Forking the issue of Board composition.
We tend to think of Board as the governing body of the movement, not just WMF. Board members tend to think of themselves as the governing body of WMF, with shiny cool movement supporting it.
We tend to discuss of community representation, they tend to assimilate anyone who joins them. While "trust and honesty" are noble words, they tend to be the words of excuse, covering forced imposition of the dominant position over everybody inside of the group.
The Board composed as it is now has no capacity to overcome this problem. I am not talking about particular persons inside of the Board, but about the culture of assimilation, which usually ends in assimilation, but, as we could see now, it could end in removal of a Board member.
I see two options to overcome this problem and both of them require wide consensus, including the present Board.
One option is to restructure the Board itself, the other one is to create new cover organization, with WMF as one of its institutions.
It's obvious to me that Wikimedia is not an ordinary organization or even an ordinary movement. The importance of Wikimedia movement is on the level of smaller country. Our needs are on the level of a city-sized society. And our governance should be so.
At the moment, we have a kind of a mix which works because of that culture of assimilation and because WMF makes enough money. Destroying any of those corruptive powers would destroy WMF itself. So, if we want to change something, we have to reorganize the structure, not to fix it.
What every organized social group? Yes, assembly (or whatever the name is inside of the particular structure). If it's about business, it's the assembly of shareholders. If it's about democratic institutions, it's about the assembly which represents all members of the society.
WMF Board is quasi-assembly, quasi-government. It will always has partial excuse that it's about community-elected members, but also that it needs "an expertise" as a governing body. It's no surprise that the turnover on the best elections (the last one) was around 10%. Not a lot of Wikimedians think they are able to change anything and they are right.
I suggested few times that we should create assembly as a real democratic institution. Such assembly could then appoint the Board as a governing body or leave to ED and staff to be executive body of the movement.
The other option is to create assembly outside of WMF and make the relation between them later.
As long as we don't talk about this issue, we will have the same stories again and again. The set of mistakes Board could make is not finite. And whenever something odd or harmful happens, we will be talking the same stories.
By moving it into openly political discourse, we will avoid secrecy and Wikimedians will be able to influence decisions, outside of closed groups and personal connections.
(At the end, I am wondering why I am repeating this, as nobody responded to this idea previous few times. Not even with "this is bad idea because of...".)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Todd Allen" toddmallen@gmail.com Date: Jan 9, 2016 19:34 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF trustee Arnnon Geshuri and part in anticompetitive agreements in Google To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc:
There is still a significant problem the Board does have, though. "Chapter/thorg selected seats" are not community seats. And we've recently found out that none of the seats at all are actually considered to be community-selected, and that a community elected board member can be removed without referendum to the community.
A majority, at least six seats, on the Board, should be directly elected
by
the Wikimedia community. (Not "chapters", the entire community). And "directly elected" should mean that the member cannot be removed involuntarily except by vote of that same electorate, whether by
referendum
or the community's own initiative.
On Sat, Jan 9, 2016 at 11:29 AM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 January 2016 at 10:09, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
We are well overdue for a major turnover of board members. Fae --
While I have largely kept out of this thread to this time, this
statement
needs to be rebutted. There are ten seats on the board. Five of them - all three "community-selected" seats and two of the four board-appointed seats - have changed hands in the last six months. An additional board-selected seat changed hands not long before Wikimania last year
(Guy
Kawasaki). That means six of the 10 board members have less than a
year's
experience in the role. (One of those has now been removed, but that
still
means half the board has very limited experience.)
Of the remaining seats, two are "Chapter/Thorg-selected" seats that
will be
contested in the near future. Historically, only one of the incumbents
of
those seats have been reseated, and I make no predictions for this year. Jimmy Wales is assumed to still hold the Founder seat, and the fourth board-appointed seat is held by longtime community member Alice Weigand.
We do not know how the board will decide to fill the recently vacated "community-selected" seat - the options appear to be narrowed to
appointing
the fourth-place candidate from the last election (which would bring an experienced board member back to the table) or an election, which could also bring a completely new trustee.
At minimum, we already have five board members who weren't board members this time last year. By the end of their Wikimania board meeting, we
could
have as many as eight trustees with less than 18 months of experience
under
their belt. Of all the problems the board has, insufficient turnover is NOT one of them.
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Milos,
I find a lot in your email to agree with.
The Board of the Wikimedia Foundation, in my understanding, is not the top governance body of the Wikimedia movement. It sometimes stands in for that, because we don't have anything better - but its composition and its legal obligations suggest that this is and should not be the case.
You write that Board members tend to think of themselves as the governing body. At least for myself, I can say that this is not the case. My understanding restricts the Board only to the role of being the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation. The Foundation is not the community. The Board is not the voice of the community for the Foundation. The community is neither lead by the Foundation, nor by the Board. I don't even think there is a community - there are numerous overlapping communities.
