Sydney and Risker make a good point that much of the current board is already fairly new and simply appointing a whole new board is unlikely to be the solution we now need.
Whether any individual board members feel sufficiently responsible for recent events that they should resign few but they can say. But the movement is in a serious mess and it is their duty to ensure we get out of it.
In the short term the current board vacancy is an opportunity for the board. Reappointing Doc James would bring back a much respected board member who already has several months recent WMF board experience. It would also be a clear signal that the board wanted to start steering the movement out of the current quagmire. Conversely, not reappointing Doc James risks leaving the impression that this particular onion has a few more layers yet to go.
In the medium term the board could reform it's constitution so that over the next couple of years we move to an all elected board and a membership system open to all who volunteer time to the project. There are some discussions about this here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_membership_controv...
I appreciate there are a lot of threads running on the current kerfuffle, but I think board reform is worth a new thread.
WereSpielChequers
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On 22 February 2016 at 22:00, Sydney Poore sydney.poore@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 2:08 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I also hope that the current Board members will thoughtfully consider whether it's in the best interests of the Wikimedia Foundation and the larger Wikimedia movement for them to continue as Board members.
The instability that would result from large scale resignations of Board members would be devastating to WMF.
That aside, under the best of circumstances, the volunteer BoT of WMF are faced with an extremely demanding and challenging work load. And, no volunteer board has the skill set to manage the problems that have come up over the last few months and have escalated out of control.
I strongly encourage giving the BoT time to react to the most recent comments, and develop a responsible plan of action.
I also agree with Sydney, and will point out that in the past year, we have had brand new board members in 3 board-selected seats (one of whom only participated for a few weeks), and 3 community seats (two of whom remain in place, the third being replaced by a former board member. That is at least five new members in a single year, no matter how one cuts it - and it doesn't even take into consideration the ongoing process for chapter-selected seats.
This past year has already seen the largest turnover in board membership that the Foundation has ever experienced; it was unusual to have more than two seats change incumbents in all the past years. We have already seen very significant change in the make-up of the Board, and half the board is still learning the ropes and responsibilities. This level of change is likely to be at least partly responsible for some of the unfortunate situations we have seen in the last several months. But those who are seeking a new board...well, you already have one.
Risker/Anne
Well, since someone brought that up, I'd risk asking: Does it make any sense to make the board in some of its future incarnations more representative? More representative of the editors? More representative of the world's lands and languages? More representative of the world's different economic regions? More representative of some relevant professional fields that are relevant for being in the Board of a massively-international-and-multilingual transparent web-oriented education-oriented non-profit?
A thing that always bothered me strongly is that there were very little or zero representation for these countries in the Board, ever: India, China, Russia, Iran, Brazil, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Arab countries and finally, all of Africa. (I picked these countries by population and roughly, the representation in the list of the world's top spoken languages.)
I'll possibly be sorry for bringing this up, but there were no black people on the board, ever.
Also, it bothers me somewhat that there were fewer women than men in the board, if you count the whole history at all times. There were 29 board members ever, and 9 of them were women. Not a huge gap, but a gap nevertheless. (I'm very bad with numbers, please slap me if I'm not counting correctly.) Women are 4 out of 9 in the current board, which is nearly a half and maybe it's not a concern any longer, but I wonder whether it's intentional or just a coincidence. I am not saying that it must be intentionally a half, but it's a thing to consider.
Finally, why is the board's composition as it is now? I refer to the total number of people on it, and the number of elected and appointed members, and the quasi-permanent founder seat. I'm sorry if these things are obvious to people who learned something about non-profit management; I did not, but I care about this movement and I am curious, and possibly many other people are curious as well. I can find the resolutions about expansion, but they don't do much to explain the rationale behind the numbers.
PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE, correct me if any of my facts are wrong.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2016-02-23 14:58 GMT+02:00 WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com:
Sydney and Risker make a good point that much of the current board is already fairly new and simply appointing a whole new board is unlikely to be the solution we now need.
Whether any individual board members feel sufficiently responsible for recent events that they should resign few but they can say. But the movement is in a serious mess and it is their duty to ensure we get out of it.
