Dear all,
As most of you know, the Board of Trustees met at the Foundation's new San Francisco headquarters a few weeks ago. At that meeting, we talked about how best to represent the full array of community members, and how best to provide professional oversight for the work of the staff. As a result of those conversations, we're announcing today some changes to the makeup of the Board, and to the Board member appointment process. We think these are positive changes that will help the Board to safeguard the Wikimedia Foundation's ability to fulfill the mission. We hope you agree.
I've laid out the most significant changes below.
We are increasing the number of Board positions to 10 overall, comprised of the following:
* Three seats elected by you, the community * Two seats to be selected by the chapters * One Board-appointed 'Community Founder' seat * Four 'specific expertise' seats, also to be Board-appointed
The most significant change here is probably the addition of two chapters-selected seats. This has been under consideration for a long time, and we are glad to finally be implementing it. We want to acknowledge that the chapters are an important player in the fulfillment of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission, and that they therefore deserve a voice in the governance of the Foundation. Please note that the two chapters-selected seats are not intended to represent the interests of the chapters vis-a-vis the Foundation. The chapters are being asked to pick trustees who they feel will represent the interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, and help it fulfill its mission as well as it possibly can.
We are also specifically naming four seats as designated for “specific expertise.” The goal here is to add skills and capacities to the current board. For example, we might decide to actively recruit board members with deep non-profit governance experience, or fundraising expertise.
We are also formalizing Jimmy's role as Community Founder, by designating a seat for that purpose.
These changes are effective today, but we will not be filling all of these roles immediately. It will take some time -likely several months to a year- before all the changes are implemented. Here's how that will work:
Nothing changes immediately. The current Board membership will stay in place, and will fill out the new roles/positions as follows:
* Three community-elected seats: - Florence Devouard (seat up for election July 2008; then, next up for election July 2009) - Kat Walsh (seat up for election July 2009) - Frieda Brioschi (seat up for election July 2009) * Chapter-selected seats: - Domas Mituzas, Executive Secretary (to be held until chapters make their own appointment) - Michael Snow (to be held until chapters make their own appointment) * Community Founder - Jimmy Wales (term expires December 31, 2008) * 'Specific expertise' seats - Jan-Bart de Vreede , Vice Chair (term expires December 31, 2008) - Stuart West, Treasurer (term expires December 31, 2008) - Vacant (term expires December 31, 2008) - Vacant (term expires December 31, 2008)
The 'specific expertise' seats, and community founder seat, will be re-appointed starting in January 2009. The chapter-selected seats will be filled as soon as the Chapters appoint representatives. Domas Mituzas and Michael Snow, who were originally asked to sit on the Board until June 2008, will be extended in their seats until the chapters make their choices.
Both the community-elected and chapter-selected seats have a duration of two years. These seats will expire in alternating years, which means that community-elected seats will be up for renewal on the July 1st 2009, 2011, and 2013, and chapter-selected seats will be up for renewal on July 1st 2010, 2012, 2014, etc.
In the short-term, the next significant date for the Board is the election for the one seat, which expires in July of this year. This is the seat currently held by Florence Devouard. The term of that seat will last for one year, to July 2009. This is a shorter term than normal, but the intent is to have the three community-elected seats all line up to one consistent election date in July 2009. You will hear more later today from the elections committee.
Once all of these positions are in place, we trust we will have built a strong Board that is well-positioned to safeguard the Wikimedia Foundation's mission, and our ability to fulfill it. We hope you agree.
We know this is all pretty complicated and hard to follow, so we asked Jay Walsh, head of communications, to put together an FAQ and a “board makeup” graphic, intended to help make it more understandable. He'll be posting both on the Foundation wiki in about an hour.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board
Thanks, Jan-Bart de Vreede Vice-chair, Board of Trustees
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 9:19 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede janbart@wikimedia.org wrote: [...] Very important things
Professionally looking new pictures! I'll be transwikiing them to Commons.
Looks very nice. However, Jay, when linking to external sites in single bracket mode, you don't need a pipe: [http://www.fetching.net www.fetching.net], not [http://www.fetching.net%7C www.fetching.net]. WikiText can be complicated at times ;)
Bryan
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 9:19 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede janbart@wikimedia.org wrote:
The most significant change here is probably the addition of two chapters-selected seats. This has been under consideration for a long time, and we are glad to finally be implementing it. We want to acknowledge that the chapters are an important player in the fulfillment of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission, and that they therefore deserve a voice in the governance of the Foundation. Please note that the two chapters-selected seats are not intended to represent the interests of the chapters vis-a-vis the Foundation. The chapters are being asked to pick trustees who they feel will represent the interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, and help it fulfill its mission as well as it possibly can.
Have the details of this already been worked out? Are those two seats divided via an election where every chapter has an X number of votes, or is it a more consensus orientated process where all chapters discuss together which two candidates are the best suited?
Both the community-elected and chapter-selected seats have a duration of two years. These seats will expire in alternating years, which means that community-elected seats will be up for renewal on the July 1st 2009, 2011, and 2013, and chapter-selected seats will be up for renewal on July 1st 2010, 2012, 2014, etc.
That sounds like a good idea as the past has shown that organizing elections is a time costly effort.
Bryan
2008/4/26 Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.com:
Have the details of this already been worked out? Are those two seats divided via an election where every chapter has an X number of votes, or is it a more consensus orientated process where all chapters discuss together which two candidates are the best suited?
It'll be a tricky one. e.g. WM-DE is an organisation with actual money and an employee, whereas WM-UK has existence and nothing much else. Let's assume "details to be worked out" :-)
- d.
At 20:57 +0100 26/4/08, David Gerard wrote:
2008/4/26 Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.com:
Have the details of this already been worked out? Are those two seats divided via an election where every chapter has an X number of votes, or is it a more consensus orientated process where all chapters discuss together which two candidates are the best suited?
It'll be a tricky one. e.g. WM-DE is an organisation with actual money and an employee, whereas WM-UK has existence and nothing much else. Let's assume "details to be worked out" :-)
- d.
WM-UK exists, that's true.
But when will it become something with any muscle? It has no governance of its own, since it has no members?
Gordo
On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 00:08 +0100, Gordon Joly wrote:
WM-UK exists, that's true.
But when will it become something with any muscle? It has no governance of its own, since it has no members?
And until it start accepting members again, it won't have any members.....
KTC
Bryan Tong Minh wrote:
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 9:19 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede janbart@wikimedia.org wrote:
The most significant change here is probably the addition of two chapters-selected seats. This has been under consideration for a long time, and we are glad to finally be implementing it. We want to acknowledge that the chapters are an important player in the fulfillment of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission, and that they therefore deserve a voice in the governance of the Foundation. Please note that the two chapters-selected seats are not intended to represent the interests of the chapters vis-a-vis the Foundation. The chapters are being asked to pick trustees who they feel will represent the interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, and help it fulfill its mission as well as it possibly can.
Have the details of this already been worked out? Are those two seats divided via an election where every chapter has an X number of votes, or is it a more consensus orientated process where all chapters discuss together which two candidates are the best suited?
The chapters read this announcement for the first time right now. The chapters will be the ones defining this process. It is entirely up to them to decide how they will elect the two representatives. So, no details have been worked out.
Ant
The chapters read this announcement for the first time right now. The chapters will be the ones defining this process. It is entirely up to them to decide how they will elect the two representatives. So, no details have been worked out.
Ant
So all chapters must group together and elect two people? Is that correct?
I would have thought that chapters were concerned, by definition, with local matters, rather than global matters. Forcing chapters to get together in this may be in line with own governing documents.
Gordo
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 8:19 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede janbart@wikimedia.org wrote:
Dear all,
As most of you know, the Board of Trustees met at the Foundation's new San Francisco headquarters a few weeks ago. At that meeting, we talked about how best to represent the full array of community members, and how best to provide professional oversight for the work of the staff. As a result of those conversations, we're announcing today some changes to the makeup of the Board, and to the Board member appointment process. We think these are positive changes that will help the Board to safeguard the Wikimedia Foundation's ability to fulfill the mission. We hope you agree.
I've laid out the most significant changes below.
We are increasing the number of Board positions to 10 overall, comprised of the following:
- Three seats elected by you, the community
- Two seats to be selected by the chapters
- One Board-appointed 'Community Founder' seat
- Four 'specific expertise' seats, also to be Board-appointed
The most significant change here is probably the addition of two chapters-selected seats. This has been under consideration for a long time, and we are glad to finally be implementing it. We want to acknowledge that the chapters are an important player in the fulfillment of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission, and that they therefore deserve a voice in the governance of the Foundation. Please note that the two chapters-selected seats are not intended to represent the interests of the chapters vis-a-vis the Foundation. The chapters are being asked to pick trustees who they feel will represent the interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, and help it fulfill its mission as well as it possibly can.
We are also specifically naming four seats as designated for "specific expertise." The goal here is to add skills and capacities to the current board. For example, we might decide to actively recruit board members with deep non-profit governance experience, or fundraising expertise.
We are also formalizing Jimmy's role as Community Founder, by designating a seat for that purpose.
These changes are effective today, but we will not be filling all of these roles immediately. It will take some time -likely several months to a year- before all the changes are implemented. Here's how that will work:
Nothing changes immediately. The current Board membership will stay in place, and will fill out the new roles/positions as follows:
- Three community-elected seats:
- Florence Devouard (seat up for election July 2008; then, next up for
election July 2009)
- Kat Walsh (seat up for election July 2009)
- Frieda Brioschi (seat up for election July 2009)
- Chapter-selected seats:
- Domas Mituzas, Executive Secretary (to be held until chapters make
their own appointment)
- Michael Snow (to be held until chapters make their own appointment)
- Community Founder
- Jimmy Wales (term expires December 31, 2008)
- 'Specific expertise' seats
- Jan-Bart de Vreede , Vice Chair (term expires December 31, 2008)
- Stuart West, Treasurer (term expires December 31, 2008)
- Vacant (term expires December 31, 2008)
- Vacant (term expires December 31, 2008)
The 'specific expertise' seats, and community founder seat, will be re-appointed starting in January 2009. The chapter-selected seats will be filled as soon as the Chapters appoint representatives. Domas Mituzas and Michael Snow, who were originally asked to sit on the Board until June 2008, will be extended in their seats until the chapters make their choices.
Both the community-elected and chapter-selected seats have a duration of two years. These seats will expire in alternating years, which means that community-elected seats will be up for renewal on the July 1st 2009, 2011, and 2013, and chapter-selected seats will be up for renewal on July 1st 2010, 2012, 2014, etc.
In the short-term, the next significant date for the Board is the election for the one seat, which expires in July of this year. This is the seat currently held by Florence Devouard. The term of that seat will last for one year, to July 2009. This is a shorter term than normal, but the intent is to have the three community-elected seats all line up to one consistent election date in July 2009. You will hear more later today from the elections committee.
Once all of these positions are in place, we trust we will have built a strong Board that is well-positioned to safeguard the Wikimedia Foundation's mission, and our ability to fulfill it. We hope you agree.