It seems to me that in open collaborative projects like ours, the amount of scrutiny and criticism a governance body receives is negatively correlated to the amount of competences it has. Creating or deleting content, banning disruptive users from a project, deciding how the energy of the community should be spent on creating content? None of these is the business of the Board. None of these is the competence of the Board. And that’s good.
When I started working on the Croatian Wikipedia, I did not send a request to the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation to see if what I did was good. When I became the first admin and bureaucrat on the Croatian Wikipedia, it was not the Board that bestowed these powers on me. When I suggested to create a Semantic Wikipedia, it was not a request sent to the Board.
The power of the communities does not emanate from the Board. The power of many of our other organs do not emanate from the Board (some do, though).
Let's say, a specific Wikipedia would be in trouble - maybe there are reports that it was taken over by a small group of POV-pushers. This would be a serious issue - what is the body in our movement to deal with that issue, though? Does anyone argue here that the Board has these powers? What could the Board do? What other organ would be the right one to make such decisions? Which other organ is willing to take on these decisions?
I think that the Wikimedia movement needs to reconsider its governance structures. We need something like a constitution. Maybe a general assembly, as Milos suggests, or another body that somehow represents the communities at large is needed. Maybe a reshuffling or explicating of the powers vested in the current bodies is needed. What is the role of the affiliates? What should the Board be deciding and what not? How can the Foundation talk to a body representing the communities? How can we strengthen the voices of the communities? Which body could credibly represent the voice of the communities towards the Foundation?
The Board currently is exposed to requirements from a number of different sources, and sometimes requirements that contradict with each other. In order to become more effective, I would like to invite everyone to consider Milos' suggestions and come up with your own. Our movement is now in its teenage years - let us have a strategic goal of having a better constitution before we leave adolescence. Let us aim at having a better understood governance structure before we turn 18.
Cheers, Denny
On Sat, Jan 9, 2016 at 11:37 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Forking the issue of Board composition.
We tend to think of Board as the governing body of the movement, not just WMF. Board members tend to think of themselves as the governing body of WMF, with shiny cool movement supporting it.
We tend to discuss of community representation, they tend to assimilate anyone who joins them. While "trust and honesty" are noble words, they tend to be the words of excuse, covering forced imposition of the dominant position over everybody inside of the group.
The Board composed as it is now has no capacity to overcome this problem. I am not talking about particular persons inside of the Board, but about the culture of assimilation, which usually ends in assimilation, but, as we could see now, it could end in removal of a Board member.
I see two options to overcome this problem and both of them require wide consensus, including the present Board.
One option is to restructure the Board itself, the other one is to create new cover organization, with WMF as one of its institutions.
It's obvious to me that Wikimedia is not an ordinary organization or even an ordinary movement. The importance of Wikimedia movement is on the level of smaller country. Our needs are on the level of a city-sized society. And our governance should be so.
At the moment, we have a kind of a mix which works because of that culture of assimilation and because WMF makes enough money. Destroying any of those corruptive powers would destroy WMF itself. So, if we want to change something, we have to reorganize the structure, not to fix it.
What every organized social group? Yes, assembly (or whatever the name is inside of the particular structure). If it's about business, it's the assembly of shareholders. If it's about democratic institutions, it's about the assembly which represents all members of the society.
WMF Board is quasi-assembly, quasi-government. It will always has partial excuse that it's about community-elected members, but also that it needs "an expertise" as a governing body. It's no surprise that the turnover on the best elections (the last one) was around 10%. Not a lot of Wikimedians think they are able to change anything and they are right.
I suggested few times that we should create assembly as a real democratic institution. Such assembly could then appoint the Board as a governing body or leave to ED and staff to be executive body of the movement.
The other option is to create assembly outside of WMF and make the relation between them later.
As long as we don't talk about this issue, we will have the same stories again and again. The set of mistakes Board could make is not finite. And whenever something odd or harmful happens, we will be talking the same stories.
By moving it into openly political discourse, we will avoid secrecy and Wikimedians will be able to influence decisions, outside of closed groups and personal connections.
(At the end, I am wondering why I am repeating this, as nobody responded to this idea previous few times. Not even with "this is bad idea because of...".)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Todd Allen" toddmallen@gmail.com Date: Jan 9, 2016 19:34 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF trustee Arnnon Geshuri and part in anticompetitive agreements in Google To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc:
There is still a significant problem the Board does have, though. "Chapter/thorg selected seats" are not community seats. And we've
recently
found out that none of the seats at all are actually considered to be community-selected, and that a community elected board member can be removed without referendum to the community.
A majority, at least six seats, on the Board, should be directly elected
by
the Wikimedia community. (Not "chapters", the entire community). And "directly elected" should mean that the member cannot be removed involuntarily except by vote of that same electorate, whether by
referendum
or the community's own initiative.
