On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 4:31 PM Nathan <nawrich@gmail.com> wrote:

No, it isn't a messaging failure. There's no failure at all - the WMF, I'm sure, already recognizes there are pros and cons to a movement where every individual participant feels a sense of ownership. They work around that, sometimes they don't work around it well, but this is an example of where there's no dodging to be done. This "ownership" feeling leads to folks thinking that the WMF should be fully reflective of my values or your values - not just around the WMF's actual mission, but about anything that I happen to feel strongly about right now.

The result is people constantly jerking the WMF in the direction of unrelated vogues. It leads to lots of friction and debate and drama, but that isn't the WMF's failure - just how our history and structure interacts with human nature. This is probably familiar to anyone who lives in a jurisdiction that permits laws or regulations to be passed by popular referenda.

The WMF has made the conscious decision to select four (soon seven) of its board members secretly and then announce them to the community after the fact. The board's only guide to whether a candidate is reflective of our values is its own judgment, and the input of the staff or other persons it decides to include in the process.[1] Of course, in many cases that turns out to be good enough. But they won't know for sure whether they've made a mistake until they draw back the curtains and let the sunshine in.

[1] In the past, the Governance Committee has included non-board, non-staff advisory members; the most recent updates indicate that this is no longer the case, though this may be an oversight: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Governance_Committee&diff=22190668&oldid=22183445 Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the Governance Committee apparently had no advisory members at the time AG was selected either: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Governance_Committee#2015-2016