We know this is all pretty complicated and hard to follow, so we asked Jay Walsh, head of communications, to put together an FAQ and a "board makeup" graphic, intended to help make it more understandable. He'll be posting both on the Foundation wiki in about an hour.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board
Thanks, Jan-Bart de Vreede Vice-chair, Board of Trustees
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Interesting changes. Do these changes affect the amount of seats available for election in the upcoming elections? I was under the impression there were three, but the graphics appear to indicate only a single seat is up for election this year.
~ Paul Williams
Paul Williams wrote:
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 8:19 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede janbart@wikimedia.org wrote:
We know this is all pretty complicated and hard to follow, so we asked Jay Walsh, head of communications, to put together an FAQ and a "board makeup" graphic, intended to help make it more understandable. He'll be posting both on the Foundation wiki in about an hour.
Interesting changes. Do these changes affect the amount of seats available for election in the upcoming elections? I was under the impression there were three, but the graphics appear to indicate only a single seat is up for election this year.
There are still three elected seats, but only one up for election this year. We couldn't shorten Kat and Frieda's terms when they were already elected to serve until July 2009, so to allow the chapters to make their selections it needed to be the seats Domas and I currently occupy.
For answers to additional questions relating to this announcement, please look at the FAQ: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announceme... Please take a look, although we'll certainly respond to any issues that aren't covered there.
--Michael Snow
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 9:38 PM, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net wrote:
Paul Williams wrote:
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 8:19 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede <
janbart@wikimedia.org>
wrote:
We know this is all pretty complicated and hard to follow, so we asked Jay Walsh, head of communications, to put together an FAQ and a "board makeup" graphic, intended to help make it more understandable. He'll be posting both on the Foundation wiki in about an hour.
Interesting changes. Do these changes affect the amount of seats
available
for election in the upcoming elections? I was under the impression there were three, but the graphics appear to indicate only a single seat is up
for
election this year.
There are still three elected seats, but only one up for election this year. We couldn't shorten Kat and Frieda's terms when they were already elected to serve until July 2009, so to allow the chapters to make their selections it needed to be the seats Domas and I currently occupy.
For answers to additional questions relating to this announcement, please look at the FAQ:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announceme... Please take a look, although we'll certainly respond to any issues that aren't covered there.
--Michael Snow
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Certainly looks like the race is going to be a lot tighter than I anticipated this year. Should be quite interesting to see how far I end up getting, because, to be honest, I don't see a committed board member like Florence being outvoted.
~ Paul Williams
Paul Williams wrote:
Certainly looks like the race is going to be a lot tighter than I anticipated this year. Should be quite interesting to see how far I end up getting, because, to be honest, I don't see a committed board member like Florence being outvoted.
Well, she'll have to decide whether to run. The election committee will have more details soon I hope about how the election part will work. By the way, if you plan to be a candidate, you might want to update your English Wikipedia user page so that people realize you're eligible.
--Michael Snow
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 9:50 PM, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net wrote:
Paul Williams wrote:
Certainly looks like the race is going to be a lot tighter than I anticipated this year. Should be quite interesting to see how far I end
up
getting, because, to be honest, I don't see a committed board member
like
Florence being outvoted.
Well, she'll have to decide whether to run. The election committee will have more details soon I hope about how the election part will work. By the way, if you plan to be a candidate, you might want to update your English Wikipedia user page so that people realize you're eligible.
--Michael Snow
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Can you tell that enWP isn't my primary project? :P
Thank you for the heads up.
~ Paul Williams
Michael Snow wrote:
For answers to additional questions relating to this announcement, please look at the FAQ: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announceme...
One question has been raised privately that's not covered, and I think is worth explaining: With 10 seats planned, did the board take into consideration the possibility that this could result in a deadlock?
The answer is that we did touch on the issue in our discussions, but concluded it was a relatively minor concern at this point. For one thing, a 5-5 vote would fail to pass whatever is being voted on, appropriately so. Working toward agreement is usually better, to me a measure with that kind of opposition is a sign that problems need to be worked out before moving forward with it. For another thing, as the membership of the board changes, inevitably the numbers will change between odd and even at various points. Right now we have eight members, in fact, but we certainly didn't want to wait longer to add a treasurer just because that's an even number.
--Michael Snow
On Sat, 2008-04-26 at 21:19 +0200, Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote:
- Jimmy Wales (term expires December 31, 2008)
Can someone with access correct http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announceme... so that it doesn't say 2009 and thus contradicting both this email and the foundation's own Board page? ;)
KTC
Hmm, let's let a board member update that one... they might have extended the appointed members' terms at another meeting. ;-)
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 8:28 PM, Kwan Ting Chan ktc@ktchan.info wrote:
On Sat, 2008-04-26 at 21:19 +0200, Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote:
- Jimmy Wales (term expires December 31, 2008)
Can someone with access correct http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announceme... so that it doesn't say 2009 and thus contradicting both this email and the foundation's own Board page? ;)
KTC
-- Experience is a good school but the fees are high.
- Heinrich Heine
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I'll be curious to see how the various chapters determine amongst themselves, without guidance for the board, how to select the two board members allocated to them. Will they use the existing inter-chapter structure, the Chapters Committee, to coordinate discussion? I'm also curious as to the rationale for this change -- have the two chapter seats been created because it was felt that the non-English project participants have been under-represented in past elections? Do their members vote at lower rate of participation than the English project members? I'm assuming that all the folks who might participate in local chapters continue to have a vote for the community seats, so will the net effect be that their individual votes are the equivalent of some multiple of a vote from a community member without a representative chapter?
Nathan
On 4/26/08, Casey Brown cbrown1023.ml@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm, let's let a board member update that one... they might have extended the appointed members' terms at another meeting. ;-)
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 8:28 PM, Kwan Ting Chan ktc@ktchan.info wrote:
On Sat, 2008-04-26 at 21:19 +0200, Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote:
- Jimmy Wales (term expires December 31, 2008)
Can someone with access correct
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announceme... that it doesn't say 2009 and thus contradicting both this email and the foundation's own Board page? ;)
KTC
-- Experience is a good school but the fees are high.
- Heinrich Heine
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-- Casey Brown Cbrown1023
Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the rationale was explained: The Board wants the Chapters to have more involvement in the governance of the foundation, and since the chapters presumably would know good candidates for the board (as they'd probably have already identified some as candidates for their own boards) the move benefits both Board and Chapters. Presumably, these would be something like "appointed community seats" as opposed to "elected community seats".
-Dan On Apr 26, 2008, at 10:55 PM, Nathan wrote:
I'll be curious to see how the various chapters determine amongst themselves, without guidance for the board, how to select the two board members allocated to them. Will they use the existing inter-chapter structure, the Chapters Committee, to coordinate discussion? I'm also curious as to the rationale for this change -- have the two chapter seats been created because it was felt that the non-English project participants have been under-represented in past elections? Do their members vote at lower rate of participation than the English project members? I'm assuming that all the folks who might participate in local chapters continue to have a vote for the community seats, so will the net effect be that their individual votes are the equivalent of some multiple of a vote from a community member without a representative chapter?
Nathan
On 4/26/08, Casey Brown cbrown1023.ml@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm, let's let a board member update that one... they might have extended the appointed members' terms at another meeting. ;-)
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 8:28 PM, Kwan Ting Chan ktc@ktchan.info wrote:
On Sat, 2008-04-26 at 21:19 +0200, Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote:
- Jimmy Wales (term expires December 31, 2008)
Can someone with access correct
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announceme... that it doesn't say 2009 and thus contradicting both this email and the foundation's own Board page? ;)
KTC
-- Experience is a good school but the fees are high.
- Heinrich Heine
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-- Casey Brown Cbrown1023
Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.
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Dan Rosenthal wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the rationale was explained: The Board wants the Chapters to have more involvement in the governance of the foundation, and since the chapters presumably would know good candidates for the board (as they'd probably have already identified some as candidates for their own boards) the move benefits both Board and Chapters. Presumably, these would be something like "appointed community seats" as opposed to "elected community seats".
I think that is all clear. What is not clear, however, is what precisely is the quality the chapters activists have that for example, OTRS volunteers, developers, the admin / bureaucrat / steward class, the arbitrator committees of the various projects, or any number of other special group within Wikimedians does not have.
As I queried earlier, is it the intention that in the future there will also be earmarked seats for developers, OTRS members etc.
I do not question the good sense of the people in the chapters, but I question the implication that for instance our developers don't have an equal amount of good sense.
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, AKA. Cimon Avaro
2008/4/27 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com:
As I queried earlier, is it the intention that in the future there will also be earmarked seats for developers, OTRS members etc.
I wonder how long until this turns from a board into a senate...
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the rationale was explained: The Board wants the Chapters to have more involvement in the governance of the foundation, and since the chapters presumably would know good candidates for the board (as they'd probably have already identified some as candidates for their own boards) the move benefits both Board and Chapters. Presumably, these would be something like "appointed community seats" as opposed to "elected community seats".
This could very well be the case, but Chapters do represent national interests. Perhaps some day chapters should indeed be represented, but I'm afraid that at this stage it's a half-baked idea that opens up a whole new can of worms.
Ec
I don't disagree with you Ec, I'm simply trying to find a way to talk about this without saying my true feelings about the restructuring, which would likely get me moderated ;)
-Dan On Apr 27, 2008, at 12:58 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the rationale was explained: The Board wants the Chapters to have more involvement in the governance of the foundation, and since the chapters presumably would know good candidates for the board (as they'd probably have already identified some as candidates for their own boards) the move benefits both Board and Chapters. Presumably, these would be something like "appointed community seats" as opposed to "elected community seats".
This could very well be the case, but Chapters do represent national interests. Perhaps some day chapters should indeed be represented, but I'm afraid that at this stage it's a half-baked idea that opens up a whole new can of worms.
Ec
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Nathan wrote:
I'll be curious to see how the various chapters determine amongst themselves, without guidance for the board, how to select the two board members allocated to them. Will they use the existing inter-chapter structure, the Chapters Committee, to coordinate discussion? I'm also curious as to the rationale for this change -- have the two chapter seats been created because it was felt that the non-English project participants have been under-represented in past elections? Do their members vote at lower rate of participation than the English project members? I'm assuming that all the folks who might participate in local chapters continue to have a vote for the community seats, so will the net effect be that their individual votes are the equivalent of some multiple of a vote from a community member without a representative chapter?
The chapters, or at least those that are able to attend, have a previously scheduled meeting coming up in May. Hopefully they'll be able to get a start there on figuring out the process to pick the two board members they will select. Delphine as the Chapters Coordinator, along with Jan-Bart on behalf of the board, will be there to help as well.
As for the rationale, I would say that it's primarily a sense that the connection with the chapters needed to be stronger. The chapters are valuable partners for the global Wikimedia Foundation, but haven't been integrated into its governance as well as they could be. Sometimes this created the impression that the chapters are dependent organizations which can do things with the foundation's permission, without a way for them to have independent input. Giving chapters an explicit role in selecting board members recognizes them as stakeholders who rightfully should contribute to governing the foundation.