On Sat, Jan 9, 2016 at 11:29 AM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 January 2016 at 10:09, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
We are well overdue for a major turnover of board members. Fae --
While I have largely kept out of this thread to this time, this
statement
needs to be rebutted. There are ten seats on the board. Five of them
all three "community-selected" seats and two of the four
board-appointed
seats - have changed hands in the last six months. An additional board-selected seat changed hands not long before Wikimania last year
(Guy
Kawasaki). That means six of the 10 board members have less than a
year's
experience in the role. (One of those has now been removed, but that
still
means half the board has very limited experience.)
Of the remaining seats, two are "Chapter/Thorg-selected" seats that
will be
contested in the near future. Historically, only one of the incumbents
of
those seats have been reseated, and I make no predictions for this
year.
Jimmy Wales is assumed to still hold the Founder seat, and the fourth board-appointed seat is held by longtime community member Alice
Weigand.
We do not know how the board will decide to fill the recently vacated "community-selected" seat - the options appear to be narrowed to
appointing
the fourth-place candidate from the last election (which would bring an experienced board member back to the table) or an election, which could also bring a completely new trustee.
At minimum, we already have five board members who weren't board
members
this time last year. By the end of their Wikimania board meeting, we
could
have as many as eight trustees with less than 18 months of experience
under
their belt. Of all the problems the board has, insufficient turnover
is
NOT one of them.
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Denny, thanks for supporting this issue moving on. Before few remarks I would respond inline, I want to say that the *draft* of the idea to make community assembly have been published by Pharos:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_Council_Compact
I want to give a small background of our work on the proposal:
Richard approached me immediately after I sent the first email from this thread, so we started to work on it. It turned out that we had very different perspectives of what should be done. However, we worked on creating a synthetic proposal, which would cover both sets of ideas.
I wanted to make a joke-spoiler, but I want to restrain of it because I want to see if the differences between our approaches are actually the differences between different cultural/continental background.
Besides two of us, Lodewijk and Lane contributed, mostly with comments. It turned out that Lodewijk was on the line I started my idea in discussion with Richard, while Lane was on the line started by Richard. Both of them found unacceptable the opposite part.
If so, I'd like to ask everybody to try to understand that our future assembly should be generally acceptable to everybody, no matter of cultural differences; which means that we should have to reach consensus in such issues, not limited on Richard's and my approaches in particular.
Besides that, it's just a draft of the proposal and everything could be changed as long as we reach consensus about one final proposal. I am fine with it as long as Wikimedians get a framework to communicate and make decisions which matter to themselves.
On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 1:26 AM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
You write that Board members tend to think of themselves as the governing body. At least for myself, I can say that this is not the case. My understanding restricts the Board only to the role of being the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation. The Foundation is not the community. The Board is not the voice of the community for the Foundation. The community is neither lead by the Foundation, nor by the Board. I don't even think there is a community - there are numerous overlapping communities.
This is misunderstandings, unless you want to say you don't see Board as the governing body of Wikimedia Foundation :P
It seems to me that in open collaborative projects like ours, the amount of scrutiny and criticism a governance body receives is negatively correlated to the amount of competences it has. Creating or deleting content, banning disruptive users from a project, deciding how the energy of the community should be spent on creating content? None of these is the business of the Board. None of these is the competence of the Board. And that’s good.
This part is very important! There are no "open collaborative projects like ours". You are not a Board of Reddit with admins controlling content. Our social structure and civilization implications are far beyond any of those projects. That's why WMF members -- as long as there is no community-wide body -- have to have vision, wisdom and balls. The basis of the most of my criticism of the Board lays in the fact that it collectively have never shown all three virtues at once.
Just as a matter of record: While I did contribute comments to the concept of the council, and am in general very much in favour of such council, I also made the comment that I don't think the council in its current shape addresses the real problems at all - because it has one responsibility (appointing board members) that will distract from what I thinktheir actual work: giving a platform for the WMF board/staff and potentially chapters to get constructive input from the community.
It is not that I find their opinions unacceptable, but they are trying to solve a different perceived problem. In the current shape, I couldn't support the council, unfortunately - both for the reason I mention above as some more practical concerns. I don't want a perception to arise that I would support the concept you link.
Lodewijk
On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 2:33 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Denny, thanks for supporting this issue moving on. Before few remarks I would respond inline, I want to say that the *draft* of the idea to make community assembly have been published by Pharos:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_Council_Compact
I want to give a small background of our work on the proposal:
Richard approached me immediately after I sent the first email from this thread, so we started to work on it. It turned out that we had very different perspectives of what should be done. However, we worked on creating a synthetic proposal, which would cover both sets of ideas.
