly contrary to the community's opinions.

Kind regards

Victoria

On Fri, Jul 19, 2024 at 11:21 AM Paulo Santos Perneta <paulosperneta@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Victoria,

My reading of the proposed Charter very closely matches yours. 
As one of the Wikimedians who voted for you in 2021, I'm very grateful that you have not yielded to the immense pressure put on you and other BoT members to approve it.

My impression - perhaps unjust, but I have had it for quite some time - is also that this Charter was seen as a kind of a gold rush by a number of affiliates and other agents, with the corresponding impacts on its writing.
With sentences such as "The Wikimedia Movement holds itself accountable through community leadership as represented within Wikimedia projects", which opens the door for all kind of judicial trouble, and "Wikimedia project communities have autonomy to establish policies for their individual projects, so long as such policies are in conformity with this Charter and the framework of global policies" - which makes the onwiki community policies subject to the charters, while not applying the same to affiliates and the WMF, and a Global Council grossly biased towards affiliate representation, I really can't see how this Charter defended the interests of our communities, and I'm very glad it was sunk.

I also have anecdotal evidence by personal contact that community members voted to support it without even reading it, because they had no time nor interest but were hard pressed to vote, so they gave a carte blanche to it. Or they were told it was against the WMF, so we must support it. And so on.

Anyway, I hope the thing is not dead here, and we'll continue finding ways to distribute the power our projects and communities generate in a more equitative and fair way, but at the end of the day I do think we are better without a Charter in the form it was proposed.

Again, thank you very much for your courage and integrity, Victoria, I hope you get reelected to the BoT.

Best,
Paulo

Victoria Doronina <vdoronina@wikimedia.org> escreveu (sexta, 19/07/2024 à(s) 09:34):
Hello Galder,

> As the BoT is, by definition, the one directing what the interests of the WMF are, we must conclude that > all the so-called community-elected and half of the affiliated-elected voted against the interests of their > represented. What interests did they vote for? That's the question that remains unanswered.

It was stated in an early Charter draft that the goal of the Charter was “to take power from the WMF” - whatever that means. Mainly to distribute its entire budget, data centres and programmers be damned.

But somehow, even the idea to further devolve the grant-making process never got any traction because some in the community want nothing less than a revolution, Russian style—to seize the assets and spend them now instead od thinking about the medium and long-term future.


The idea that community-selected trustees - I’m one of them - must have voted to support the charter is false. I’m a part of the online community of the Russian Wikipedia and was never formally involved with any affiliates. The narrative “online wikimedians vs affiliates” mirrors the “wikimedians vs. WMF” - the affiliates are seen as people who don’t create the content but only profit from it. And don’t see how ratifying the charter would change anything significantly for me except spending the money on another bureaucratic body.


After being on the WMF board for the last 2,5 years, I don’t support this idea, but the Charter  for me clearly presents an attempt at a power grab by the affiliates. I was struck by the output document [1] from the Berlin summit, where a third of the affiliates think that the online community should not be significantly represented on the Global council.



19. Processes must ensure that unorganized volunteers are significantly represented in regional batches of seats.

yes

56

no

31

undecided

18


 

As a member of the online community, I couldn't have voted to approve a document that supports the creation of a global bureaucratic class UN-style—with no possibility of impeachment of the individual members. My experience in global governance shows that in the proposed form, GC would not work effectively and would be only a waste of resources. 


Coincidentally, it also tallies with my fiduciary duty as a member of the BoT of the Wikimedia Foundation - I believe that the monies will be better spent on the infrastructure, overhaul of MediaWiki, grants to the affiliates - almost anything else than a 100 people talking.


You would say that the “online community voted in support”, but this is an overstatement. “The quorum” is only 2%  (!) of the eligible voters, and who know how many of them are the affiliates members and the people who were lobbied by the affiliates.


As for the rest, I took part in a WMF staff and wikimedins meeting in London only the last week. I talked to a wikimedian who was going to vote yes, but when I asked them if they know about the proposed numbers of the GC they said no.