That also ties in with my comments on the Volunteer Council proposal. Rather than create a new foundation-level structure and figure out what it might be good for, I think it was important to work better with the pieces that are already in place. By that I don't wish to discourage development of a council as a community-level structure.
I don't think the issue of representation played a big factor in the restructuring, at least in the sense you're asking about. The elections have resulted in board members like Florence and Frieda; if anything the last election had people concerned that the rate of voter participation from the English projects was too low, until a "get-out-the-vote" drive materialized and presented its own issues. We are of course an international organization and I'm sure board selections will continue to reflect that somehow. The chapters can consider this along with other issues - the point is for the chapters to choose whom they believe to be the best available people, rather than falling into a trap of "we have to pick somebody from Portugal this year because we picked somebody from Japan last time."
--Michael Snow
At 21:51 -0700 26/4/08, Michael Snow wrote:
Nathan wrote:
I'll be curious to see how the various chapters determine amongst themselves, without guidance for the board, how to select the two board members allocated to them. Will they use the existing inter-chapter structure, the Chapters Committee, to coordinate discussion? I'm also curious as to the rationale for this change -- have the two chapter seats been created because it was felt that the non-English project participants have been under-represented in past elections? Do their members vote at lower rate of participation than the English project members? I'm assuming that all the folks who might participate in local chapters continue to have a vote for the community seats, so will the net effect be that their individual votes are the equivalent of some multiple of a vote from a community member without a representative chapter?
The chapters, or at least those that are able to attend, have a previously scheduled meeting coming up in May.
What meeting in May?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee
Hopefully they'll be able to get a start there on figuring out the process to pick the two board members they will select. Delphine as the Chapters Coordinator, along with Jan-Bart on behalf of the board, will be there to help as well.
They will indeed.
As for the rationale, I would say that it's primarily a sense that the connection with the chapters needed to be stronger. The chapters are valuable partners for the global Wikimedia Foundation, but haven't been integrated into its governance as well as they could be. Sometimes this created the impression that the chapters are dependent organizations which can do things with the foundation's permission, without a way for them to have independent input. Giving chapters an explicit role in selecting board members recognizes them as stakeholders who rightfully should contribute to governing the foundation.
That also ties in with my comments on the Volunteer Council proposal. Rather than create a new foundation-level structure and figure out what it might be good for, I think it was important to work better with the pieces that are already in place. By that I don't wish to discourage development of a council as a community-level structure.
I don't think the issue of representation played a big factor in the restructuring, at least in the sense you're asking about. The elections have resulted in board members like Florence and Frieda; if anything the last election had people concerned that the rate of voter participation from the English projects was too low, until a "get-out-the-vote" drive materialized and presented its own issues. We are of course an international organization and I'm sure board selections will continue to reflect that somehow. The chapters can consider this along with other issues - the point is for the chapters to choose whom they believe to be the best available people, rather than falling into a trap of "we have to pick somebody from Portugal this year because we picked somebody from Japan last time."
--Michael Snow
I sense a big change in the Foundation in the past few months (maybe since the end of last year). The Foundation exists as a single body, Wikipedians exist in their thousands. If the Foundation is trying to listen, then maybe they should change the tune, since it does not resonate.
Gordo
On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 4:55 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I'll be curious to see how the various chapters determine amongst themselves, without guidance for the board, how to select the two board members allocated to them. Will they use the existing inter-chapter structure, the Chapters Committee, to coordinate discussion?
Just to clarify one point, the chapters committee is not an inter-chapter structure, but a committee appointed by the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, which lends a hand to the Board and chapters coordinator (myself) on the Foundation side, as well as helps new and existing chapters when it comes to chapters matters.
Its main task in the past months has been the guidance of new would-be chapters in their first steps towards officialisation as Wikimedia chapters.
Cheers,
Delphine
At 09:55 +0200 27/4/08, Delphine Ménard wrote:
On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 4:55 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I'll be curious to see how the various chapters determine amongst themselves, without guidance for the board, how to select the two board members allocated to them. Will they use the existing inter-chapter structure, the Chapters Committee, to coordinate discussion?
Just to clarify one point, the chapters committee is not an inter-chapter structure, but a committee appointed by the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, which lends a hand to the Board and chapters coordinator (myself) on the Foundation side, as well as helps new and existing chapters when it comes to chapters matters.
Its main task in the past months has been the guidance of new would-be chapters in their first steps towards officialisation as Wikimedia chapters.
Cheers,
Delphine
If there is no "inter-chapter structure", how will the Chapters vote on two people for the new positions?
Gordo
Nathan wrote:
I'll be curious to see how the various chapters determine amongst themselves, without guidance for the board, how to select the two board members allocated to them. Will they use the existing inter-chapter structure, the Chapters Committee, to coordinate discussion? I'm also curious as to the rationale for this change -- have the two chapter seats been created because it was felt that the non-English project participants have been under-represented in past elections? Do their members vote at lower rate of participation than the English project members? I'm assuming that all the folks who might participate in local chapters continue to have a vote for the community seats, so will the net effect be that their individual votes are the equivalent of some multiple of a vote from a community member without a representative chapter?
Nathan
have the two chapter seats been created because it was felt that the non-English project participants have been under-represented in past elections?
Absolutely and most explicitely not.
First, let me remind you that there is a UK chapter and an Australian chapter, who will weight in the elections. We also recommand that a new US chapter be created in the future, even if that implies special policies to define their relationships with WMF. Second, chapters may perfectly decide to appoint english-native as their representant. Third, with only one seat open for elections this year and usually a 2/3 majority of english-native voters, I'd say this year elections will probably be painful for everyone.
The chapter seats comes from several considerations. Essentially, the mission of the WMF is to work in coordination with a network of chapters. The mission is shared between all of our organizations, and the WMF controls certain assets needed by the chapters (trademarks), which made the partnership a certain one-sided collaboration. Providing seats to chapters is both a way to foster a real coordination between all of our organizations, and a way to recognize the chapter role in the great scheme of things.
Side benefit is that chapters also may understand better than community some of the organization needs and as such bring interesting missing and different expertise. I'd say it will enrich things in bringing a different viewpoint that editing community. Our community is not only about editing the projects, it is also about promoting them to the public, answering the press, dealing with the various legal complaints, discussing with government to push for better laws, seeking funds, organizing Wikimania or Academies, producing DVDs, implementing tech features, etc... Many of these things are largely handled by chapters or chapters-to-be. So, it seems fair to recognise them as stakeholders as well.
I think that for a certain time, it will make very little difference to what would have happened. If you look at past elections, many elected were actually chapter board members (Florence, Frieda, Oscar)
I'm assuming that all the folks who might participate in local
chapters continue to have a vote for the community seats, so will the net effect be that their individual votes are the equivalent of some multiple of a vote from a community member without a representative chapter?
Some chapter members are not community members, so will not have a vote to the general elections. As for chapter selection, we still do not know how it will be organized (will all members vote ? will only board vote ? Or chair ? Or what ? they may also decide that those voting at these elections will not vote at the other elections ? We just do not know yet)
Ant
On 4/26/08, Casey Brown cbrown1023.ml@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm, let's let a board member update that one... they might have extended the appointed members' terms at another meeting. ;-)
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 8:28 PM, Kwan Ting Chan ktc@ktchan.info wrote:
On Sat, 2008-04-26 at 21:19 +0200, Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote:
- Jimmy Wales (term expires December 31, 2008)
Can someone with access correct
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announceme... that it doesn't say 2009 and thus contradicting both this email and the foundation's own Board page? ;)
KTC
-- Experience is a good school but the fees are high.
- Heinrich Heine
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Florence Devouard wrote:
The chapter seats comes from several considerations. Essentially, the mission of the WMF is to work in coordination with a network of chapters. The mission is shared between all of our organizations, and the WMF controls certain assets needed by the chapters (trademarks), which made the partnership a certain one-sided collaboration. Providing seats to chapters is both a way to foster a real coordination between all of our organizations, and a way to recognize the chapter role in the great scheme of things.
This may be a laudable long-term goal to aim at, but for the medium term, the vast majority of countries are not represented by a chapter---and those regions that do have chapters are already disproportionately well-represented. So this will, if anything, tend to increase the disparity in representation.
For the record, this is the current chapter distribution: Europe - 9 East Asia - 2 Middle East - 1 South America - 1 Australia - 1
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Florence Devouard wrote:
The chapter seats comes from several considerations. Essentially, the mission of the WMF is to work in coordination with a network of chapters. The mission is shared between all of our organizations, and the WMF controls certain assets needed by the chapters (trademarks), which made the partnership a certain one-sided collaboration. Providing seats to chapters is both a way to foster a real coordination between all of our organizations, and a way to recognize the chapter role in the great scheme of things.
This may be a laudable long-term goal to aim at, but for the medium term, the vast majority of countries are not represented by a chapter---and those regions that do have chapters are already disproportionately well-represented. So this will, if anything, tend to increase the disparity in representation.
For the record, this is the current chapter distribution: Europe - 9 East Asia - 2 Middle East - 1 South America - 1 Australia - 1
-Mark
You are absolutely correct Mark. But you may not have understood that chapters will not necessarily elect chapter members ? I even have the weakness to think that they will have the wisdom to avoid that trap ;-)
Ant
Florence Devouard wrote:
You are absolutely correct Mark. But you may not have understood that chapters will not necessarily elect chapter members ? I even have the weakness to think that they will have the wisdom to avoid that trap ;-)
Well that's true, but they still get the vote---even if they elect someone else, they have the power to decide who to elect. I'm not sure I like the power being distributed with such a skew, that for example Europeans get 9 input into the process nine times, and Japanese zero.
Of course I don't really like the idea of chapters in the first place, so that's a whole separate issue (I tend to dislike nation-based organizations, especially as they tend to promote nationalism).
-Mark
I share your concerns. For instance WMF AU and WMF UK are going to be more likely to want to pick someone from the en.wp community, but are not likely to be familiar with potential candidates from say, ru.wp. A theoretical WMF Japan, however, would likely be wanting to pick someone from the jp.wp and have absolutely no familiarity with anyone from the en.wp, de.wp or other communities.
The end result is either that the chapters pick from their own, or they take outside direction as to who to pick (which then defeats the purpose of it being a community seat).
-Dan
On Apr 27, 2008, at 10:40 PM, Delirium wrote:
Florence Devouard wrote:
You are absolutely correct Mark. But you may not have understood that chapters will not necessarily elect chapter members ? I even have the weakness to think that they will have the wisdom to avoid that trap ;-)
Well that's true, but they still get the vote---even if they elect someone else, they have the power to decide who to elect. I'm not sure I like the power being distributed with such a skew, that for example Europeans get 9 input into the process nine times, and Japanese zero.
Of course I don't really like the idea of chapters in the first place, so that's a whole separate issue (I tend to dislike nation-based organizations, especially as they tend to promote nationalism).