In the short term the current board vacancy is an opportunity for the board. Reappointing Doc James would bring back a much respected board member who already has several months recent WMF board experience. It would also be a clear signal that the board wanted to start steering the movement out of the current quagmire. Conversely, not reappointing Doc James risks leaving the impression that this particular onion has a few more layers yet to go.
In the medium term the board could reform it's constitution so that over the next couple of years we move to an all elected board and a membership system open to all who volunteer time to the project. There are some discussions about this here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_membership_controv...
I appreciate there are a lot of threads running on the current kerfuffle, but I think board reform is worth a new thread.
WereSpielChequers
Message-ID: <CAPXs8yRT9xu2tvXpP-27BDzx8njuN= RM0ovM9sDda9_0YXZgPg@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
On 22 February 2016 at 22:00, Sydney Poore sydney.poore@gmail.com
wrote:
On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 2:08 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I also hope that the current Board members will thoughtfully consider whether it's in the best interests of the Wikimedia Foundation and
the
larger Wikimedia movement for them to continue as Board members.
The instability that would result from large scale resignations of Board members would be devastating to WMF.
That aside, under the best of circumstances, the volunteer BoT of WMF are faced with an extremely demanding and challenging work load. And, no volunteer board has the skill set to manage the problems that have come up over the last few months and have escalated out of control.
I strongly encourage giving the BoT time to react to the most recent comments, and develop a responsible plan of action.
I also agree with Sydney, and will point out that in the past year, we
have
had brand new board members in 3 board-selected seats (one of whom only participated for a few weeks), and 3 community seats (two of whom remain
in
place, the third being replaced by a former board member. That is at
least
five new members in a single year, no matter how one cuts it - and it doesn't even take into consideration the ongoing process for chapter-selected seats.
This past year has already seen the largest turnover in board membership that the Foundation has ever experienced; it was unusual to have more
than
two seats change incumbents in all the past years. We have already seen very significant change in the make-up of the Board, and half the board
is
still learning the ropes and responsibilities. This level of change is likely to be at least partly responsible for some of the unfortunate situations we have seen in the last several months. But those who are seeking a new board...well, you already have one.
Risker/Anne
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On 2016-02-23 14:30, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
Well, since someone brought that up, I'd risk asking: Does it make any sense to make the board in some of its future incarnations more representative? More representative of the editors? More representative of the world's lands and languages? More representative of the world's different economic regions? More representative of some relevant professional fields that are relevant for being in the Board of a massively-international-and-multilingual transparent web-oriented education-oriented non-profit?
Hi Amir,
in my personal opinion, the current composition of the Board (elected vs nominated by affiliates vs appointed seats) is in principle fine. It can be fine-tuned by moving may be one seat here and there, but this is a big deal and it is not clear for me how it is needed.
A big question which was there from the very beginning is how to ensure the diversity. This is related to the composition of the board. We know if we make all seats directly elected we do not necessarily have the desired diversity and needed skills. If we make all of them appointed we can in principle have diversity and skills (though recent events shown this can have some problematic side issues) but then the community has no voice.
I do not know how this can be currently solved. Or, to be precise, how one can solve it without compromising on bigger issues.
Cheers Yaroslav
We should not have direct elections to the board. We should have a "house of representatives" with X members from each part of the world and charged with electing the board and decide major issues like location of the WMF, changed of bylaws etc.
Regards, Thyge
2016-02-23 14:38 GMT+01:00 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru:
On 2016-02-23 14:30, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
Well, since someone brought that up, I'd risk asking: Does it make any sense to make the board in some of its future incarnations more representative? More representative of the editors? More representative of the world's lands and languages? More representative of the world's different economic regions? More representative of some relevant professional fields that are relevant for being in the Board of a massively-international-and-multilingual transparent web-oriented education-oriented non-profit?
Hi Amir,
in my personal opinion, the current composition of the Board (elected vs nominated by affiliates vs appointed seats) is in principle fine. It can be fine-tuned by moving may be one seat here and there, but this is a big deal and it is not clear for me how it is needed.
A big question which was there from the very beginning is how to ensure the diversity. This is related to the composition of the board. We know if we make all seats directly elected we do not necessarily have the desired diversity and needed skills. If we make all of them appointed we can in principle have diversity and skills (though recent events shown this can have some problematic side issues) but then the community has no voice.