I wanted to make a joke-spoiler, but I want to restrain of it because I want to see if the differences between our approaches are actually the differences between different cultural/continental background.
Besides two of us, Lodewijk and Lane contributed, mostly with comments. It turned out that Lodewijk was on the line I started my idea in discussion with Richard, while Lane was on the line started by Richard. Both of them found unacceptable the opposite part.
If so, I'd like to ask everybody to try to understand that our future assembly should be generally acceptable to everybody, no matter of cultural differences; which means that we should have to reach consensus in such issues, not limited on Richard's and my approaches in particular.
Besides that, it's just a draft of the proposal and everything could be changed as long as we reach consensus about one final proposal. I am fine with it as long as Wikimedians get a framework to communicate and make decisions which matter to themselves.
On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 1:26 AM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
You write that Board members tend to think of themselves as the governing body. At least for myself, I can say that this is not the case. My understanding restricts the Board only to the role of being the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation. The Foundation is not the community. The Board
is
not the voice of the community for the Foundation. The community is
neither
lead by the Foundation, nor by the Board. I don't even think there is a community - there are numerous overlapping communities.
This is misunderstandings, unless you want to say you don't see Board as the governing body of Wikimedia Foundation :P
It seems to me that in open collaborative projects like ours, the amount
of
scrutiny and criticism a governance body receives is negatively
correlated
to the amount of competences it has. Creating or deleting content,
banning
disruptive users from a project, deciding how the energy of the community should be spent on creating content? None of these is the business of the Board. None of these is the competence of the Board. And that’s good.
This part is very important! There are no "open collaborative projects like ours". You are not a Board of Reddit with admins controlling content. Our social structure and civilization implications are far beyond any of those projects. That's why WMF members -- as long as there is no community-wide body -- have to have vision, wisdom and balls. The basis of the most of my criticism of the Board lays in the fact that it collectively have never shown all three virtues at once.
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On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 8:33 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Denny, thanks for supporting this issue moving on. Before few remarks I would respond inline, I want to say that the *draft* of the idea to make community assembly have been published by Pharos:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_Council_Compact
I think it is a good idea to have a sort of community council. To give credit, Guy Kawasaki just recently proposed something along these lines in internal discussions. My first take is that it would be good to have some representation and governance of our movement, not just WMF. It would make everyone's lives easier, too - it would be easier to consult, seek advise, etc.
I've been also thinking about revitalizing our Advisory Board - the way I would like to see it would be dividing it into (a) community (b) tech and (c) academic subgroups, available for immediate consulting and feedback.
This definitely does not collide with the idea of a community council in the form that you're proposing, I think. It is worth further discussion. Should it be continued on meta?
dj
On 2016-01-13 16:32, Dariusz Jemielniak wrote:
On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 8:33 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
I think it is a good idea to have a sort of community council. To give credit, Guy Kawasaki just recently proposed something along these lines in internal discussions. My first take is that it would be good to have some representation and governance of our movement, not just WMF. It would make everyone's lives easier, too - it would be easier to consult, seek advise, etc.
I've been also thinking about revitalizing our Advisory Board - the way I would like to see it would be dividing it into (a) community (b) tech and (c) academic subgroups, available for immediate consulting and feedback.
This definitely does not collide with the idea of a community council in the form that you're proposing, I think. It is worth further discussion. Should it be continued on meta?
dj
Hi Dariusz,
there have been several discussions over the years, and those which I remember (the first one was Lodewijk's proposal in 2008? 2009?) were either rejected/not endorsed by the board, or got stalled on meta with no consensus. My impression is therefore that some sort of a preparatory work is needed to avoid these two traps. Ideally, there would be a drafting group with a broad representation (possibly the members of the group will be prohibited to sit in the first edition of the elected body), and the Board will preliminary express an interest (so that the group knows the chances are not zero). Of course we can just agree on electing the representative body witout actually asking the Board, but I am not sure this would be the right way of doing it.
Cheers Yaroslav
On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 11:17 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
there have been several discussions over the years, and those which I remember (the first one was Lodewijk's proposal in 2008? 2009?) were either rejected/not endorsed by the board, or got stalled on meta with no consensus.
I remember some dating back to 2005. But it does not mean the situation has not matured since.
My impression is therefore that some sort of a preparatory work is needed to avoid these two traps. Ideally, there would be a drafting group with a broad representation (possibly the members of the group will be prohibited to sit in the first edition of the elected body), and the Board will preliminary express an interest (so that the group knows the chances are not zero). Of course we can just agree on electing the representative body witout actually asking the Board, but I am not sure this would be the right way of doing it.
