The way I'm making sense of the timeline is:
Last summer the Board remembered that the ASBS was coming up (in among all their conversations about the strategy). Probably in July they discussed it for the first time and they asked AffCom to look at a way of including User Groups. At the November meeting they looked at AffCom's recommendation and decided not to accept it 'as is' but to leave the door open to other solutions. They then started the formal community consultation. At the January meeting they adopted the still very open proposals they'd consulted on.
Personally I would have preferred the Board to consult in public back in July rather than just consulting AffCom at that point, then we might be 3 months in advance. And I expressed my reservations about this change, so did many other people. But it's the job of any board to make decisions, and in this case it seems they felt there were good reasons for going ahead in spite of the objections raised - and to be fair the voices on the Meta page were a relatively narrow slice of the overall Wikimedia community.
To those who still have concerns, there is plenty of space to still design a process that meets them.
And if this issue makes people have wider thoughts about the role of affiliates and the WMF, please hold onto them, because there is much more movement strategy thinking coming up in the run up to the Wikimedia Summit, and the strategy process is probably going to work on a scale that makes this issue seem insignificant.
Thanks,
Chris
On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 8:05 PM Strainu strainu10@gmail.com wrote:
În joi, 21 feb. 2019 la 16:59, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel itzik@wikimedia.org.il a scris:
No, you aren't missing anything. The timeline is strange.
As Antanana wrote, *"The conversation about how User Groups may
participate
in this process has been on for years, it is not a new topic [4]." * So if it isn't a new proposal, why the board jumped to do this change so close to the election instead of a year or so before? On the other hand, if this issue is old enough, so why do the change now, instead of holding the elections and then conduct (without pressure) a
REAL
discussion and DEEP thinking about how to involve UGs while maintaining equal elections.
Actually, the timeline (give or take a couple of weeks) seems quite well chosen to force a timely discussion. Realistically speaking, if a wiki-discussion has lagged for years, it would have also lagged until the next round of elections, in 3 years. Also, having a solution in place for the current election does not prevent another round of discussions afterwards, based on the then-existing experience.
I understand that the chapters have concerns regarding their ability to have a say in the board, but the fact that there has been a lack in new chapters in recent years has given them an unfair advantage over other organizations in the ecosystem. Most of the objections on the talk page focused on how the UGs will double vote, skew the elections etc. without considering that many user groups have established internal policies and decision-taking procedures on par with smaller chapters. I urge all of the chapter representatives to give up the fearmongering and work with the interested parties to make this dialogue a showcase of openness and collaboration "à la Wikimedia".
Strainu (for himself)
*Itzik Edri* Chairperson itzik@wikimedia.org.il +972-54-5878078
On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 8:01 PM effe iets anders <
effeietsanders@gmail.com>
wrote:
As for process.. While I appreciate that this time, the change was at
least
announced before the vote, and that some board members at least
engaged in
some conversation - I have yet to see how this was taken into
consideration
by the board as a whole. It feels like the board already made up its
mind.
What is surprising me most, is that it took a month for this
announcement
to be made - especially considering a time sensitive process being
impacted
by this decision. Or did I miss a more timely announcement elsewhere?
Best, Lodewijk
On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 3:19 AM Santiago Navarro < santiagonavarro@wikimedia.es> wrote:
In fact, I did not participate in the discussion page on meta about that, because I guessed that my opinion would not be taken in
account,
neither discussed, and now it seems that, sadly, I was right in that thought.
El 2019-02-19 17:25, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel escribió:
Antanana and the board,
I find it sad and disappointing that after such a long
conversation on
the talk page, there wasn't any comment on the talk page or in this statement about the problem of double voting by many UG's members. Did the
board
even discuss that or we just wasted our time giving feedback on it?
Ensuring equality in voting is the basis for every democracy and is trampled here completely without any comment from the board about
how
to ensure it.
*Itzik Edri* Chairperson itzik@wikimedia.org.il +972-54-5878078
On Tue, Feb 19, 2019 at 5:18 PM Nataliia Tymkiv <
ntymkiv@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Hello all!
The Wikimedia Foundation Board has unanimously approved the
changes to
the Bylaws [1] during the last Board meeting on January 30, 2019. This will be covered in the minutes, and the resolution will be published in
short
order.
This change allows the participation of User Groups [2] in the Affiliate-selected Board seats (ASBS) 2019 process [3]. The discussion about this process should start as soon as possible in order to
have
these two seats selected by Wikimania. This is why we are sending this letter now, before the resolution is published.
There are now over 100 recognized User Groups, covering over 50 countries, several languages and topics, many of whom represent new and
emergent
communities within the Wikimedia movement. The Board believes
that the
added perspectives of the User Groups, combined with the voices of Chapters and Thematic Organizations, will lead to a richer collection of guidance for our movement. The conversation about how User Groups may participate in this process has been on for years, it is not a new topic [4].
Once the facilitators of the Selection process are appointed by
the
affiliates, they should work with María Sefidari, who has been
chosen
by the Board as the Board liaison for the ASBS process.
Given the potential complexity of organizing a process that now
will
include over a hundred user groups, the Wikimedia Foundation is offering its support to set up infrastructure and help with communications
if
requested by the affiliates.
A page for translation can be found at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2019/Wikimedi...
On behalf of the Board
antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv
Chair of the Board Governance Committee
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws/December_2018_-_...
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_user_groups
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2019
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws/January_2014_-_A...
*NOTICE: You may have received this message outside of your normal working hours/days, as I usually can work more as a volunteer during
weekend.
You should not feel obligated to answer it during your days off.
Thank you
in advance!* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
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