I do not know how this can be currently solved. Or, to be precise, how one can solve it without compromising on bigger issues.
Cheers Yaroslav
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On 2016-02-23 14:54, Thyge wrote:
We should not have direct elections to the board. We should have a "house of representatives" with X members from each part of the world and charged with electing the board and decide major issues like location of the WMF, changed of bylaws etc.
Regards, Thyge
I do not think it could solve the diversity issue.
To appoint the number of individuals with a set of skills and needed diversity, one needs candidates which will have needed skills and desired diversity to start with.
Our experience as a movement (and also of people in other organizations in different contexts) that these people do not always queue at the doors of the WMF office to wait for being elected. They need to be scouted, negotiated with, and convinced to be willing to sit at the board. This is what currently various companies are paid to do, and this seems to be a reasonable arrangement to me.
As far as the candidates are there, I do not see much of a difference whether the community, a selected group (like house of representatives), or the Board votes for them. And as soon as there is no difference there is also no need to make the structure more complicated. I thus conclude that this House of representatives is not needed for the Board elections.
(It might be needed for other things, which are outside the scope of this discussion).
Cheers Yaroslav
Hello,
Could I remind you all that there is a board election in progress right now for 2 of the 10 seats? Please see details for the 2016 Affiliate-selected board seats election at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016
Amir, you said that you wanted representation from "India, China, Russia, Iran, Brazil, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Arab countries and finally, all of Africa". If you like, you may encourage anyone from those countries to seek a nomination. Also, it would be very helpful if you could encourage the Wikimedia chapters in those countries to participate in the election in any way that they could, especially by planning to vote during the upcoming voting period.
Thyge - we do have a sort of house of representatives and it has a board election happening right now.
Nominations for the board are open till March 8! Election starts March 24! Please share the message.
Thanks - if anyone has questions post on the election page.
yours,
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
On 2016-02-23 14:54, Thyge wrote:
We should not have direct elections to the board. We should have a "house of representatives" with X members from each part of the world and charged with electing the board and decide major issues like location of the WMF, changed of bylaws etc.
Regards, Thyge
I do not think it could solve the diversity issue.
To appoint the number of individuals with a set of skills and needed diversity, one needs candidates which will have needed skills and desired diversity to start with.
Our experience as a movement (and also of people in other organizations in different contexts) that these people do not always queue at the doors of the WMF office to wait for being elected. They need to be scouted, negotiated with, and convinced to be willing to sit at the board. This is what currently various companies are paid to do, and this seems to be a reasonable arrangement to me.
As far as the candidates are there, I do not see much of a difference whether the community, a selected group (like house of representatives), or the Board votes for them. And as soon as there is no difference there is also no need to make the structure more complicated. I thus conclude that this House of representatives is not needed for the Board elections.
(It might be needed for other things, which are outside the scope of this discussion).
Cheers Yaroslav
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Lane Rasberry,
I'm aware of the ongoing election - but in all respect, that has nothing to do with a house of representavtives as I envision it, i.e. being "above" the board.
The present structure allows the existing board to decline access to the persons being elected.
Regards, Thyge
2016-02-23 16:05 GMT+01:00 Lane Rasberry lane@bluerasberry.com:
Hello,
Could I remind you all that there is a board election in progress right now for 2 of the 10 seats? Please see details for the 2016 Affiliate-selected board seats election at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016
Amir, you said that you wanted representation from "India, China, Russia, Iran, Brazil, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Arab countries and finally, all of Africa". If you like, you may encourage anyone from those countries to seek a nomination. Also, it would be very helpful if you could encourage the Wikimedia chapters in those countries to participate in the election in any way that they could, especially by planning to vote during the upcoming voting period.
Thyge - we do have a sort of house of representatives and it has a board election happening right now.
Nominations for the board are open till March 8! Election starts March 24! Please share the message.
Thanks - if anyone has questions post on the election page.
yours,
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
On 2016-02-23 14:54, Thyge wrote:
We should not have direct elections to the board. We should have a
"house
of representatives" with X members from each part of the world and
charged
with electing the board and decide major issues like location of the
WMF,
changed of bylaws etc.
Regards, Thyge
I do not think it could solve the diversity issue.
To appoint the number of individuals with a set of skills and needed diversity, one needs candidates which will have needed skills and desired diversity to start with.
