If a board member mentions staff fear, you might ask if item 2 of the code of conduct [1] couldn't be rewritten so it's not a soviet-style catch-all that outlaws discussion about anything that happens within the WMF.
Staff, if a board member mentions staff fear, you might ask if item 2 of the code of conduct [1] could be rewritten so it's not a soviet-style catch-all that prohibits discussion about anything that happens within the WMF.
(Off topic, but: If Jimmy utters the word "accountable" over the next few days, would one (or all) of you please take the opportunity to ask him to relinquish his founder seat, abolish the seat, add another community-selected seat, and run for election as a community-selected trustee in the next round? (That's the next round, not in three years when his current term expires.)
If any board member mentions "transparency", ask them if we could please at least know what topics are discussed at board meetings. I.e., could the secretary please take down and publish at least the barest minimum by way of minutes, if that's not too much to ask.
Take notes. If they disallow note-taking in the meeting, sit down immediately afterwards and summarise what happened, from memory.
1. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Code_of_conduct_policy&...
On Tuesday, 1 March 2016, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 4:44 PM, Oliver Keyes <ironholds@gmail.com javascript:;> wrote:
So my concern is not that you lost touch with staff. I don't particularly care about any one person. My concern is that the *board* did. My concern is that when staff reached out the Board replied with a letter indicating they had full and unanimous confidence in our leadership. You indicating that you see a problem here and have some sympathy is nice; so is you visiting the office. So is Alice visiting the office. But nice is not sufficient.
Guy Kawasaki, I believe, lives in the bay area (correct me if I'm wrong). Denny works a 10 minute walk from the office. Kelly's org is based in Mountain View. There are a whole host of trustees who could be making it into the office, experiencing the culture and the sentiment and the concerns directly. Why are they not coming in? Why are they not listening to people?
I must confess that this was my initial response as well.
My initial impression of Jimmy coming to SF was that this was a self-selected PR exercise for Jimmy – borne out of a desire to be seen as part of the solution of the problem, rather than part of its causes – and not so much an effort by the Board to develop a better rapport with staff.
As you say, there are several board members who could comfortably pop in for afternoon tea at the WMF office any day of the week.
Still, I hope the discussions with Jimmy and Alice in SF are fruitful.
While I appreciate, deeply, both you and Alice coming in, I am unable to shake my concerns that the rest of the board making decisions informed not by their perspectives but by your recollection of your perspectives, is going to be tremendously limiting. We selected these people because we thought they had something to contribute we didn't already have: because their experiences would shape incoming information in new and interesting ways. So let them receive that information, and let them shape it. Let's have an informed board. Because trust isn't great, right now, and this last year should have made us steer *away* from processes with a small bus factor, not towards them.
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