Florence Devouard, 02/09/2011 21:11:
You seek to remove "perceived" conflicts of
interest, even if that means
creating "real" conflicts of interest ?
Because there would be conflict of interest and rather BIG ONES.
We are facing rather severe challenges right now. Let's say it straight,
Wikimedia Foundation is simply trying to absorb/control the chapters as
is they were simple bureaux of the WMF locally and chapters kind of
disagree with WMF idea that centralization is a good move for the
mouvement...
Actually it can be considered quite a coherent plan: if the chapters are
completely controlled by the WMF, like local branches of a corporation
but with more subtle means, then there's no conflict of interest,
perceived (by whom?) or real.
I don't understand, by the way, why the perceived "conflict of interest"
should be perceived as high right now, and in need of being reduced; the
topic seems a bit surreal, Florence gave better examples and context of
real COI issues.
Michael Snow, 02/09/2011 22:02:
If the point is to improve communication, then a more
practical approach
might be to designate "observers" who are not given authority but merely
sit in with a chapter board.
I don't consider this practical, rather ideal: it's impossible to
appoint voting (and working) board members, as explained by Ilario,
Florence and others; at least observers are ideally possible. Assuming
that they are not spies of another organization (!) but they're there
because they know the language, the chapter and its problems, and they
are willing to help with suggestions, who wouldn't be happy to have
them? But even considering only the language problem mentioned by BYria,
this is going to be quite difficult and the WMF is most likely not able
to find suitable observers; the ChapCom /could/ be able to. I bet that
WMIT board would be super-happy to have e.g. Delphine as observer, if
she wanted to follow yet another mailing list and bunch of meetings; but
despite her preternatural ability to find discussions (among thousands
on our members mailing list) where she can give useful feedback, this
doesn't seem a safe assumption even in this lucky context.
But we're going more and more offtopic.
Theo10011, 02/09/2011 21:25:
I
would argue that the onus is on WMF to aid in communication, there is
still
not a single dedicated person on staff for chapter
coordination/outreach,
instead most Chapter relation/oversight comes from an unusual overlap of
Global Development, Communications department and rarely Community
department. Let me put this in perspective, there are 3 Storytellers, a
Strategy department, dedicated researchers, full-time on staff but not a
single person to deal with chapters who have been around for several
years.
If a board of chapters composed of volunteers who have to solely rely
on the
foundation for activities have to do a better job in
communications, the
Foundation has to do its part first.
Perhaps this can take us a bit more on topic.
There's indeed a big confusion about WMF staff responsibilities and it
would be interesting to know how the "Outreach" and the "Global South"
departments will work together, why they're separated despite the
overlaps etc. Brasil could be a good example to see whether the local
office will just be yet another layer of complexity or rather a useful
single point of contact and catalyst for the local chapter and community.
I've been following the WMF Brasil office activities on Meta for several
months now (almost a year) and I don't understand completely how local
activities have been organized and what impact they had so far, so I
don't know what's the best approach, but the letter by Wikimedia Brasil
is very good in its approach if not in the details. To actually involve
the local community and chapter in the activities, besides generic
transparency which often doesn't actually give room to useful feedback,
we could imagine something like an advisory board or scientific
committee (not executive), appointed by the local chapter (and which
could just be the chapter board of trustees, to start with), which would
assist and somehow oversee the local office, with frequent reciprocal
reports and feedback at least.
Nemo