Our experience as a movement (and also of people in other organizations
in
different contexts) that these people do not always queue at the doors of the WMF office to wait for being elected. They need to be scouted, negotiated with, and convinced to be willing to sit at the board. This is what currently various companies are paid to do, and this seems to be a reasonable arrangement to me.
As far as the candidates are there, I do not see much of a difference whether the community, a selected group (like house of representatives),
or
the Board votes for them. And as soon as there is no difference there is also no need to make the structure more complicated. I thus conclude that this House of representatives is not needed for the Board elections.
(It might be needed for other things, which are outside the scope of this discussion).
Cheers Yaroslav
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-- Lane Rasberry user:bluerasberry on Wikipedia 206.801.0814 lane@bluerasberry.com _______________________________________________ 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
I think it is an important conversation to have. I am a bit skeptical about creating a parliament-like body, and I am a bit worried that it would advance the disengagement of the board from the community.
I am working on a proposal for some reform (in short: I want to increase the number of community/chapter seats, increase the level of professional expertise, increase diversity, and all that without changing the overall number of seats ;), but I need time to present it in a coherent way. I hope to do so in March, but of course this dialogue will hopefully bring results meanwhile, too.
dj
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Thyge ltl.privat@gmail.com wrote:
Lane Rasberry,
I'm aware of the ongoing election - but in all respect, that has nothing to do with a house of representavtives as I envision it, i.e. being "above" the board.
The present structure allows the existing board to decline access to the persons being elected.
Regards, Thyge
2016-02-23 16:05 GMT+01:00 Lane Rasberry lane@bluerasberry.com:
Hello,
Could I remind you all that there is a board election in progress right
now
for 2 of the 10 seats? Please see details for the 2016 Affiliate-selected board seats election at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016
Amir, you said that you wanted representation from "India, China, Russia, Iran, Brazil, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Arab countries and finally, all of Africa". If you like, you may encourage anyone from those countries to seek a nomination. Also, it would be very helpful if you
could
encourage the Wikimedia chapters in those countries to participate in the election in any way that they could, especially by planning to vote
during
the upcoming voting period.
Thyge - we do have a sort of house of representatives and it has a board election happening right now.
Nominations for the board are open till March 8! Election starts March
24!
Please share the message.
Thanks - if anyone has questions post on the election page.
yours,
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
On 2016-02-23 14:54, Thyge wrote:
We should not have direct elections to the board. We should have a
"house
of representatives" with X members from each part of the world and
charged
with electing the board and decide major issues like location of the
WMF,
changed of bylaws etc.
Regards, Thyge
I do not think it could solve the diversity issue.
To appoint the number of individuals with a set of skills and needed diversity, one needs candidates which will have needed skills and
desired
diversity to start with.
Our experience as a movement (and also of people in other organizations
in
different contexts) that these people do not always queue at the doors
of
the WMF office to wait for being elected. They need to be scouted, negotiated with, and convinced to be willing to sit at the board. This
is
what currently various companies are paid to do, and this seems to be a reasonable arrangement to me.
As far as the candidates are there, I do not see much of a difference whether the community, a selected group (like house of
representatives),
or
the Board votes for them. And as soon as there is no difference there
is
also no need to make the structure more complicated. I thus conclude
that
this House of representatives is not needed for the Board elections.
(It might be needed for other things, which are outside the scope of
this
discussion).
Cheers Yaroslav
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Dariusz,
Could I ask you to briefly outline for us, in general terms and from your point of view,
(1) The most compelling arguments in favour of having appointees as voting board members (as opposed to having them as advisory board members), (2) If you are comfortable doing so, the most important risks or downsides attached to the present arrangement?
I am glad to hear you are working on a proposal to increase the number of community/chapter seats on the board (though I personally tend to think that at 2 vs. 3, the chapters are already slightly over-represented, compared to the general community).
Best, Andreas
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 3:35 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
I think it is an important conversation to have. I am a bit skeptical about creating a parliament-like body, and I am a bit worried that it would advance the disengagement of the board from the community.