Agreed. A mixed working group could be a way to go.
dj
On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 5:28 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 11:17 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru
My impression is therefore that some sort of a preparatory work is needed to avoid these two traps. Ideally, there would be a drafting group with a broad representation (possibly the members of the group will be prohibited to sit in the first edition of the elected body), and the Board will preliminary express an interest (so that the group knows the chances are not zero). Of course we can just agree on electing the representative body witout actually asking the Board, but I am not sure this would be the right way of doing it.
Agreed. A mixed working group could be a way to go.
From my perspective, anything which would move the situation from the
status quo would work.
Presently, the discussion has been started on Meta and it would be good to see your input there. I don't see the proposal as anything in the form take it or leave it, but as the beginning of the discussion (or reloading it after a lot of time).
Working group could be created based on that discussion; the other option -- and I'd like to believe in it -- is to create the final proposal based on completely public discussion.
Significant difference between the previous attempts to do something like this is the fact that at least three Board members (Denny, Dariusz and Guy) support something similar to this idea. Previously, Board was the body which at least passively obstructed the idea. That means that we have much better chances for success this time.
So, please join the discussion; if you have a different idea as the whole proposal, write it there, so we could discuss. We could rearrange the page into the set of relatively coherent proposals and discuss about the proposals integrally, about their features and finally find the best possible solution, which would be the product of as wide as possible consensus.
My issue with the current proposal on Meta is that it creates a body which works towards the Board.
This is, in my opinion, a fundamental mistake: it perpetuates the idea that the Board is the major governing body of the movement at large.
I would very much prefer an independent and strong body that can speak and represent the communities but is not subordinate to any bodies of the Wikimedia Foundation, including its Board.
I see how the community council as currently suggested in
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_Council_Compact
can be useful, but I am not sure whether that would resolve the kind of conflicts that we are seeing currently and which arise from the perception that the Board is the top body of the Movement, but instead it has legal obligations to the Foundation.
Am I the only one who would rather see an independent body represent the communities than one subordinate to the Board?
On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 2:31 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 5:28 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 11:17 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru
My impression is therefore that some sort of a preparatory work is
needed
to avoid these two traps. Ideally, there would be a drafting group with
a
broad representation (possibly the members of the group will be
prohibited
to sit in the first edition of the elected body), and the Board will preliminary express an interest (so that the group knows the chances are not zero). Of course we can just agree on electing the representative
body
witout actually asking the Board, but I am not sure this would be the
right
way of doing it.
Agreed. A mixed working group could be a way to go.
From my perspective, anything which would move the situation from the status quo would work.
Presently, the discussion has been started on Meta and it would be good to see your input there. I don't see the proposal as anything in the form take it or leave it, but as the beginning of the discussion (or reloading it after a lot of time).
Working group could be created based on that discussion; the other option -- and I'd like to believe in it -- is to create the final proposal based on completely public discussion.
Significant difference between the previous attempts to do something like this is the fact that at least three Board members (Denny, Dariusz and Guy) support something similar to this idea. Previously, Board was the body which at least passively obstructed the idea. That means that we have much better chances for success this time.
So, please join the discussion; if you have a different idea as the whole proposal, write it there, so we could discuss. We could rearrange the page into the set of relatively coherent proposals and discuss about the proposals integrally, about their features and finally find the best possible solution, which would be the product of as wide as possible consensus.
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Am I the only one who would rather see an independent body represent the communities than one subordinate to the Board?
My concern is that in the long run such a body may lead to excluding community representation from the Board ("since we have a community body already..."). Also, I think that we're lacking a senate, not a government per se.
dj
Whatever I may think of some of the recent actions of the board, I think its present role goes well beyond " bring stability and assure that the daily business is done: keep the platform online, deal with legal cases and keep a positive financial balance. "
The key roles are to ensure the quality of WP, and " to lead 'in a political manner' " the open information movement.
First, it it does have the power to deal with a situation where"Let's say, a specific Wikipedia would be in trouble - maybe there are reports that it was taken over by a small group of POV-pushers. " It has control of the trademark, and the ability to prevent any particular WP from using it. It cannot prevent any aberrant group from using our material while calling itself something else, but it can prevent it calling itself Wikipedia. True, this may not be effective in some cases as it used to be, before some of the individual language chapters had developed organizational and financial resources of their own, to the extent that some of them could well persist as the major free encyclopedia in their language communities even without the WP name
Second, when dealing with the ongoing threats to free information, the WMF can and does effectively speak for all those interested as perhaps the best known and the strongest voice. This is not something to be regarded lightly. It can organize the greatest general public indignation that any one organization can, and it can coordinate and act asa center for the work of others. Much as all languages in the world need a good free encyclopedia, all the people in the world need this freedom even more.
On the other hand, it is not needed financially--many other groups in the movement can successfully raise sufficient money to keep the whole operation going, if not to maintain the present number of programers working on ancillary projects
On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 11:20 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
Am I the only one who would rather see an independent body represent the communities than one subordinate to the Board?
