New subject: Ombuds Commission - minor request for consistency in the name

10 Jun 2020

Dear WMF Board members,

The Ombuds Commission acts on your behalf as part of the movements
governance processes and it is, therefore, the WMF board that
authorizes Ombuds policies. The Wikimedia project systems and policies
for the commission were established many years ago with rare
amendments since, and are not harmonized on the use of the word
"ombuds". For example, though the email contact group uses "ombuds",
the detailed policy page on Meta uses "ombudsman" and refers to
members of the group as "ombudsmen". As a gender-neutral form is in
common International English and American English usage and is already
used in some places and not others, can the WMF board agree that the
gender-neutral term is desirable in line with the goals of the
Wikimedia Foundation strategy and should be applied systematically?

With your agreement, this would then harmonize in the names of email
groups, the group name configured into the system on Meta and the
wording of policies, and help avoid an accidental bias towards
identifying ombuds members as men. As this is a question of
harmonization, rather than a change in process, policy or scope, this
is a style issue rather than a change that required a resolution or a
community RfC.

For those unaware, the Ombuds Commission "investigates complaints
about infringements of the Privacy Policy, the Access to nonpublic
personal data policy, the CheckUser policy and the oversight policy on
any Wikimedia project for the Board of Trustees. They also investigate
for the Board the compliance of local CheckUser or Oversight policies
or guidelines with the global CheckUser and Oversight policies."[1]

Links:
1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission
2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:GlobalUsers/ombudsman

Thanks,
Fae
-- 
faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae