The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election is logically run by the Wikimedia Foundation, just as elections for other movement entities are logically run by those specific entities.

The Board of Trustees is responsible for monitoring the election and for the tasking of and appointment of the Election Committee. (Similarly, other movement entities do exactly the same thing.) There are some constricts built into the bylaws of the organization that identify certain qualifications for candidates for elected seats. The WMF staff member(s) involved in the election are there primarily as facilitators to ensure that the decisions made by the committee are enacted in a timely way. They're there to make sure stuff gets done, in other words. They're not there to make the decisions; that responsibility is squarely in the purview of the Committee.

I confess I am disappointed that the existing Election Committee did not complete its assigned tasks of reviewing different types of voting, leading community discussions, and identifying a specific preference. Given that the final result of the election will need to be released later than mid-May 2020, and there is a minimum 10-week period before the polls close to identify, qualify, and allow questioning of candidates, there is not sufficient time to carry out much more than preliminary research on alternate voting methods. The recent experience with the movement-entity board member selection process - in which some organizations clearly did not understand the rules of engagement and had to ask for a "new" ballot - illustrate the problem with not having sufficient time to really understand and implement a different voting system. Bluntly put, the Election Commission should have completed its work in this regard by now if there was any chance of changing voting systems. It's been on the table as something that needed to be done for at least 4 years, and is in fact the reason that the Board created a "permanent" Election Commission instead of one that gets appointed just to run a particular election.

The reality is that people who are good at actually running elections are usually not the same people who are good at analysing and recommending election processes. Thus, it's really hard to find the right mix of membership for a permanent Election Committee. Comparatively speaking, there are a lot more people who are proficient at the mechanics of organizing and running elections; the only significant difference between running a board election and running an Enwiki Arbitration Committee election is scale (and perhaps better familiarity with Meta).

It's also essential that everyone on the committee pulls their weight. In the past, Election Committees have suffered from having people on board who simply disappear after their appointment and don't do anything (or show up so sporadically that they're more a hindrance than a help), leaving it to an even smaller subgroup of the committee to make decisions and do the work. This is really a problem, and it's almost impossible to fix once the work of the election has started. The work for the 2020 election should be starting....well, it probably already should have started.

Risker/Anne

On Sun, 12 Jan 2020 at 19:44, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:

Hello,

As far as I know, there has been no functioning Elections Committee in awhile. I think that there should be one, and I am glad to see the interest in reviving it. So, thanks for the message, Joe.

In the long term, similar to my opinion about separating the Ombudsman Commission from WMF, I would like to have the Elections Committee be independent from WMF. However, as far as I know, there is no other organization that is able and willing to host community authorities which would not be under WMF's control or substantial influence. (WMF can exercise significant influence over Wikimedia affiliates by restricting their use of Wikimedia trademarks and/or their grant funding.) I hope that the possibility of having one or more such legally and financially independent organizations is being considered as a part of the 2030 strategy process.

Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe

Hello everyone,

First of all, many thanks to everyone who has expressed interest in joining the Elections Committee. I really appreciate your willingness to contribute to a successful election and addressing some of the broader questions that have been identified. I'll get in touch with those who have emailed me shortly.

As a reminder, please let me know by January 19 if you are interested in participating in the Elections Committee.

And thank you for your questions and feedback. I’ll respond inline to the questions I believe are still pending an answer.

On Sat, 11 Jan 2020 at 22:31, Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:

Joe, What would "experience with advanced wikitext markup" mean in this context? Also "responsiveness to email outreach"?

In this context, we are ideally looking for someone who is comfortable with things like translation tags, nested templates, and other "advanced" markup provided by MediaWiki. One of the tasks the committee has historically been involved with has been to set up and organise the pages for the election on Meta-Wiki, and this can get pretty complicated (as evidenced by the source code https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2017/Board_of_Trustees&action=edit!). This is a nice-to-have rather than a must-have, since it's only one of the ways the committee supports these elections - but it's still very useful.

As for responsiveness, the timelines for these elections have historically been tight, and so we really would like committee members who are able to respond to emails in a timely way so we can make committee decisions quickly.

On Sun, 12 Jan 2020 at 10:14, Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:

• I can't find any evidence of the Elections Committee having met since the

conclusion of the 2017 elections - am I missing something? (The 'Minutes' page seems to only refer to 2015 meetings, which is almost 5 years ago, so hopefully this is a case of the meeting minutes being somewhere else on Meta)

You are justifiably not finding minutes, as the Elections Committee has only met intermittently since the last election and maintained some of their discussions over email outside of meetings (to the best of my knowledge!). I am not able to offer extensive insights on the historical practice around the Elections Committee, but I can revisit the process for publishing minutes with the new committee. Supporting the committee was not in my purview until this cycle. I will however echo the disappointment about not having had the opportunity of meeting more frequently and share more updates with the community. I look forward to working more closely with the new committee once they are appointed.

• Also, part of the mandate of the Elections Committee was meant to have

been to do a review of the method of election to the Board of Trustees. I haven't heard anything about this happening. Has either the Board or the Elections Committee done anything about this?

The Elections Committee has had some initial conversation, and I expect this topic will be at the top of the Election Committee's agenda once they begin.

• Your email says we're looking for 2-3 new members. Does that imply that

all the existing members are all continuing? (Who in fact are the existing members? Is the April 2017 list still valid?)

All but four of the existing committee members have indicated they are interested in continuing their membership. I and the rest of the Foundation staff supporting this work are more than happy to continue working with them once the Election Committee is renewed by the Board Governance Committee. The list is currently valid and will be updated once we'd had the Board Governance Committee approve these new members.

• Has the Board, or the Board Governance Committee, done any assessment of

whether the Elections Committee is the right tool for the job? (Does the Board actually review the performance of the committees it creates?)

That'd be a question for the Board Governance Committee, but my personal understanding is that there hasn't been a need to change things for the moment.

On Sun, 12 Jan 2020 at 23:16, Henry Wood henry.wood.1869@gmail.com wrote:

Secondly, the first meeting is to be held in

January, so you've given yourself less than another two weeks to have staff

vet the candidates, get the approval of the Board Governance Committee, and then hold the first meeting. Why give yourself and your propsective candidates so little time for a process which you have known will be coming since this time last year?

I understand that the timeline looks tight, and it is, I should however mention that it is already an improvement compared to election cycles past. Of course, there is room for improvement, and the Elections Committee will be collecting this kind of feedback at the end of the cycle to improve future elections.

Thirdly, there is some important information missing (and very little time to disseminate it effectively). For example, what are these meetings? Is personal attendance necessary? If so, and any committee members need to get a US visa, it's already far too late, they will have needed to apply back in November or early December. Again, and especially if travel is required, will the Foundation reimburse the out-of-pocket expenses of committee members? Failure to think through these points may explain why certain groups continue to be under-represented.

The meetings will be held remotely, likely over Google Hangouts. We've done them through Webex before, so we will consider which platform will best serve the purpose of the meeting before deciding. I apologise for any confusion caused on this; these meetings have historically always been held remotely and will likely continue to be so. I hope this clarification is useful for those considering joining the Elections Committee.

Joe