I am working on a proposal for some reform (in short: I want to increase the number of community/chapter seats, increase the level of professional expertise, increase diversity, and all that without changing the overall number of seats ;), but I need time to present it in a coherent way. I hope to do so in March, but of course this dialogue will hopefully bring results meanwhile, too.
dj
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Thyge ltl.privat@gmail.com wrote:
Lane Rasberry,
I'm aware of the ongoing election - but in all respect, that has nothing
to
do with a house of representavtives as I envision it, i.e. being "above" the board.
The present structure allows the existing board to decline access to the persons being elected.
Regards, Thyge
2016-02-23 16:05 GMT+01:00 Lane Rasberry lane@bluerasberry.com:
Hello,
Could I remind you all that there is a board election in progress right
now
for 2 of the 10 seats? Please see details for the 2016
Affiliate-selected
board seats election at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016
Amir, you said that you wanted representation from "India, China,
Russia,
Iran, Brazil, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Arab countries
and
finally, all of Africa". If you like, you may encourage anyone from
those
countries to seek a nomination. Also, it would be very helpful if you
could
encourage the Wikimedia chapters in those countries to participate in
the
election in any way that they could, especially by planning to vote
during
the upcoming voting period.
Thyge - we do have a sort of house of representatives and it has a
board
election happening right now.
Nominations for the board are open till March 8! Election starts March
24!
Please share the message.
Thanks - if anyone has questions post on the election page.
yours,
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod@mccme.ru
wrote:
On 2016-02-23 14:54, Thyge wrote:
We should not have direct elections to the board. We should have a
"house
of representatives" with X members from each part of the world and
charged
with electing the board and decide major issues like location of the
WMF,
changed of bylaws etc.
Regards, Thyge
I do not think it could solve the diversity issue.
To appoint the number of individuals with a set of skills and needed diversity, one needs candidates which will have needed skills and
desired
diversity to start with.
Our experience as a movement (and also of people in other
organizations
in
different contexts) that these people do not always queue at the
doors
of
the WMF office to wait for being elected. They need to be scouted, negotiated with, and convinced to be willing to sit at the board.
This
is
what currently various companies are paid to do, and this seems to
be a
reasonable arrangement to me.
As far as the candidates are there, I do not see much of a difference whether the community, a selected group (like house of
representatives),
or
the Board votes for them. And as soon as there is no difference there
is
also no need to make the structure more complicated. I thus conclude
that
this House of representatives is not needed for the Board elections.
(It might be needed for other things, which are outside the scope of
this
discussion).
Cheers Yaroslav
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https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Lane Rasberry user:bluerasberry on Wikipedia 206.801.0814 lane@bluerasberry.com _______________________________________________ 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
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--
prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego i grupy badawczej NeRDS Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://n http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl/wrds.kozminski.edu.pl
członek Akademii Młodych Uczonych Polskiej Akademii Nauk członek Komitetu Polityki Naukowej MNiSW
Wyszła pierwsza na świecie etnografia Wikipedii "Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia" (2014, Stanford University Press) mojego autorstwa http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=24010
Recenzje Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml Pacific Standard: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/killed-wikipedia-93777/ Motherboard: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/an-ethnography-of-wikipedia The Wikipedian: http://thewikipedian.net/2014/10/10/dariusz-jemielniak-common-knowledge _______________________________________________ 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
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 11:02 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
(1) The most compelling arguments in favour of having appointees as voting board members (as opposed to having them as advisory board members),
I'm not sure what you're asking. I think that both external experts and the community-elected and chapter-appointed Board members should be voting members, if they are to be on the board. If you're asking whether it is useful to have external appointees on the Board at all, I think the answer is quite obvious - we need the level of engagement and expertise, that will not be available if we ask them to be on the advisory board, and I don't think it is likely it would be if they were to no non-decisive board members. Proportions between solely board-appointed and community-nominated people is a different story.
(2) If you are comfortable doing so, the most important risks or downsides attached to the present arrangement?
well, there are several, just from the top of my head: community/chapter elected members do not always have any prior experience of working on an NGO board or in any similar body; the current system disfavors diversity, externally-appointed experts have trouble understanding open collaboration organizations in general, and Wikipedia ecosystem in particular... I could go on, but at the time I can't really sit down to it methodically.
I am glad to hear you are working on a proposal to increase the number of community/chapter seats on the board (though I personally tend to think that at 2 vs. 3, the chapters are already slightly over-represented, compared to the general community).
