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.

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