[ Split from "Results of 2015 WMF Board elections" ]
2015-06-06 13:19 GMT+03:00 Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com:
- There is nothing in the process to produce any diversity in the result.
Indeed. I don't see much active effort to encourage diversity in gender, professional skills, economic background, language or region.
Though I'm sincerely happy about the results according to the current system, I'm not happy at all about the system. I would love to see a Board that is more diverse in the above points. I'd love to see a board with people who speak languages that are important, but weakly represented in Wikimedia projects (e.g. Hausa, Indonesian, Hindi[1]) and who are closer to the social, cultural and economic realities of the areas where they are spoken.
Unless I'm missing something,[2] in the whole history of Wikimedia, there was one board member from India, one from China, and zero from Indonesia, Russia and *all of Africa*. This doesn't seem quite right for a movement that is supposed to be global. Efforts to encourage editing outside of "the global North" bore little fruit till now - maybe it has something to do with such a low board representation? Maybe board seats for representatives of different regions could be reserved for more diversity and less self-selection?
I know very little about non-profit management, so maybe I'm naive, but it bothered me for a long time.
[1] I would also argue for Russian and Arabic even if Wikipedias in them are quite large. [2] Please correct me if I'm missing something!
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
Yes. Actively inviting people with mixed backgrounds - which started to happen this year - is a step in the right direction. But we might look for ways to explicitly aim for more thorough geo + culture + language diversity, since these map directly onto awareness of knowledge resources & practice around the world.
A more active and comprehensive advisory group may address some of this, since there is no way to span the full range of backgrounds on a board small enough to get things done. If their network effectively spans much of the world, they could also help improve the diversity of nominations for all seats. On Jun 6, 2015 8:11 AM, "Amir E. Aharoni" amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
[ Split from "Results of 2015 WMF Board elections" ]
2015-06-06 13:19 GMT+03:00 Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com:
- There is nothing in the process to produce any diversity in the
result.
Indeed. I don't see much active effort to encourage diversity in gender, professional skills, economic background, language or region.
Though I'm sincerely happy about the results according to the current system, I'm not happy at all about the system. I would love to see a Board that is more diverse in the above points. I'd love to see a board with people who speak languages that are important, but weakly represented in Wikimedia projects (e.g. Hausa, Indonesian, Hindi[1]) and who are closer to the social, cultural and economic realities of the areas where they are spoken.
Unless I'm missing something,[2] in the whole history of Wikimedia, there was one board member from India, one from China, and zero from Indonesia, Russia and *all of Africa*. This doesn't seem quite right for a movement that is supposed to be global. Efforts to encourage editing outside of "the global North" bore little fruit till now - maybe it has something to do with such a low board representation? Maybe board seats for representatives of different regions could be reserved for more diversity and less self-selection?
I know very little about non-profit management, so maybe I'm naive, but it bothered me for a long time.
[1] I would also argue for Russian and Arabic even if Wikipedias in them are quite large. [2] Please correct me if I'm missing something!
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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