To explain Luis' slightly cryptic "more board news today" comment:

Raju Narisetti, the chair of the Board Governance Committee - on whose behalf Margo sent the message that opened this thread, and which had led last year's controversial selection process changes and candidate removals - suddenly announced his departure from the board the other day (see also).

Also, to keep conversations connected: Worth being aware that on July 31, a different Board Governance Committee member (i.e. not its now departed chair) posted an update regarding the eligibility criteria on Meta ("We realize that our proposal needs more work to achieve these goals").

Regards, Tilman

PS: Not to zoom too much into particular personnel examples, but this whole debate might be an occasion for the Board to explain and juxtapose its eligibility criteria for the other (appointed, i.e. non-community selected) trustee positions as well. Also in light of the previous WMF CEO's comments (as reported here) that the community-selected and (non-community) appointed trustees form "effectively two boards (not that they were at odds necessarily but operating in almost parallel) and how hard that made her work as a CEO". I am not one of those who think that, say, every trustee must have edited Wikipedia or that we need ideological litmus tests (in the sense, say, that you cannot be a high-ranking executive in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp while serving on the board). But at a time where some seem to be pushing for WMF to compromise on its longstanding free knowledge ideals and guiding principles in order to serve the organization's own narrow financial interests, it's worth asking how much we know about the appointed Board members' pre-existing stances about such ideals and principles.

On Sun, Aug 9, 2026 at 1:38 PM Luis Villa via Wikimedia-l <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

Since there is more board news today, sending a long-drafted followup:

On Fri, Jul 24, 2026 at 7:45 PM Erik Moeller via Wikimedia-l <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Wikimedia Foundation needs folks with relevant governance experience
for an organization of this scale, but it also needs voices that
challenge it and push it in new directions on the Board. The trick is
to find the right balance between those goals. Requiring that people
advance along an internal functionary ladder towards the possibility
of standing for trusteeship is not that balance; it is the kind of
requirement structure you find in institutions that drift towards
stagnancy and self-reinforcement, often out of institutionalized fear.

A compromise proposal:
* Change the word "must" to "should" when it comes to the governance
experience criteria
* Require that candidates indicate comparable or equivalent experience
in their candidate profile if they do not meet these criteria.

To echo and add to what Erik said: Governance of an organization like WMF is a wickedly complex problem, requiring many different skillsets. It's not enough to have good *ideas* - you have to have the *skills* to make those ideas happen: how to understand an auditor's report; how to think through the human politics of governance; employee management skills; etc. etc.

So I think tightening skills and experience requirements is pretty reasonable.

I like Erik's suggestions, and would add: WMF should invest in board skills development, not just restrict those who don't yet have the skills. Among other things, this could be formal training through services like https://boardsource.org/; or experiential learning through board observer seats/fellowships like Haas does for their b-school students: https://haas.berkeley.edu/cssl/programs-events/board-fellows/ The former would be good skills development for the movement, and the latter would double as a transparency move.

I mean *invest*, not "commit to invest"; the Foundation should do a few years of this investment and *then* put in stricter rules, since otherwise the temptation for new board members to say "this is not necessary" and pull the drawbridge up after them would be very strong.

I would also add, beating my recent drum: much of the energy that goes into Foundation board questions should instead be going into making the Foundation less central to the movement. That goes for the board -- who should be following through on the "infrastructure for open" commitments of 2030, not re-centralizing, so that the exact composition of the board is less important -- and for many movement leaders: *you can be a movement leader without being on the WMF board*. There are so many ways to lead.

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