-Mark
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2008/4/28 Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com:
I share your concerns. For instance WMF AU and WMF UK are going to be more likely to want to pick someone from the en.wp community, but are not likely to be familiar with potential candidates from say, ru.wp. A theoretical WMF Japan, however, would likely be wanting to pick someone from the jp.wp and have absolutely no familiarity with anyone from the en.wp, de.wp or other communities.
The end result is either that the chapters pick from their own, or they take outside direction as to who to pick (which then defeats the purpose of it being a community seat).
I am wondering if it would be possible to make a voting similar to the "normal" community seats' election but the voters would be formal members of chapters only. Candidates would be nominated by Boards of chapters. The problem is what to do with non-member chapters (are there any?)
On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 1:23 PM, Tomasz Ganicz polimerek@gmail.com wrote:
2008/4/28 Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com:
I am wondering if it would be possible to make a voting similar to the "normal" community seats' election but the voters would be formal members of chapters only. Candidates would be nominated by Boards of chapters. The problem is what to do with non-member chapters (are there any?)
On the paper, there aren't any chapters with no members. In the reality, some older chapters and some new don't have members /yet/.
Delphine
First I think it would have been nice this decision making would have had a public comment phase, before the Board simply resolved that as such, while most of its current members come from the community. It is rather, a issue of process of formalization of decision making, not criticism to its outcome. <OT>Adherence of good formalized process is a strong feature of tea ceremony and Japanese way of thought in general.</OT> .
On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
For the record, this is the current chapter distribution: Europe - 9 East Asia - 2 Middle East - 1 South America - 1 Australia - 1
-Mark
You are absolutely correct Mark. But you may not have understood that chapters will not necessarily elect chapter members ? I even have the weakness to think that they will have the wisdom to avoid that trap ;-)
Hopefully so, and Kurt seems to show such a wisdom already (and you are also WMFR Board member, right?), so in a short time it would be okay (or am I too optimistic?), but for a long run, I'm not sure the scheme announced is the best composition and schedule.
Several brainstormig ideas: * Why not having the "chapter seats" as of appointed ones and keep the community vote seats in the current number or so? * Why distribute into 3/2/1/4? Why not 4/2/ ... and have the community to elect 2 in one year? * Why (always) need 4 appointed? (I think it was already brought up...) why not say "up to 4"? etc etc.
The chapter seats may have many implications. It may be seen as an alternative of current community seats, so from this view, it could be seen as reduced the power of community, specially when one have no near future possibility to settle a chapter in his land (e.g. PRC Main Land, excluding HK and Macau). Reflecting more thought from the chapters, in respect to their experience, is fine. But reducing the representation of the rest of community is not always fine.
However, I have another thought it wouldn't make the situation change drastically at least at this moment: my gray cell units whispers "anyway most of votes come from the project whose volunteers or at least some of them have formed a chapter or more?" And I am tempting to say "yeah, exactly" .... For 2007: top ten projects of voters were en [UK and now Austria], de [DE, CH and now AU], fr [FR, CH], it [IT, CH], pl, nl [NL], ja, commons, no [now NO], es [now AR and we know already some planning chapters] . Only ja has no chapter even in the plan, and we may remove commons for this consideration because of their service project characteristic.. In top twenty, we will find also he and zh. sv and sr had relatively small numbers of voters (10 and 8 respectively) but anyway there are many projects which had no voter at all).
I won't say the issue of overweight is purely theoretical, since I believe the composition of Board should be considered carefully, both in a short term and in a long run. But even such consideration is genuine theoretical, it should be based on facts we know and have faced. I think I don't so much like of this chapter seat and its distribution ideas, but currently I won't reject it simply either.
Re: community election schedule. As a past election committee member I tend to support a election in every two years, because of overhead of election process, but on the other hand, I believe the basic idea of having an election every year is good to keep the BoT composition to reflect the latest community concerns, specially considering the possibility the chapter seats will be able to be taken by people not coming from the community.
And my first question was: is there any potential problem to have other orgs (legally chapters are other orgs based in another country, at least at that moment, right?) voices to select WMF BoT and not vice versa? I suppose the Board had consulted Mike and he nodded, but I would love to get further explanation.
Aphaia wrote:
First I think it would have been nice this decision making would have had a public comment phase, before the Board simply resolved that as such, while most of its current members come from the community. It is rather, a issue of process of formalization of decision making, not criticism to its outcome. <OT>Adherence of good formalized process is a strong feature of tea ceremony and Japanese way of thought in general.</OT> .
*nod*
The chapter seats may have many implications. It may be seen as an alternative of current community seats, so from this view, it could be seen as reduced the power of community, specially when one have no near future possibility to settle a chapter in his land (e.g. PRC Main Land, excluding HK and Macau). Reflecting more thought from the chapters, in respect to their experience, is fine. But reducing the representation of the rest of community is not always fine.
Yes, I think this is an important point. There are three things that matter. Appearances matter. Formal arrangements matter. Practical functionality matters. Ignoring any one of these three is not good.
I have an idle thought. If there are to be seats elected by a limited circle of projects with chapters, would not the easiest manner of balancing things be that people from projects with chapters not be able to vote in the other elections from the community. In this fashion the so called "community" seats would be transformed into "chapterless community seats".
Note that this proposal has the virtue that this would not disenfranchise nearly all the _individuals_ who contribute to projects with chapters, as many of them contribute in multiple languages, and thus may have an voting-eligble account in a smaller language without chapter.
However, I have another thought it wouldn't make the situation change drastically at least at this moment: my gray cell units whispers "anyway most of votes come from the project whose volunteers or at least some of them have formed a chapter or more?" And I am tempting to say "yeah, exactly" .... For 2007: top ten projects of voters were en [UK and now Austria], de [DE, CH and now AU], fr [FR, CH], it [IT, CH], pl, nl [NL], ja, commons, no [now NO], es [now AR and we know already some planning chapters] . Only ja has no chapter even in the plan, and we may remove commons for this consideration because of their service project characteristic.. In top twenty, we will find also he and zh. sv and sr had relatively small numbers of voters (10 and 8 respectively) but anyway there are many projects which had no voter at all).
I won't say the issue of overweight is purely theoretical, since I believe the composition of Board should be considered carefully, both in a short term and in a long run. But even such consideration is genuine theoretical, it should be based on facts we know and have faced. I think I don't so much like of this chapter seat and its distribution ideas, but currently I won't reject it simply either.
If we ignore (just for discussion, not in the real world, as that would be bad) for the moment the "formal structure" and the "outward appearance" of the thing; in practical terms there might become into force a paradoxical tendency...
Since in practise the disenfranchisement of the chapterless this new process creates would drastically lower the "opportunity cost" of creating a completely separate institution to represent specifically the chapterless, whether official or unofficial, those of a paranoid tendency in the chapters, might in actual practise bend over backwards to make sure the *actual* concerns of the chapterless are given high attention to.
I am not saying this is necessarily a felicitous way of making sure that that happens, but it is something to consider.
Yours in Wikimedia;
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, AKA. Cimon Avaro
On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 07:54 +0300, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
I have an idle thought. If there are to be seats elected by a limited circle of projects with chapters, would not the easiest manner of balancing things be that people from projects with chapters not be able to vote in the other elections from the community. In this fashion the so called "community" seats would be transformed into "chapterless community seats".
Note that this proposal has the virtue that this would not disenfranchise nearly all the _individuals_ who contribute to projects with chapters, as many of them contribute in multiple languages, and thus may have an voting-eligble account in a smaller language without chapter.
No, just no.
This *will* be disenfranchising all the people who contribute, some quite a lot, for the simple reason that they are not involved with the chapter in their respective country. I will argue that many contributor in fact _do not_ contribute in multiple language.
KTC
Kwan Ting Chan wrote:
On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 07:54 +0300, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
I have an idle thought. If there are to be seats elected by a limited circle of projects with chapters, would not the easiest manner of balancing things be that people from projects with chapters not be able to vote in the other elections from the community. In this fashion the so called "community" seats would be transformed into "chapterless community seats".
Note that this proposal has the virtue that this would not disenfranchise nearly all the _individuals_ who contribute to projects with chapters, as many of them contribute in multiple languages, and thus may have an voting-eligble account in a smaller language without chapter.
No, just no.
This *will* be disenfranchising all the people who contribute, some quite a lot, for the simple reason that they are not involved with the chapter in their respective country. I will argue that many contributor in fact _do not_ contribute in multiple language.
KTC
I have to agree with KTC. This issue was actually discussed in length with Sue when she joined the staff. She believed that we could consider chapters represented all editors of a given nation, whilst the Foundation would represent all the un-represented nations. But that would suppose that all editors of a nation actually feel (or want to be) represented by the local chapter. This is not the case.
Ant
Honestly, a few months participating in the projects hands on would give the Board and staff a much better idea of who they're working for. It's not for your large donors. It's not for potential venture capitalists. It's not for any of the reasons or people that seem to recently be the focus of the WMF.
In case you all have forgotten, you work for the community. The community is not the tight-knit group who post on Foundation-l or contribute to meta. The community also isn't the pre-approved list of people allowed to post via the approved mediums (read: PR channels, such as Planet Wikimedia or the WMF Blog). The community also isn't defined by what the ED's staff or Board says it is.
The community is the millions of anonymous and pseudo-anonymous contributors who've put their work into the projects to give a staff a nice fat paycheck and let the Board pussyfoot their way around proper governance.
Out of curiosity: If the entire Board and staff were put up to a public vote across /all/ projects (assuming good representation could be assured), I wonder how many of them would be with the WMF at the end of the day.
For free content, Chad
On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 5:08 AM, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Kwan Ting Chan wrote:
On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 07:54 +0300, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
I have an idle thought. If there are to be seats elected by a limited circle of projects with chapters, would not the easiest manner of balancing things be that people from projects with chapters not be able to vote in the other elections from the community. In this fashion the so called "community" seats would be transformed into "chapterless community seats".
Note that this proposal has the virtue that this would not disenfranchise nearly all the _individuals_ who contribute to projects with chapters, as many of them contribute in multiple languages, and thus may have an voting-eligble account in a smaller language without chapter.
No, just no.
This *will* be disenfranchising all the people who contribute, some quite a lot, for the simple reason that they are not involved with the chapter in their respective country. I will argue that many contributor in fact _do not_ contribute in multiple language.
KTC
I have to agree with KTC. This issue was actually discussed in length with Sue when she joined the staff. She believed that we could consider chapters represented all editors of a given nation, whilst the Foundation would represent all the un-represented nations. But that would suppose that all editors of a nation actually feel (or want to be) represented by the local chapter. This is not the case.
Ant
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Hello,
Honestly, a few months participating in the projects hands on would give the Board and staff a much better idea of who they're working for. It's not for your large donors. It's not for potential venture capitalists. It's not for any of the reasons or people that seem to recently be the focus of the WMF.
Alas, we're all working for readers (and creating nice environment to convert readers into writers). Collaboration and community is tool to create the value of freely accessible knowledge.