Of course, I see a discrepancy in the WMF board's actions: on one hand, the candidates and newly selected trustees are told that they should act only in the interest of the WMF, while on the other hand, the Board just voted against the creation of a body that would have had the same duty of care for the movement as the WMF Board has for WMF. 


I did my best to commit the Board to the continuation of the Global Council creation process and salvaging parts of the Charter proposal. The result is buried deep in the legalise but there’s a potential to continue the conversation after the current pilots of the Tech Council and Grants Committee run their course. 


But of course, I can only influence the Board actions if I’m reelected. Right now, I feel that by voting against the charter in its current form—both as a trustee and a volunteer—I fulfilled the promise that I gave to about 6,000 wikimedians who voted for me in 2021. Preventing putting an albatross around the Movement neck is the worthy reason for losing my seat on the board. 


By all means, replace me and the other BoT members running for the reelection by the candidates that supported  the charter - and see if that changes anything.


Ultimately, the question of ratifying the Charter for me came down to "Is the Charter good enough”? My sincere personal opinion, considering how hard it is to change an existing structure or document even if it's clearly not working, is that it is not.



Kind regards,


Victoria


  1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Summit_2024/Outputs


On Thu, Jul 18, 2024 at 5:45 PM Chris Keating <chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com> wrote:
Well, that's pretty categoric.

While it is worth noting that many of the votes likely came with caveats, or suggestions for improvement - it is also a massive vote in favour of the concept of a Charter and Global Council, and against the idea that the WMF should be the sole body in the movement responsible for, well, anything really.

There is a clear way forward now for the WMF to bring itself in line with the vast majority of the community that it claims to work with as an equal partner, and start working with the MCDC, or whoever there is to talk to if the MCDC is now disbanded, to look at the feedback on the present draft and create a final version. Perhaps we can hear less about how everything has changed since the start of the strategy process 8 years ago (it hasn't), or how there isn't money (there is), or how 'form should follow function' (well, perhaps it should, but also let's not have unrealistic and single-sided expectations where every proposal for change is made to provide a clear and eloquent narrative while the status quo continues to evade scrutiny). 

Regards,

Chris
(User: The Land)



On Thu, Jul 18, 2024 at 3:40 PM Charter Electoral Commission <cec@wikimedia.org> wrote:

Hello everyone,


After carefully tallying both individual and affiliate votes, the Charter Electoral Commission is pleased to announce the final results of the Wikimedia Movement Charter voting.  


As communicated by the Charter Electoral Commission, we reached the quorum for both Affiliate and individual votes by the time the vote closed on July 9, 23:59 UTC. We thank all 2,451 individuals and 129 Affiliate representatives who voted in the ratification process. Your votes and comments are invaluable for the future steps in Movement Strategy. 


The final results of the Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification voting held between 25 June and 9 July 2024 are as follows: 

Individual vote: 


Out of 2,451 individuals who voted as of July 9 23:59 (UTC), 2,446 have been accepted as valid votes. Among these, 1,710 voted “yes”; 623 voted “no”; and 113 selected “–” (neutral). Because the neutral votes don’t count towards the total number of votes cast, 73.30% voted to approve the Charter (1710/2333), while 26.70% voted to reject the Charter (623/2333).


Affiliates vote: 


Out of 129 Affiliates designated voters who voted as of July 9 23:59 (UTC), 129 votes are confirmed as valid votes. Among these, 93 voted “yes”; 18 voted “no”; and 18 selected “–” (neutral). Because the neutral votes don’t count towards the total number of votes cast, 83.78% voted to approve the Charter (93/111), while 16.22% voted to reject the Charter (18/111).


Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation:


The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees voted not to ratify the proposed Charter during their special Board meeting on July 8, 2024. The Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, Natalia Tymkiv, shared the result of the vote, the resolution, meeting minutes and proposed next steps.  


With this, the Wikimedia Movement Charter in its current revision is not ratified.


We thank you for your participation in this important moment in our movement’s governance.


The Charter Electoral Commission,

 Abhinav619, Borschts, Iwuala Lucy, Tochiprecious, Der-Wir-Ing

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--
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Gnangarra
'ngany dabakarn koorliny arn boodjera dardon nlangan Nyungar koortabodjar'
  
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