Sadly, humans count in full numbers only, so it could be either 1 or 2 in the current system, and 1 is not that many neither :)
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 4:12 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 11:02 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
(1) The most compelling arguments in favour of having appointees as voting board members (as opposed to having them as advisory board members),
I'm not sure what you're asking. I think that both external experts and the community-elected and chapter-appointed Board members should be voting members, if they are to be on the board. If you're asking whether it is useful to have external appointees on the Board at all, I think the answer is quite obvious - we need the level of engagement and expertise, that will not be available if we ask them to be on the advisory board, and I don't think it is likely it would be if they were to no non-decisive board members. Proportions between solely board-appointed and community-nominated people is a different story.
Thanks Dariusz. It's more or less what I was thinking too; a seat on an advisory board is perhaps not attractive enough to really care.
I am glad to hear you are working on a proposal to increase the number of
community/chapter seats on the board (though I personally tend to think that at 2 vs. 3, the chapters are already slightly over-represented, compared to the general community).
Sadly, humans count in full numbers only, so it could be either 1 or 2 in the current system, and 1 is not that many neither :)
Well, you might add a community-selected board member. That would make 2 seats for the chapters, and 4 for the community in general. That seems a healthier proportion.
Moreover, if you increase the community-selected board members to 4, this would ensure that the majority of members (6 out of 11) can trace their presence on the board to the results of a democratic process.
Hey, you could just re-add James, leaving María in place. :) I think the community might welcome that, as a signal of reconciliation.
Andreas
Dariusz,
It's very good to know that those changes are being considered at all. I do tend to agree with Andreas about two chapter seats being a slight overrepresentation, but I think there should be one.
If I were to make my ideal board (and I realize you may have something else in mind, but just to throw the idea out :) ):
-Five community-elected seats. Truly community-elected, not "community-suggested"; the Board cannot refuse to seat them or throw them off, but can call a referendum to the community in the event a for-cause removal is thought to be necessary. No not-for-cause involuntary removals, though of course a Board member may voluntarily resign at any time and for any or no reason.
-One chapter/org seat, appointed by the chapters as done today.
-Four appointed/"specialty" seats, appointed for specialty expertise or outside perspective as would befit the current strategy.
And yes, there is a madness to my method, or something like that. Five community seats (I don't consider the chapter seat a community seat) would mean that while those five individuals could not act unilaterally, they could, if unanimously opposed, block any actions by the unelected Board members. (I presume tie votes are considered to fail, as is common practice.) Similarly, the non-community members could, if unanimous, block something brought forth by only the community board members. All business that goes through would, by necessity, involve at least one person supporting it from both "sides".
So, five community elected seats, five filled by other means. No Founder seat. If Jimmy wants to serve, he's of course welcome to run for a community-elected seat, or seek appointment to one of the appointed seats.
Like I said, not my call, but I'd be interested to know your thoughts on a scheme like that.
Todd
On 23 February 2016 at 18:22, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
So, five community elected seats, five filled by other means. No Founder seat. If Jimmy wants to serve, he's of course welcome to run for a community-elected seat, or seek appointment to one of the appointed seats.
Since you raise this point, it might be worth noting that Jimmy's "Founder's Seat" was renewed at the November board meeting. The new term continues until the end of 2018 - when it may be renewed again. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Resolution_to_renew_the_Foun...)
This resolution might not have gone unnoticed by many because the minutes for that Board meeting were approved in December (and not published on Meta until January) during the same meeting that also appointed Arnnon Geshuri and removed James Heilman. Issues that, shall we say, occupied a lot of our attention at the time!
[Chronological list of resolutions here: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions ]
-Liam / Wittylama
wittylama.com Peace, love & metadata
Salam,
I sincerely appreciated any effort to craft a reform for the Board of Trustees membership. Thank you, Dariusz and Todd. Also, apologize for (possibly) flawed English, since it isn't my first language :)
As a volunteer from the so-called Global South community, I'm much more concerned about the diversity issue in the Board. The issue here is that geographical and linguistic groups that are significant in the current state of our community should be proportionally represented. We must ensure that their voice will be heard on deciding important issues that might also affect them, in one way or another. Our current Board consist of no Asian or African, a very disturbing reality especially if we consider the immense potential and rapidly growing community in these two region.