Board is not governing the community, either. Board is taking care, that organization, that supports the projects, is able to sustain, provide tools for contributors, provide access to users. Organization is trying to facilitate lots of things, but rarely to be 'power body'. It is not 'power body', it does not want to exercise power. It is not representational body, it is a body where people spend quite some time to discuss and agree on topics, based on various inputs.
In case you all have forgotten, you work for the community.
In our work, everyone is our community. A kid that tells his parents how wikipedia is good for him. A student fighting with his teacher about credibility of his sources. Anyone who uses Wikipedia in the end ends up to be an advocate. Is advocate part of our community? For sure. How many readers of ours are advocates? :)
The community is not the tight-knit group who post on Foundation-l channels, such as Planet Wikimedia or the WMF Blog). The community also isn't defined by what the ED's staff or Board says it is.
:) indeed, because there is no such definition.
The community is the millions of anonymous and pseudo-anonymous contributors who've put their work into the projects to give a staff a nice fat paycheck and let the Board pussyfoot their way around proper governance.
Please, show some respect to people for their work, as behind the 'nice fat' (???) paycheck there are duties and responsibilities, that had to be taken care of.
Out of curiosity: If the entire Board and staff were put up to a public vote across /all/ projects (assuming good representation could be assured), I wonder how many of them would be with the WMF at the end of the day.
Unfortunately, not all aspects of running an organization are a popularity contest.
The staff of this particular project is indeed working in order to facilitate the work of the editors in the project. There is no other reason for their role. This facilitation is extremely important, and i do not want to appear to downgrade it. We do need some monetary and legal and technical support and coordination, and, at our size, it cannot be in practice done on a purely voluntary basis, but requires a few dedicated professionals.
The board, however, are not the staff. They exists as a legally responsible body to make the official formulation of policy--for the benefit of the project. The project itself is the work of the editors (in the broad sense, including the programmers and so forth). To the extent they do so in accordance with the aims of the people actually working on the project, they do it correctly., The best people to determine this are not themselves, but those who are doing the actual work and development.
On 4/28/08, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
Chad wrote:
In case you all have forgotten, you work for the community.
Flat wrong. Both, the projects and the staff, work for the idea of free knowledge. The staff is not working for the editors.
Ciao Henning
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At 15:17 -0400 28/4/08, David Goodman wrote:
The staff of this particular project is indeed working in order to facilitate the work of the editors in the project. There is no other reason for their role. This facilitation is extremely important, and i do not want to appear to downgrade it. We do need some monetary and legal and technical support and coordination, and, at our size, it cannot be in practice done on a purely voluntary basis, but requires a few dedicated professionals.
The board, however, are not the staff. They exists as a legally responsible body to make the official formulation of policy--for the benefit of the project. The project itself is the work of the editors (in the broad sense, including the programmers and so forth). To the extent they do so in accordance with the aims of the people actually working on the project, they do it correctly., The best people to determine this are not themselves, but those who are doing the actual work and development.
So, is there seat on the board for the programmers who maintain Mediawiki?
Gordo
Hoi, A chapter is not related to any project. You can contribute either to a project or to a chapter, the two are not necessarily related. You may either be represented by a chapter in your country or you are not represented at all in this way. Thanks, GerardM
On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 6:54 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Aphaia wrote:
First I think it would have been nice this decision making would have had a public comment phase, before the Board simply resolved that as such, while most of its current members come from the community. It is rather, a issue of process of formalization of decision making, not criticism to its outcome. <OT>Adherence of good formalized process is a strong feature of tea ceremony and Japanese way of thought in general.</OT> .
*nod*
The chapter seats may have many implications. It may be seen as an alternative of current community seats, so from this view, it could be seen as reduced the power of community, specially when one have no near future possibility to settle a chapter in his land (e.g. PRC Main Land, excluding HK and Macau). Reflecting more thought from the chapters, in respect to their experience, is fine. But reducing the representation of the rest of community is not always fine.
Yes, I think this is an important point. There are three things that matter. Appearances matter. Formal arrangements matter. Practical functionality matters. Ignoring any one of these three is not good.
I have an idle thought. If there are to be seats elected by a limited circle of projects with chapters, would not the easiest manner of balancing things be that people from projects with chapters not be able to vote in the other elections from the community. In this fashion the so called "community" seats would be transformed into "chapterless community seats".
Note that this proposal has the virtue that this would not disenfranchise nearly all the _individuals_ who contribute to projects with chapters, as many of them contribute in multiple languages, and thus may have an voting-eligble account in a smaller language without chapter.
However, I have another thought it wouldn't make the situation change drastically at least at this moment: my gray cell units whispers "anyway most of votes come from the project whose volunteers or at least some of them have formed a chapter or more?" And I am tempting to say "yeah, exactly" .... For 2007: top ten projects of voters were en [UK and now Austria], de [DE, CH and now AU], fr [FR, CH], it [IT, CH], pl, nl [NL], ja, commons, no [now NO], es [now AR and we know already some planning chapters] . Only ja has no chapter even in the plan, and we may remove commons for this consideration because of their service project characteristic.. In top twenty, we will find also he and zh. sv and sr had relatively small numbers of voters (10 and 8 respectively) but anyway there are many projects which had no voter at all).
I won't say the issue of overweight is purely theoretical, since I believe the composition of Board should be considered carefully, both in a short term and in a long run. But even such consideration is genuine theoretical, it should be based on facts we know and have faced. I think I don't so much like of this chapter seat and its distribution ideas, but currently I won't reject it simply either.
If we ignore (just for discussion, not in the real world, as that would be bad) for the moment the "formal structure" and the "outward appearance" of the thing; in practical terms there might become into force a paradoxical tendency...
Since in practise the disenfranchisement of the chapterless this new process creates would drastically lower the "opportunity cost" of creating a completely separate institution to represent specifically the chapterless, whether official or unofficial, those of a paranoid tendency in the chapters, might in actual practise bend over backwards to make sure the *actual* concerns of the chapterless are given high attention to.
I am not saying this is necessarily a felicitous way of making sure that that happens, but it is something to consider.
Yours in Wikimedia;
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, AKA. Cimon Avaro
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Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
I have an idle thought. If there are to be seats elected by a limited circle of projects with chapters, would not the easiest manner of balancing things be that people from projects with chapters not be able to vote in the other elections from the community. In this fashion the so called "community" seats would be transformed into "chapterless community seats".
Note that this proposal has the virtue that this would not disenfranchise nearly all the _individuals_ who contribute to projects with chapters, as many of them contribute in multiple languages, and thus may have an voting-eligble account in a smaller language without chapter.
I would be cautious about tying projects to chapters, considering that they do not map to each other at all exactly. So unless I misunderstand your proposal, I think the consequences for individual participation are more drastic than you seem to believe. You suggest people might have accounts on other projects, but it seems like this would "disenfranchise" everyone who contributes to the Spanish projects, all because a chapter has been formed in Argentina.
I'd be more inclined to take the idea and turn it completely around. In the context of chapters selecting board members, I think it's worth considering having an "at-large chapter" for people to participate in if they don't have one available in their jurisdiction. Since it already puts us in a situation where we have to think outside the standard mold of what is a chapter, because we need to create something for the US among others, a virtual chapter could be considered. A "chapter" for board selection purposes need not be a "chapter" in the sense of an incorporated nonprofit entity with tax deductibility for donations and the ability to make formal agreements. Maybe this would also help some of the places where people have expressed concerns about the wisdom of actually forming associations - I vaguely recall Japan might have that issue, for example.
--Michael Snow
Michael Snow wrote:
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
I have an idle thought. If there are to be seats elected by a limited circle of projects with chapters, would not the easiest manner of balancing things be that people from projects with chapters not be able to vote in the other elections from the community. In this fashion the so called "community" seats would be transformed into "chapterless community seats".
Note that this proposal has the virtue that this would not disenfranchise nearly all the _individuals_ who contribute to projects with chapters, as many of them contribute in multiple languages, and thus may have an voting-eligble account in a smaller language without chapter.
I would be cautious about tying projects to chapters, considering that they do not map to each other at all exactly. So unless I misunderstand your proposal, I think the consequences for individual participation are more drastic than you seem to believe. You suggest people might have accounts on other projects, but it seems like this would "disenfranchise" everyone who contributes to the Spanish projects, all because a chapter has been formed in Argentina.
I'd be more inclined to take the idea and turn it completely around. In the context of chapters selecting board members, I think it's worth considering having an "at-large chapter" for people to participate in if they don't have one available in their jurisdiction. Since it already puts us in a situation where we have to think outside the standard mold of what is a chapter, because we need to create something for the US among others, a virtual chapter could be considered. A "chapter" for board selection purposes need not be a "chapter" in the sense of an incorporated nonprofit entity with tax deductibility for donations and the ability to make formal agreements. Maybe this would also help some of the places where people have expressed concerns about the wisdom of actually forming associations - I vaguely recall Japan might have that issue, for example.
Well, in the past this approach has met with "mixed" support.
I point you towards:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:European_Wikimedia_chapter
That said...
I do think your refutation of my (not entirely serious) suggestion is valid. The mapping is indeed untenable in the sense of such a mechanistic application expressed in my light-hearted suggestion.
Curiously we are now in the process of brainstorming after the fact, rather than preliminary to the initial decision being taken.
Yours in Wikimedia;
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, AKA. Cimon Avaro
I have already asked this question on meta (and got a response from Ziko, which I am however not to happy with).
A real life example.
I am a Russian citizen, mostly contributing to ru.wp, and I am an admin on ru.wp
I reside in the Netherlands and I have smth like 10 edits on nl.wp (probably there will be more coming, but at the time I have no interest in nl.wp meta-issues).
I have whatsoever no connection with the (potentially upcoming) ru chapter, and I would be definitely not able to attend the meetings etc.
What chapter does represent me, even in the long run?
Note that three out of 5 bureaucrats of ru.wp reside abroad (2 in Germany, 1 in Belgium), and two of them have never been (and probably will never become) Russian citizens or residents.
Cheers Yaroslav
You are absolutely correct Mark. But you may not have understood that chapters will not necessarily elect chapter members ? I even have the weakness to think that they will have the wisdom to avoid that trap ;-)
Hopefully so,$B!!(Band Kurt seems to show such a wisdom already (and you are also WMFR Board member, right?), so in a short time it would be okay (or am I too optimistic?), but for a long run, I'm not sure the scheme announced is the best composition and schedule.
Several brainstormig ideas:
- Why not having the "chapter seats" as of appointed ones and keep the
community vote seats in the current number or so?
- Why distribute into 3/2/1/4? Why not 4/2/ ... and have the
community to elect 2 in one year?
- Why (always) need 4 appointed? (I think it was already brought
up...) why not say "up to 4"? etc etc.
The chapter seats may have many implications. It may be seen as an alternative of current community seats, so from this view, it could be seen as reduced the power of community, specially when one have no near future possibility to settle a chapter in his land (e.g. PRC Main Land, excluding HK and Macau). Reflecting more thought from the chapters, in respect to their experience, is fine. But reducing the representation of the rest of community is not always fine.