My concern is that in the long run such a body may lead to excluding community representation from the Board ("since we have a community body already..."). Also, I think that we're lacking a senate, not a government per se.
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David,
thanks for that perspective. I agree that in theory the Foundation has the power you describe. But it is the same theory that lead to the implementation of Superprotect, and we know how this worked out. I do not think that the use of such a power would be accepted.
Or am I wrong?
Denny
On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 9:01 AM, David Goodman dggenwp@gmail.com wrote:
Whatever I may think of some of the recent actions of the board, I think its present role goes well beyond " bring stability and assure that the daily business is done: keep the platform online, deal with legal cases and keep a positive financial balance. "
The key roles are to ensure the quality of WP, and " to lead 'in a political manner' " the open information movement.
First, it it does have the power to deal with a situation where"Let's say, a specific Wikipedia would be in trouble - maybe there are reports that it was taken over by a small group of POV-pushers. " It has control of the trademark, and the ability to prevent any particular WP from using it. It cannot prevent any aberrant group from using our material while calling itself something else, but it can prevent it calling itself Wikipedia. True, this may not be effective in some cases as it used to be, before some of the individual language chapters had developed organizational and financial resources of their own, to the extent that some of them could well persist as the major free encyclopedia in their language communities even without the WP name
Second, when dealing with the ongoing threats to free information, the WMF can and does effectively speak for all those interested as perhaps the best known and the strongest voice. This is not something to be regarded lightly. It can organize the greatest general public indignation that any one organization can, and it can coordinate and act asa center for the work of others. Much as all languages in the world need a good free encyclopedia, all the people in the world need this freedom even more.
On the other hand, it is not needed financially--many other groups in the movement can successfully raise sufficient money to keep the whole operation going, if not to maintain the present number of programers working on ancillary projects
On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 11:20 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
Am I the only one who would rather see an independent body represent
the
communities than one subordinate to the Board?
My concern is that in the long run such a body may lead to excluding community representation from the Board ("since we have a community body already..."). Also, I think that we're lacking a senate, not a government per se.
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-- David Goodman
DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Honestly while I think that more community governance could be good I worry that this conversation is going into a direction that is doomed to failure and distracts us from the REAL issues that people are frustrated about. Large governing bodies are complicated, difficult to set up and difficult to administer especially with limited official power and scope. We have had off and on discussions about them for ages but they aren't particularly feasible and aren't suddenly more feasible now. They also don't really fix the problems that people are having I think. There are some relatively stable facts that I, personally, see though some may disagree with all or some:
- The board has a leadership role in the movement and the communities as well as the WMF though how that manifests itself differs at times. - The WMF serves at the defacto "head" (for lack of a better term) of the movement. They are the trademark holders, the server operators, the legal stewards, the fundraisers etc. The affiliates and community groups all serve immensely important roles but but in the end can not get away from the fact that the legal responsibility rests in the WMF. The WMF can not get away from that either. - The community and the board and the WMF are irretrievably intertwined. "The communities" came before the WMF, it "created" the WMF (of course in practice Jimmy did but you know what I mean) and it will, almost certainly, exist after the WMF. Some level of "separation" from the volunteer community as a whole can be good for us all because it allows the foundation to help see things that need to change which are harder to fix/change when you're deep in the weeds HOWEVER if they separate 'too' much from the community as a whole it makes it impossible for them to truly effect any change or support the projects in the way they need to because they are unable to understand the environment they are working in.
and to some of the specific questions Denny was talking about:
- The board/WMF 'has' the power to do things like super protect, just like it has the power to globally ban someone, to create and shut down projects, to sue and be sued. - The problem people had with super protect was some combination of how it was done, why it was done and how the response was done. - I do not see a ton of people saying that it doesn't have that power, or even (at some level) that it 'shouldn't have that power (some might think that but in the end they usually want the WMF to be responsible for things or have other powers that intrinsically require them to have the power to do things like that. If you run the servers you need the ability to control them etc).
I will fully admit the possibility that my read of this may be biased by my own thoughts but from what I can tell (both within staff and on this mailing list/on wiki) the concern is that the WMF/"the board" is getting too far apart. More community governance or representation is not necessarily bad but but it will not solve the actual problem and I think right now it is a distraction. As Dariusz said what is desired here is a Senate not a new body. Would that help? I don't know, it might, though it alone is still not really attacking the actual issue. The issue is a lack of trust in the board and the WMF because of a history of past concerns (either real or imagined) and, now, what is seen as multiple different issues coming to a head at once. We have to address those before we talk about much larger broad reaching questions.
James User:Jamesofur User:Jalexander-WMF
On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 9:28 AM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
David,
thanks for that perspective. I agree that in theory the Foundation has the power you describe. But it is the same theory that lead to the implementation of Superprotect, and we know how this worked out. I do not think that the use of such a power would be accepted.
Or am I wrong?
Denny
On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 9:01 AM, David Goodman dggenwp@gmail.com wrote:
Whatever I may think of some of the recent actions of the board, I think its present role goes well beyond " bring stability and assure that the daily business is done: keep the platform online, deal with legal cases and keep a positive financial balance. "
The key roles are to ensure the quality of WP, and " to lead 'in a political manner' " the open information movement.
First, it it does have the power to deal with a situation where"Let's say, a specific Wikipedia would be in trouble - maybe there are reports that it was taken over by a small group of POV-pushers. " It has control of the trademark, and the ability to prevent any
particular
WP from using it. It cannot prevent any aberrant group from using our material while calling itself something else, but it can prevent it
calling
itself Wikipedia. True, this may not be effective in some cases as it used to be, before
some
of the individual language chapters had developed organizational and financial resources of their own, to the extent that some of them could well persist as the major free encyclopedia in their language communities even without the WP name
Second, when dealing with the ongoing threats to free information, the
WMF
can and does effectively speak for all those interested as perhaps the
best
known and the strongest voice. This is not something to be regarded lightly. It can organize the greatest general public indignation that
any
one organization can, and it can coordinate and act asa center for the
work
of others. Much as all languages in the world need a good free encyclopedia, all the people in the world need this freedom even more.
On the other hand, it is not needed financially--many other groups in the movement can successfully raise sufficient money to keep the whole operation going, if not to maintain the present number of programers working on ancillary projects
On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 11:20 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
Am I the only one who would rather see an independent body represent
the
communities than one subordinate to the Board?
My concern is that in the long run such a body may lead to excluding community representation from the Board ("since we have a community
body
already..."). Also, I think that we're lacking a senate, not a
government
per se.
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-- David Goodman
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No, I think the questions of community representation on the Board and the creation of an independent body able to represent the communities are orthogonal. I do not see anyone suggesting that the Board should not have community representatives.
But I see the need for a body representing the communities that does not derive its power from the Board, but from the communities directly.
On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 8:20 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
Am I the only one who would rather see an independent body represent the communities than one subordinate to the Board?
My concern is that in the long run such a body may lead to excluding community representation from the Board ("since we have a community body already..."). Also, I think that we're lacking a senate, not a government per se.
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Denny, Dariusz: May you take a look the talk page [1], see the flow of concerns and ideas in relation to the proposal and comment specifically what you think it could work and what you think it couldn't.
Besides that, I created two subpages which deal separately with Representation and diversity [2] and Scope [3], so we could be more focused on those issues, as they turned out to be the most discussed ones. (If anyone sees the need for any other discussion topic, let them create a separate page, as well.)
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Community_Council_Compact [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_Council_Compact/Represen... [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_Council_Compact/Scope
On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 6:25 PM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
No, I think the questions of community representation on the Board and the creation of an independent body able to represent the communities are orthogonal. I do not see anyone suggesting that the Board should not have community representatives.
But I see the need for a body representing the communities that does not derive its power from the Board, but from the communities directly.
On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 8:20 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
Am I the only one who would rather see an independent body represent the communities than one subordinate to the Board?
My concern is that in the long run such a body may lead to excluding community representation from the Board ("since we have a community body already..."). Also, I think that we're lacking a senate, not a government per se.
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On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 10:32 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 8:33 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Denny, thanks for supporting this issue moving on. Before few remarks I would respond inline, I want to say that the *draft* of the idea to make community assembly have been published by Pharos:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_Council_Compact
I think it is a good idea to have a sort of community council. To give credit, Guy Kawasaki just recently proposed something along these lines in internal discussions. My first take is that it would be good to have some representation and governance of our movement, not just WMF. It would make everyone's lives easier, too - it would be easier to consult, seek advise, etc.
I've been also thinking about revitalizing our Advisory Board - the way I would like to see it would be dividing it into (a) community (b) tech and (c) academic subgroups, available for immediate consulting and feedback.
This definitely does not collide with the idea of a community council in the form that you're proposing, I think. It is worth further discussion. Should it be continued on meta?
Yes, we'd welcome folks to read the proposal on meta at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_Council_Compact
Sign up there if you like the basic idea, and offer comments and improvements at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Community_Council_Compact
Thanks, Pharos
Thank you Milos for pointing here what seems to me the most fundamental flaw of our current organisation.
The WMF as organisation was created to bring stability and assure that the daily business is done: keep the platform online, deal with legal cases and keep a positive financial balance. This is not the same as leading "in a political manner" the movement. But the WMF tends meanwhile to do both.
The political history show us that this is not going to work well that way because both duties are in essence pretty different and have internal contradictions. As a consequence, the WMF focuses (with success) on what it was made for: administrative work and is not is position to do the other part correctly.