Allow me to propose the Board composition I felt the most suitable to accommodate this issue. This Board will be comprised of fifteen members, all with same voting power:
- One Founder's Seat, reserved for Jimbo. While I believe that some might found this as a strangely contrast position for any reform needed by the Board, I think that we still need him in the Board as the voice of moderation and what makes us completely unique to other Internet institution. - Six regional seats, popularly elected by the regional communities. The proposed "regional communities" would be North America, South and Central America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and Asia Pacific and Oceania. - Five at-large seats, or what we call today as community seats. Like the regional one, it will be popularly elected --- but by the whole community. - Three affiliate seats, elected by the affiliate and thematic organizations.
Yes, there might be some flaw in this proposal. The biggest concern will be how to define and categorize a project into a specific "regional community". Maybe we could categorize the editors based on where do they edit (English Wikipedia editors will be voting for European seat) or where do they reside (which also possibly will raise question about privacy etc).
Some might also question about why there is no more appointed seats. While I do agree with those who are saying that we need professional experts to sit in the Board, I believe that their power and influence should be nowhere more than the community to avoid another Arnnon-like controversy. So I would like to see them as members of the Advisory Board (as discussed in another thread before), possibly with increased function.
I'd be very grateful to know your thoughts.
Best,
Ramzy
I like the idea of reserved seats for the global south. I would prefer to still have some appointed members for expertise, but that number should be diminished to give the community seats a majority.
Somewhat controversial: I'd prefer to scrap the affiliate - selected seats. Chapters vary so much in organization and effectiveness that having seats for them isn't ideal to me.
And, of course, let's remove Jimbo's seat. He contributes little to the board or movement these days except for the occasional response on his talk page, accepting awards on our behalf, and making ridiculous public comments which are listened to due to his status. I actually have nothing against the guy personally, but I see no need for this relic of a seat to continue. Salam,
I sincerely appreciated any effort to craft a reform for the Board of Trustees membership. Thank you, Dariusz and Todd. Also, apologize for (possibly) flawed English, since it isn't my first language :)
As a volunteer from the so-called Global South community, I'm much more concerned about the diversity issue in the Board. The issue here is that geographical and linguistic groups that are significant in the current state of our community should be proportionally represented. We must ensure that their voice will be heard on deciding important issues that might also affect them, in one way or another. Our current Board consist of no Asian or African, a very disturbing reality especially if we consider the immense potential and rapidly growing community in these two region.
Allow me to propose the Board composition I felt the most suitable to accommodate this issue. This Board will be comprised of fifteen members, all with same voting power:
- One Founder's Seat, reserved for Jimbo. While I believe that some might found this as a strangely contrast position for any reform needed by the Board, I think that we still need him in the Board as the voice of moderation and what makes us completely unique to other Internet institution. - Six regional seats, popularly elected by the regional communities. The proposed "regional communities" would be North America, South and Central America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and Asia Pacific and Oceania. - Five at-large seats, or what we call today as community seats. Like the regional one, it will be popularly elected --- but by the whole community. - Three affiliate seats, elected by the affiliate and thematic organizations.
Yes, there might be some flaw in this proposal. The biggest concern will be how to define and categorize a project into a specific "regional community". Maybe we could categorize the editors based on where do they edit (English Wikipedia editors will be voting for European seat) or where do they reside (which also possibly will raise question about privacy etc).
Some might also question about why there is no more appointed seats. While I do agree with those who are saying that we need professional experts to sit in the Board, I believe that their power and influence should be nowhere more than the community to avoid another Arnnon-like controversy. So I would like to see them as members of the Advisory Board (as discussed in another thread before), possibly with increased function.
I'd be very grateful to know your thoughts.
Best,
Ramzy _______________________________________________ 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
I don't really want to generate yet-another-thread, but it seems to me that many people in this conversation don't really understand the need of chapter-elected seats, which to me feels like "I don't understand the need for chapters".
I have mixed feeling about this. Of course, I've been in a chapter board member for 5 years, so I do think they are useful. Chapters, in my POV, help Wikipedia be understood and engaged by the outside world: institutions, GLAMs, schools, universities, normal people. They try to bring institution in Wikipedia, as useful, free content. They talk a lot with people, make presentations and try to explain Wikipedia. This is something that the editing community doesn't do very often.