However, I have another thought it wouldn't make the situation change drastically at least at this moment: my gray cell units whispers "anyway most of votes come from the project whose volunteers or at least some of them have formed a chapter or more?" And I am tempting to say "yeah, exactly" .... For 2007: top ten projects of voters were en [UK and now Austria], de [DE, CH and now AU], fr [FR, CH], it [IT, CH], pl, nl [NL], ja, commons, no [now NO], es [now AR and we know already some planning chapters] . Only ja has no chapter even in the plan, and we may remove commons for this consideration because of their service project characteristic.. In top twenty, we will find also he and zh. sv and sr had relatively small numbers of voters (10 and 8 respectively) but anyway there are many projects which had no voter at all).
I won't say the issue of overweight is purely theoretical, since I believe the composition of Board should be considered carefully, both in a short term and in a long run. But even such consideration is genuine theoretical, it should be based on facts we know and have faced. I think I don't so much like of this chapter seat and its distribution ideas, but currently I won't reject it simply either.
Re: community election schedule. As a past election committee member I tend to support a election in every two years, because of overhead of election process, but on the other hand, I believe the basic idea of having an election every year is good to keep the BoT composition to reflect the latest community concerns, specially considering the possibility the chapter seats will be able to be taken by people not coming from the community.
And my first question was: is there any potential problem to have other orgs (legally chapters are other orgs based in another country, at least at that moment, right?) voices to select WMF BoT and not vice versa? I suppose the Board had consulted Mike and he nodded, but I would love to get further explanation.
-- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD
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Hoi, Becoming a member of a chapter is a choice. As a chapter is not related to projects, contributors to the Russian, Javanese, West Frisian, English and Dutch projects are equally welcome to the Dutch chapter. A chapter is organised in order to provide representation of our movement in a particular jurisdiction. I call it movement here because it is NOT representing neither the WMF nor its projects.
There is nothing wrong in having contributors to projects all over the world. It is important for chapters to realise that they need to be welcoming to the people that are not part of what is often considered the primary project in a country. When you consider Russia, many of its languages are included in the long list that we support with Wikipedias and other projects. Thanks, GerardM
2008/4/28 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru:
I have already asked this question on meta (and got a response from Ziko, which I am however not to happy with).
A real life example.
I am a Russian citizen, mostly contributing to ru.wp, and I am an admin on ru.wp
I reside in the Netherlands and I have smth like 10 edits on nl.wp (probably there will be more coming, but at the time I have no interest in nl.wp meta-issues).
I have whatsoever no connection with the (potentially upcoming) ru chapter, and I would be definitely not able to attend the meetings etc.
What chapter does represent me, even in the long run?
Note that three out of 5 bureaucrats of ru.wp reside abroad (2 in Germany, 1 in Belgium), and two of them have never been (and probably will never become) Russian citizens or residents.
Cheers Yaroslav
You are absolutely correct Mark. But you may not have understood that chapters will not necessarily elect chapter members ? I even have the weakness to think that they will have the wisdom to avoid that trap ;-)
Hopefully so, and Kurt seems to show such a wisdom already (and you are also WMFR Board member, right?), so in a short time it would be okay (or am I too optimistic?), but for a long run, I'm not sure the scheme announced is the best composition and schedule.
Several brainstormig ideas:
- Why not having the "chapter seats" as of appointed ones and keep the
community vote seats in the current number or so?
- Why distribute into 3/2/1/4? Why not 4/2/ ... and have the
community to elect 2 in one year?
- Why (always) need 4 appointed? (I think it was already brought
up...) why not say "up to 4"? etc etc.
The chapter seats may have many implications. It may be seen as an alternative of current community seats, so from this view, it could be seen as reduced the power of community, specially when one have no near future possibility to settle a chapter in his land (e.g. PRC Main Land, excluding HK and Macau). Reflecting more thought from the chapters, in respect to their experience, is fine. But reducing the representation of the rest of community is not always fine.
However, I have another thought it wouldn't make the situation change drastically at least at this moment: my gray cell units whispers "anyway most of votes come from the project whose volunteers or at least some of them have formed a chapter or more?" And I am tempting to say "yeah, exactly" .... For 2007: top ten projects of voters were en [UK and now Austria], de [DE, CH and now AU], fr [FR, CH], it [IT, CH], pl, nl [NL], ja, commons, no [now NO], es [now AR and we know already some planning chapters] . Only ja has no chapter even in the plan, and we may remove commons for this consideration because of their service project characteristic.. In top twenty, we will find also he and zh. sv and sr had relatively small numbers of voters (10 and 8 respectively) but anyway there are many projects which had no voter at all).
I won't say the issue of overweight is purely theoretical, since I believe the composition of Board should be considered carefully, both in a short term and in a long run. But even such consideration is genuine theoretical, it should be based on facts we know and have faced. I think I don't so much like of this chapter seat and its distribution ideas, but currently I won't reject it simply either.
Re: community election schedule. As a past election committee member I tend to support a election in every two years, because of overhead of election process, but on the other hand, I believe the basic idea of having an election every year is good to keep the BoT composition to reflect the latest community concerns, specially considering the possibility the chapter seats will be able to be taken by people not coming from the community.
And my first question was: is there any potential problem to have other orgs (legally chapters are other orgs based in another country, at least at that moment, right?) voices to select WMF BoT and not vice versa? I suppose the Board had consulted Mike and he nodded, but I would love to get further explanation.
-- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD
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On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 10:33 PM, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Delirium wrote:
For the record, this is the current chapter distribution: Europe - 9 East Asia - 2 Middle East - 1 South America - 1 Australia - 1
-Mark
You are absolutely correct Mark. But you may not have understood that chapters will not necessarily elect chapter members ? I even have the weakness to think that they will have the wisdom to avoid that trap ;-)
Hey, the method of chapter selection hasn't been determined yet, right? So the chapters could just choose to use the same election process as the rest of the elected members. Or would the board forbid that?
Anthony wrote:
On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 10:33 PM, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Delirium wrote:
For the record, this is the current chapter distribution: Europe - 9 East Asia - 2 Middle East - 1 South America - 1 Australia - 1
-Mark
You are absolutely correct Mark. But you may not have understood that chapters will not necessarily elect chapter members ? I even have the weakness to think that they will have the wisdom to avoid that trap ;-)
Hey, the method of chapter selection hasn't been determined yet, right? So the chapters could just choose to use the same election process as the rest of the elected members. Or would the board forbid that?
That sounds like a throwback to the very first elections that brought Anthere and Angela to the Board. One of the seats would somehow have been linked to formal membership, but that proved to be impractical so the two positions became indistinguishable from each other.
Ec
Kwan Ting Chan wrote:
On Sat, 2008-04-26 at 21:19 +0200, Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote:
- Jimmy Wales (term expires December 31, 2008)
Can someone with access correct http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announceme... so that it doesn't say 2009 and thus contradicting both this email and the foundation's own Board page?
Sorry about that, I just fixed it. Jimmy's term expires at the end of this year; the same is true for Jan-Bart and Stu; it also would apply to anyone else appointed in the near future specifically for their expertise.
--Michael Snow
Hi,
I had the impression that Florence's "elected" position had been converted into an "appointed" one. But now I see it is listed as a community one.
Will the Board look to the community first to fill the appointed 'expertise' seats? (I understand in many, probably most cases, that expertise + willingness may not exist.)
Under this new structure, will it be possible that community-elected positions may be converted to board-appointed? (Expert in the community?)
Are the 'specific expertise' seats going to be for specifically named areas of expertise?
Community Founder seat seems to be locking Jimmy into the Board for, well, indefinitely. Presumably he is happy with that, but it will mean the rules need to be changed when he can't do it any more, right? (Yer, maybe decades from now :)) I mean, there are no other people in the community, and there never will be, who fufil the role of "community founder". What is the point of "formalizing Jimmy's role as Community Founder" - why not just make his seat one of the Board appointed ones?
It will be interesting to see how the chapter seats play out.
regards, Brianna
Hoi, The seat occupied by Anthere was changed in order to be up for re-election a year later. It has always been a community seat. The motivation was that being the chair and the amount of instability at the time, it gives the board of trustees a little more needed stability.
Jimmy IS in a class of its own. I am convinced that when his seat were a "community seat" he would easily keep his position. On the other hand his influence and support makes a world of a difference to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation. If he occupies the "community founder" seat and does this as well as he has done so far, I would not begrudge him not to have to stand for elections. When you compare his seat with the "specific expertise" seats, it is hard to express what exact expertise makes Jimmy qualify, I think that his constant involvement from the start and his intimate awareness of much what goes on gives him this "specific expertise". In the end by giving him the "community founder" seat, you express his unique position that qualifies him as an expert and recognises his position in the community. Thanks, GerardM
On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 8:35 AM, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I had the impression that Florence's "elected" position had been converted into an "appointed" one. But now I see it is listed as a community one.
Will the Board look to the community first to fill the appointed 'expertise' seats? (I understand in many, probably most cases, that expertise + willingness may not exist.)
Under this new structure, will it be possible that community-elected positions may be converted to board-appointed? (Expert in the community?)
Are the 'specific expertise' seats going to be for specifically named areas of expertise?
Community Founder seat seems to be locking Jimmy into the Board for, well, indefinitely. Presumably he is happy with that, but it will mean the rules need to be changed when he can't do it any more, right? (Yer, maybe decades from now :)) I mean, there are no other people in the community, and there never will be, who fufil the role of "community founder". What is the point of "formalizing Jimmy's role as Community Founder" - why not just make his seat one of the Board appointed ones?
It will be interesting to see how the chapter seats play out.
regards, Brianna
-- They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment: http://modernthings.org/
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Brianna Laugher wrote:
Will the Board look to the community first to fill the appointed 'expertise' seats? (I understand in many, probably most cases, that expertise + willingness may not exist.)
We consciously avoided calling them "external experts" for that reason. The priority for those positions is the expertise, though. A marginally qualified candidate from the community would not take precedence over a fully qualified "outsider". But in case of similarly qualified candidates, someone from the community would have the advantage by being familiar with the culture already.
Under this new structure, will it be possible that community-elected positions may be converted to board-appointed? (Expert in the community?)
Depends what you mean. In the bylaws amendments that will implement this plan, we are specifically providing that a majority of the positions (not counting Jimmy) are to be selected by the community/chapters. The structure as outlined is 5 and 4 (3+2=5 community seats, 4 expertise seats, and Jimmy), so no, the position itself could not be changed in this fashion.
If you're referring only to the person, someone who was once elected could later be given an appointed position. That depends on whether the person has expertise of the kind the board is looking to appoint. Nobody can occupy two seats at once, though.
Are the 'specific expertise' seats going to be for specifically named areas of expertise?
We'll be reviewing exactly what expertise the foundation most needs on the board. It's possible that this may change over time, so we may not want to attach an area of expertise permanently to a specific seat. It also remains to be seen what expertise comes out of the selections by the community and the chapters.