As a consequence we indeed face a serious lack of democracy in the way we are organized and this weak "quality loopback" leads us, as movement, to regular awkward situations. This is an instability factor.
Back in 2006, I heard for the first time the idea of a democratic assembly "Wikimedia international" and was sceptical about it. Seeing how things have evolved, an approach including two organisations, one political to lead the movement and one administrative to keep core things running & stability, looks really appealing.
Emmanuel
On 09.01.2016 20:37, Milos Rancic wrote:
Forking the issue of Board composition.
We tend to think of Board as the governing body of the movement, not just WMF. Board members tend to think of themselves as the governing body of WMF, with shiny cool movement supporting it.
We tend to discuss of community representation, they tend to assimilate anyone who joins them. While "trust and honesty" are noble words, they tend to be the words of excuse, covering forced imposition of the dominant position over everybody inside of the group.
The Board composed as it is now has no capacity to overcome this problem. I am not talking about particular persons inside of the Board, but about the culture of assimilation, which usually ends in assimilation, but, as we could see now, it could end in removal of a Board member.
I see two options to overcome this problem and both of them require wide consensus, including the present Board.
One option is to restructure the Board itself, the other one is to create new cover organization, with WMF as one of its institutions.
It's obvious to me that Wikimedia is not an ordinary organization or even an ordinary movement. The importance of Wikimedia movement is on the level of smaller country. Our needs are on the level of a city-sized society. And our governance should be so.
At the moment, we have a kind of a mix which works because of that culture of assimilation and because WMF makes enough money. Destroying any of those corruptive powers would destroy WMF itself. So, if we want to change something, we have to reorganize the structure, not to fix it.
What every organized social group? Yes, assembly (or whatever the name is inside of the particular structure). If it's about business, it's the assembly of shareholders. If it's about democratic institutions, it's about the assembly which represents all members of the society.
WMF Board is quasi-assembly, quasi-government. It will always has partial excuse that it's about community-elected members, but also that it needs "an expertise" as a governing body. It's no surprise that the turnover on the best elections (the last one) was around 10%. Not a lot of Wikimedians think they are able to change anything and they are right.
I suggested few times that we should create assembly as a real democratic institution. Such assembly could then appoint the Board as a governing body or leave to ED and staff to be executive body of the movement.
The other option is to create assembly outside of WMF and make the relation between them later.
As long as we don't talk about this issue, we will have the same stories again and again. The set of mistakes Board could make is not finite. And whenever something odd or harmful happens, we will be talking the same stories.
By moving it into openly political discourse, we will avoid secrecy and Wikimedians will be able to influence decisions, outside of closed groups and personal connections.
(At the end, I am wondering why I am repeating this, as nobody responded to this idea previous few times. Not even with "this is bad idea because of...".)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Todd Allen" toddmallen@gmail.com Date: Jan 9, 2016 19:34 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF trustee Arnnon Geshuri and part in anticompetitive agreements in Google To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc:
There is still a significant problem the Board does have, though. "Chapter/thorg selected seats" are not community seats. And we've recently found out that none of the seats at all are actually considered to be community-selected, and that a community elected board member can be removed without referendum to the community.
A majority, at least six seats, on the Board, should be directly elected
by
the Wikimedia community. (Not "chapters", the entire community). And "directly elected" should mean that the member cannot be removed involuntarily except by vote of that same electorate, whether by
referendum
or the community's own initiative.
On Sat, Jan 9, 2016 at 11:29 AM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 January 2016 at 10:09, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
We are well overdue for a major turnover of board members. Fae --
While I have largely kept out of this thread to this time, this
statement
needs to be rebutted. There are ten seats on the board. Five of them - all three "community-selected" seats and two of the four board-appointed seats - have changed hands in the last six months. An additional board-selected seat changed hands not long before Wikimania last year
(Guy
Kawasaki). That means six of the 10 board members have less than a
year's
experience in the role. (One of those has now been removed, but that
still
means half the board has very limited experience.)
Of the remaining seats, two are "Chapter/Thorg-selected" seats that
will be
contested in the near future. Historically, only one of the incumbents
of
those seats have been reseated, and I make no predictions for this year. Jimmy Wales is assumed to still hold the Founder seat, and the fourth board-appointed seat is held by longtime community member Alice Weigand.
We do not know how the board will decide to fill the recently vacated "community-selected" seat - the options appear to be narrowed to
appointing
the fourth-place candidate from the last election (which would bring an experienced board member back to the table) or an election, which could also bring a completely new trustee.
At minimum, we already have five board members who weren't board members this time last year. By the end of their Wikimania board meeting, we
could
have as many as eight trustees with less than 18 months of experience
under
their belt. Of all the problems the board has, insufficient turnover is NOT one of them.
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