Community Founder seat seems to be locking Jimmy into the Board for, well, indefinitely. Presumably he is happy with that, but it will mean the rules need to be changed when he can't do it any more, right? (Yer, maybe decades from now :)) I mean, there are no other people in the community, and there never will be, who fufil the role of "community founder". What is the point of "formalizing Jimmy's role as Community Founder" - why not just make his seat one of the Board appointed ones?
This is touched on in the FAQ, but maybe the reasons for it aren't fully explained. The distinction is partly because of the balance outlined above, by which a majority of the board would come from the community in one way or another. It would be ridiculous and insulting to say that Jimmy is not from the community, but it's also desirable not to have the community majority depend on him always being around, so he's set aside as a special case. Jimmy can of course resign anytime he wants to, and the board can choose not to renew his term if it wants to, but in either scenario the seat disappears.
--Michael Snow
Brianna Laugher wrote:
Hi,
I had the impression that Florence's "elected" position had been converted into an "appointed" one. But now I see it is listed as a community one.
Yes, it is mostly a simplification to "describe" things. In a similar way, Domas and Michael are now "chapter seat". Transitional glitches :-)
Will the Board look to the community first to fill the appointed 'expertise' seats? (I understand in many, probably most cases, that expertise + willingness may not exist.)
Under this new structure, will it be possible that community-elected positions may be converted to board-appointed? (Expert in the community?)
Are the 'specific expertise' seats going to be for specifically named areas of expertise?
All good questions. Here is the background: * Some board members agree that we need "external experts" to cast a different light on things, provide a different approach (eg, Jan-Bart) * Most (all ?) board members agree that we need certain skills on the board, to fullfill our fiduciary role (eg, fundraising, finances, legal etc..). And notice that these skills are not necessarily brought by community elections, hence the need *for the board* to have the ability to appoint additional people when necessary (eg, Stu) * At the same time, some members feel that the organization must stay under control of the editing community * And some members fear that the organization could be "taken over" by powerful forces if there are no safegards regarding community involvement
In the current system, community+chapter seats represent half of the board, and may prevent any take over by external forces. Which leave a rather large independance to the board to appoint *external* experts as needed. The experts may be from the community or may be external. There is no obligation to first look outside, nor in the community. The primary lead will be the skill needed.
Every year, after the elections (community or chapter), a nominating committee will meet and decide which skillsets are missing on the *current* board (the one with brand new members). After missing skills are identified, this committee will look for candidates to provide these specific skills. I do not think a "seat" will be associated to a specific expertise since the expertise missing may change every year and since a board member can bring different skills in the plate (eg, Stuart is both bringing business and finances skills).
May someone from the community be appointed for "community" expertise ? Probably not. We traditionally have never lacked community expertise, and the new system with 5 elected will probably just go on bringing community expertise. As a consequence, it is much more likely that these four seats will bring other types of expertise entirely.
Incidently, note that chapters may very well elect as representatives someone who is not a chapter member, or even who may not be a real community member. That's up to them.
I guess the transparent question is "would Florence be appointed as community expert". I am fully sure the answer is no.
Community Founder seat seems to be locking Jimmy into the Board for, well, indefinitely. Presumably he is happy with that, but it will mean the rules need to be changed when he can't do it any more, right? (Yer, maybe decades from now :)) I mean, there are no other people in the community, and there never will be, who fufil the role of "community founder". What is the point of "formalizing Jimmy's role as Community Founder" - why not just make his seat one of the Board appointed ones?
I tend to agree with you that the Community Founder seat locks Jimbo in that seat for probably forever, which, imho, is not good. But this was the best consensus we could agree on.
The main problem is that for the past, at least, year, we have struggled as to whether Jimbo had a "community" seat or an "appointed" seat. As for me, I find really hard to call "community" seat the seat of someone who has never been elected, who never will, and who has a special position in the community. Jimbo, however, felt really really wrong to be considered "external" (which is totally fair as well). The problem is that our bylaws explicitely said "majority of board members from the community". Was Jimbo to be counted as such or not ?
In the new scheme, Jimbo could not be put in the "chapter seats" (he may have not be elected), he could not be put in the "community seats", but he could not be put in "special expertise" seat either (he is not particularly bringing any of the expertises we have listed as necessary).
So, we got this solution out of the hat ;-) Whenever he does not want to be on anymore, he can just resign and this seat will automatically cease to exist (so, there is no need to change any rule).
It will be interesting to see how the chapter seats play out.
ya
ant
regards, Brianna
2008/4/27 Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com:
Incidently, note that chapters may very well elect as representatives someone who is not a chapter member, or even who may not be a real community member. That's up to them.
Right, so "the chapters" should decide first * what constitutes "the chapters" (members of internal? chapter boards? chapter members?) * what the method that the chapters will use to choose candidates will be (with no constraints at all??) and then * carry out the choosing of candidates according to the method they chose
And there's no kind of timeline or deadline for all this? And they could simply choose, say, to pick the top 2 failed candidates from the most recent community election?
Given that the seats are called chapters but "the two chapters-selected seats are not intended to represent chapters' self-interest"... It looks a little bit to me like the Board is pushing off the task of appointing Board members from the community, to "the chapters". Which may be an entirely good idea... but like Effietsanders, I (as a community member) am also rather surprised to only hear of it when it's all decided and done.
If the chapters are choosing community seats, I guess it may be appropriate for the community to have some input into that method. (You know -- if the chapters decide that would be good.)
I guess the transparent question is "would Florence be appointed as community expert". I am fully sure the answer is no.
Well, that's something of a shame, because in my experience you've been an active, hard-working and responsive board member.
which reminds me of your earlier comment:
- And some members fear that the organization could be "taken over" by
powerful forces if there are no safegards regarding community involvement
(Ironic... We are happy to let the content in the world's top reference source be decided by anyone who puts their hand up, but not the governance nub of same. When do we under- and when do we over-estimate our own power?)
With the recent professionalisation of WMF - massively expanded staff, and the end of the "working Board", is this fear still well-founded? (if it ever was)
Actually... does this mean that community elected positions are no longer subject to ultimate Board approval? I thought that was the safeguard.
Finally, does this Board update affect the Advisory Board?
cheers, Brianna
"Brianna Laugher" brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
[...] (Ironic... We are happy to let the content in the world's top reference source be decided by anyone who puts their hand up, but not the governance nub of same. When do we under- and when do we over-estimate our own power?)
With the recent professionalisation of WMF - massively expanded staff, and the end of the "working Board", is this fear still well-founded? (if it ever was) [...]
IBTD. A lot of users will happily create articles, revert vandalism and ensure NPOV on their turf but won't be inter- ested to follow foundation "politics" and so will either not participate in elections or maybe cast their vote for the most populist candidate.
What I find most interesting about the whole quest for councils and board seats (vulgo: power) is that there is no incentive to those positions: The funds are earmarked (and rather small) and as soon as you make a decision that is contrary to the community's consensus, they will walk and you will have to cover yourself whether Amy Winehouse is so- ber or stoned at the moment. Or, in other words: There is no power because you cannot give orders to volunteers.
Personally, I would not mind if the current board's terms end 2099 as long as the servers are running, MediaWiki is maintained and developed and the financial conduct does not cross any legal limits.
Tim
On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 8:07 PM, Tim Landscheidt tim@tim-landscheidt.de wrote:
"Brianna Laugher" brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
[...]
(Ironic... We are happy to let the content in the world's top reference source be decided by anyone who puts their hand up, but not the governance nub of same. When do we under- and when do we over-estimate our own power?)
With the recent professionalisation of WMF - massively expanded staff, and the end of the "working Board", is this fear still well-founded? (if it ever was) [...]
IBTD. A lot of users will happily create articles, revert vandalism and ensure NPOV on their turf but won't be inter- ested to follow foundation "politics" and so will either not participate in elections or maybe cast their vote for the most populist candidate.
What I find most interesting about the whole quest for councils and board seats (vulgo: power) is that there is no incentive to those positions: The funds are earmarked (and rather small) and as soon as you make a decision that is contrary to the community's consensus, they will walk and you will have to cover yourself whether Amy Winehouse is so- ber or stoned at the moment. Or, in other words: There is no power because you cannot give orders to volunteers.
Personally, I would not mind if the current board's terms end 2099 as long as the servers are running, MediaWiki is maintained and developed and the financial conduct does not cross any legal limits.
Tim
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I fully agree.
Bryan
2008/4/27, Tim Landscheidt tim@tim-landscheidt.de:
Personally, I would not mind if the current board's terms end 2099 as long as the servers are running, MediaWiki is maintained and developed and the financial conduct does not cross any legal limits.
Tim
I am not sure how to read this, but I would like to state that the mission of the Foundation (and actually of the Movement, which is much more important) is much broader then that. If we would only care about the servers, software and legal limits, I would very seriously wonder why we are continuing, because Free knowledge is about much more then that.
There are roughly four aspects of Free Knowledge in the game here. Creating, Maintaining, Gathering (but not creating yourself) and spreading. All those are of major importance. To create Free Knowledge, you need a community (which you have to maintain) and good infrastructure (ie, software), to maintain the Free Knowlegde you need both a Community and the Technical things (ie, servers). to gather you need much more contacts and goodwill, knowledge of local customs etc, and to spread, you need again another set of skills and resources.
So please let's be proud on our mission, and try to work it out in it's full glory.
BR, Lodewijk
"effe iets anders" effeietsanders@gmail.com wrote:
Personally, I would not mind if the current board's terms end 2099 as long as the servers are running, MediaWiki is maintained and developed and the financial conduct does not cross any legal limits.
I am not sure how to read this, but I would like to state that the mission of the Foundation (and actually of the Movement, which is much more important) is much broader then that. If we would only care about the servers, software and legal limits, I would very seriously wonder why we are continuing, because Free knowledge is about much more then that.
There are roughly four aspects of Free Knowledge in the game here. Creating, Maintaining, Gathering (but not creating yourself) and spreading. All those are of major importance. To create Free Knowledge, you need a community (which you have to maintain) and good infrastructure (ie, software), to maintain the Free Knowlegde you need both a Community and the Technical things (ie, servers). to gather you need much more contacts and goodwill, knowledge of local customs etc, and to spread, you need again another set of skills and resources.
So please let's be proud on our mission, and try to work it out in it's full glory.
There is much pathos in those words, and I seriously doubt that many users see themselves as part of "the Movement" (or would want to pledge themselves to anything like that). But be that as it may.
So, assuming the end is "is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to dissem- inate it effectively and globally", you have identified four (possible) means to achieve it. I do not see that board com- position or councils are among them and I could not imagine how they would be able to foster the stated end anyhow.
Tim
What I find most interesting about the whole quest for councils and board seats (vulgo: power) is that there is no incentive to those positions: The funds are earmarked (and rather small) and as soon as you make a decision that is contrary to the community's consensus, they will walk and you will have to cover yourself whether Amy Winehouse is so- ber or stoned at the moment. Or, in other words: There is no power because you cannot give orders to volunteers.
Personally, I would not mind if the current board's terms end 2099 as long as the servers are running, MediaWiki is maintained and developed and the financial conduct does not cross any legal limits.
Tim
To put it in an impolite way, I do not care a sh*t about power. I joined this list because some things I was dealing with were not (and are not) running smoothly. Of course you can not give orders to volunteers, but if there is an understanding that certain things should be done you can help the volunteers to get them done.
Cheers, Yaroslav
"Yaroslav M. Blanter" putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
What I find most interesting about the whole quest for councils and board seats (vulgo: power) is that there is no incentive to those positions: The funds are earmarked (and rather small) and as soon as you make a decision that is contrary to the community's consensus, they will walk and you will have to cover yourself whether Amy Winehouse is so- ber or stoned at the moment. Or, in other words: There is no power because you cannot give orders to volunteers.
Personally, I would not mind if the current board's terms end 2099 as long as the servers are running, MediaWiki is maintained and developed and the financial conduct does not cross any legal limits.
To put it in an impolite way, I do not care a sh*t about power. I joined this list because some things I was dealing with were not (and are not) running smoothly. Of course you can not give orders to volunteers, but if there is an understanding that certain things should be done you can help the volunteers to get them done.
Feel free to elaborate. Without looking at the archives, my memory serves the following non-meta issues discussed here:
- Ancient Greek Wikipedia
Maybe I did not pay enough attention. What did I miss?
Tim
On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 2:07 PM, Tim Landscheidt tim@tim-landscheidt.de wrote:
Or, in other words: There is no power because you cannot give orders to volunteers.
This meme is oft-repeated but still untrue. Almost every volunteer organization has a hierarchy and "gives orders" to its members to some extent. Its members are, of course, free to ignore those "orders", but the organization is then free to disallow them from further participation.
Seriously, what volunteer organization can you think of where volunteers are told to just do whatever they feel like? Does the Obama campaign committee give volunteers a bunch of blank signs and say "go support Obama", or do they assign people to particular routes and ask them to follow particular rules while canvassing?
The Wikimedia Foundation may run this way, and maybe it's even a good way of running things, but it's certainly not impossible to do it any other way.
Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Or, in other words: There is no power because you cannot give orders to volunteers.
This meme is oft-repeated but still untrue. Almost every volunteer organization has a hierarchy and "gives orders" to its members to some extent. Its members are, of course, free to ignore those "orders", but the organization is then free to disallow them from further participation.
Seriously, what volunteer organization can you think of where volunteers are told to just do whatever they feel like? Does the Obama campaign committee give volunteers a bunch of blank signs and say "go support Obama", or do they assign people to particular routes and ask them to follow particular rules while canvassing?
The Wikimedia Foundation may run this way, and maybe it's even a good way of running things, but it's certainly not impossible to do it any other way.
I have spent about a decade working in election campaigns, and, to repeat the "meme": You cannot give orders to volun- teers. (Besides, I see no rationale in disallowing an editor to edit article A before he has edited article B - probably you end up with no article edited at all. What would be the benefit?)
The US presidential election is a prime example: Polls show that supporters of the Democratic Party will not only cease their commitment if their favorite candidate is not nominated, they will even vote for *another* party's candi- date.
That is exactly the point I made in the post you replied to: Should the board decide against the consensus of the volunteers (editors, developers, system administrators, whatever), they will walk.
Tim
Tim Landscheidt wrote:
Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Or, in other words: There is no power because you cannot give orders to volunteers.
This meme is oft-repeated but still untrue. Almost every volunteer organization has a hierarchy and "gives orders" to its members to some extent. Its members are, of course, free to ignore those "orders", but the organization is then free to disallow them from further participation.
Seriously, what volunteer organization can you think of where volunteers are told to just do whatever they feel like? Does the Obama campaign committee give volunteers a bunch of blank signs and say "go support Obama", or do they assign people to particular routes and ask them to follow particular rules while canvassing?
The Wikimedia Foundation may run this way, and maybe it's even a good way of running things, but it's certainly not impossible to do it any other way.
I have spent about a decade working in election campaigns, and, to repeat the "meme": You cannot give orders to volun- teers. (Besides, I see no rationale in disallowing an editor to edit article A before he has edited article B - probably you end up with no article edited at all. What would be the benefit?)
The US presidential election is a prime example: Polls show that supporters of the Democratic Party will not only cease their commitment if their favorite candidate is not nominated, they will even vote for *another* party's candi- date.
That is exactly the point I made in the post you replied to: Should the board decide against the consensus of the volunteers (editors, developers, system administrators, whatever), they will walk.
Tim
I could not agree more with you. but I would like to offer another perspective as well.
Board members are also volunteers. And you are correct "you cannot give orders to volunteers".
A big difference between board and editors is that if an article has not been written yet, an editor can not be blamed for not having written it. Also, if an editor makes a mistake, the next editor can not be blamed for the mistake done by the previous editor.
It is not the case for the board. If a board member makes a mistake, then the whole board is seen as responsible. If a board member does not do his job, then the whole board is guilty of not providing this specific job. The outcome is quite embarassing. As Chair, I feel that a particular problematic situation. Whilst I "can not give orders to volunteer board members", I have to make sure that certain things are done and properly done (if not done, the community complains, the IRS complains, the audit company complains, the readers of the website complain etc...). But whilst I can not give orders to others, I can not fire them either.
I am left with either the choice of "letting the thing not done" (with the risk of failing to my own duties as board member, or with the risk of community blaming me as Chair, or with the risk of the community not electing me :-)); or I am left with the choice of trying to do the job myself, covering up for the others failures (at the risk of becoming enslaved to the Foundation, ruining my own personal and professional life).
"This meme is oft-repeated but still untrue. Almost every volunteer organization has a hierarchy and "gives orders" to its members to some extent. Its members are, of course, free to ignore those "orders", but the organization is then free to disallow them from further participation."
...is not something I believe is true neither in the case of our projects, nor of WMF.
Ant
On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 8:42 AM, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Tim Landscheidt wrote:
I have spent about a decade working in election campaigns, and, to repeat the "meme": You cannot give orders to volun- teers.
I see no sense that that is true.
(Besides, I see no rationale in disallowing an editor to edit article A before he has edited article B - probably you end up with no article edited at all. What would be the benefit?)
Depends what "Article A" and "Article B" are, but for the most part I agree with this.
The US presidential election is a prime example: Polls show that supporters of the Democratic Party will not only cease their commitment if their favorite candidate is not nominated, they will even vote for *another* party's candi- date.
Are you saying that all voters are "volunteers"? I guess this is true in a sense, as one is not required by law to vote (in the US). But when I referred to Obama volunteers I was thinking more of the people who work directly on the campaign.
That is exactly the point I made in the post you replied to: Should the board decide against the consensus of the volunteers (editors, developers, system administrators, whatever), they will walk.
Tim
Depends on the gravity of the decision (I'm sure no one agrees with the board 100%), but to some extent, yes, this is true.
A big difference between board and editors is that if an article has not been written yet, an editor can not be blamed for not having written it. Also, if an editor makes a mistake, the next editor can not be blamed for the mistake done by the previous editor.
It is not the case for the board. If a board member makes a mistake, then the whole board is seen as responsible. If a board member does not do his job, then the whole board is guilty of not providing this specific job.
This is only true if the individual board members choose not to publicly point out the mistake or neglect and speak against it.
The outcome is quite embarassing. As Chair, I feel that a particular problematic situation. Whilst I "can not give orders to volunteer board members", I have to make sure that certain things are done and properly done (if not done, the community complains, the IRS complains, the audit company complains, the readers of the website complain etc...). But whilst I can not give orders to others, I can not fire them either.
I am left with either the choice of "letting the thing not done" (with the risk of failing to my own duties as board member, or with the risk of community blaming me as Chair, or with the risk of the community not electing me :-)); or I am left with the choice of trying to do the job myself, covering up for the others failures (at the risk of becoming enslaved to the Foundation, ruining my own personal and professional life).
I certainly hope you do not choose the latter. You don't owe anything to us, Florence. If the Foundation is ruining your personal and/or professional life, please resign. I hope that's not the case, but I get the sense that you're saying it is.
As for the former, I think your first step, should you choose this route, should be to come to the community and explain what's not being done, or what's being done improperly. Then, if you feel you're qualified to do so, write up a resolution to fix the problem. It's not your fault if the rest of the board doesn't pass the resolution.
In a private organization, a "manager" can motivate a group by using various incentives. Saying publicly that someone is just not doing his job is not exactly the best way to stimulate an already not-so-active person.
The best solution is probably to have a cohesive group, with a deep sense of the collective. A cohesive group, with complementary skills and compatible personnalities.
The way to have such a group is by making it possible to someone to actually define which group he wants, and to recruit the members of this group. This is not exactly how we build the board. The majority of members are chosen by others, regardless of the cohesiveness of the group.
(I do not say that elections are a bad idea. I like elections. However, the community should feel responsibility in the possible poorer results that might be expected)
Ant
On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 11:48 AM, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
In a private organization, a "manager" can motivate a group by using various incentives. Saying publicly that someone is just not doing his job is not exactly the best way to stimulate an already not-so-active person.
Maybe not, but at least then the whole board won't take the blame, which I thought was what you were complaining about.
On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 2:41 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 11:48 AM, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
In a private organization, a "manager" can motivate a group by using various incentives. Saying publicly that someone is just not doing his job is not exactly the best way to stimulate an already not-so-active person.
Maybe not, but at least then the whole board won't take the blame, which I thought was what you were complaining about.
Moreover, if a board member persistently doesn't do his job, and refuses to resign, there's always removal.
You say "the community should feel responsibility in the possible poorer results that might be expected", but if the community doesn't have feedback over who it is that's giving poor results, and the community doesn't have any removal power anyhow, then I disagree that the community does have any responsibility over this.
This cloak-and-dagger treatment of what you apparently consider a big enough problem to bring up on this list is not at all helpful.
Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
I have spent about a decade working in election campaigns, and, to repeat the "meme": You cannot give orders to volun- teers.
I see no sense that that is true.
Well, I see sense in it. And I have seen many student volun- teers not showing up at events before 9:00, many volunteers not preparing presentations on topics they did not like, many volunteers not coming back the second day after they discovered on the first day that posting bills can be quite tiring and canvassing very frustrating, etc., etc., etc. If your methods had a higher success rate, please share them with me. I'd be very interested in them.
The only organizations with a working approach I know of are churches and sects who condemn non-compliants to Dante's Inferno. But unfortunately, my divine qualities are a bit underdeveloped.
[...]
The US presidential election is a prime example: Polls show that supporters of the Democratic Party will not only cease their commitment if their favorite candidate is not nominated, they will even vote for *another* party's candi- date.
Are you saying that all voters are "volunteers"? I guess this is true in a sense, as one is not required by law to vote (in the US). But when I referred to Obama volunteers I was thinking more of the people who work directly on the campaign. [...]
You will see the same phenomenon with people working direct- ly on the campaign, even if for example Obama would take the second place on a double ticket.
And I would consider every voter for Obama a volunteer un- less one is required by law to vote for him.
Tim
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