Also, I think is that with chapters/affiliates there is at least the beginning of a global conversation: chapters discuss a lot with each other, and chapter elected seats are the result of a diplomatic conversation. Their appointed are usually more diverse than "community-selected"... Many, for example, don't come from English Wikipedia as their mother wiki.
Maybe I'm mistaken but it seems to me that when we talk about community, we implicitly assume that is the English Wikipedia community. This then means there is a huge disproportion between native English speakers (US, UK, Australia, for etc.) and the rest of the world. As much as I understand that many editors don't feel that chapters are relevant, at least I feel that chapters and affiliates do try to talk to each other and build an international community and common discourse. It is a layer on top, if you will, but it has advantages.
M2c.
Aubrey
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 7:00 AM, Adrian Raddatz ajraddatz@gmail.com wrote:
I like the idea of reserved seats for the global south. I would prefer to still have some appointed members for expertise, but that number should be diminished to give the community seats a majority.
Somewhat controversial: I'd prefer to scrap the affiliate - selected seats. Chapters vary so much in organization and effectiveness that having seats for them isn't ideal to me.
And, of course, let's remove Jimbo's seat. He contributes little to the board or movement these days except for the occasional response on his talk page, accepting awards on our behalf, and making ridiculous public comments which are listened to due to his status. I actually have nothing against the guy personally, but I see no need for this relic of a seat to continue. Salam,
I sincerely appreciated any effort to craft a reform for the Board of Trustees membership. Thank you, Dariusz and Todd. Also, apologize for (possibly) flawed English, since it isn't my first language :)
As a volunteer from the so-called Global South community, I'm much more concerned about the diversity issue in the Board. The issue here is that geographical and linguistic groups that are significant in the current state of our community should be proportionally represented. We must ensure that their voice will be heard on deciding important issues that might also affect them, in one way or another. Our current Board consist of no Asian or African, a very disturbing reality especially if we consider the immense potential and rapidly growing community in these two region.
Allow me to propose the Board composition I felt the most suitable to accommodate this issue. This Board will be comprised of fifteen members, all with same voting power:
- One Founder's Seat, reserved for Jimbo. While I believe that some might
found this as a strangely contrast position for any reform needed by the Board, I think that we still need him in the Board as the voice of moderation and what makes us completely unique to other Internet institution.
- Six regional seats, popularly elected by the regional communities. The
proposed "regional communities" would be North America, South and Central America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and Asia Pacific and Oceania.
- Five at-large seats, or what we call today as community seats. Like the
regional one, it will be popularly elected --- but by the whole community.
- Three affiliate seats, elected by the affiliate and thematic
organizations.
Yes, there might be some flaw in this proposal. The biggest concern will be how to define and categorize a project into a specific "regional community". Maybe we could categorize the editors based on where do they edit (English Wikipedia editors will be voting for European seat) or where do they reside (which also possibly will raise question about privacy etc).
Some might also question about why there is no more appointed seats. While I do agree with those who are saying that we need professional experts to sit in the Board, I believe that their power and influence should be nowhere more than the community to avoid another Arnnon-like controversy. So I would like to see them as members of the Advisory Board (as discussed in another thread before), possibly with increased function.
I'd be very grateful to know your thoughts.
Best,
Ramzy _______________________________________________ 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 _______________________________________________ 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
While my first impression of this proposed plan is fairly positive, I do have one major concern.
Wiadomość napisana przez Ramzy Muliawan ramzymuliawan14@gmail.com w dniu 24.02.2016, o godz. 11:47:
- Six regional seats, popularly elected by the regional communities. The
proposed "regional communities" would be North America, South and Central America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and Asia Pacific and Oceania.
- Five at-large seats, or what we call today as community seats. Like the
regional one, it will be popularly elected --- but by the whole community.
My concern with the "at-large" seats is that if we’ve looked at the history of community Board elections, the electorate is overwhelmingly from the developed world. The candidates are also overwhelmingly from the developed world. We’ve already seen this in the current election, where despite the presence of six fine developing world candidates, myself included, the electorate settled on three white men (no offense to Dariusz, Denny and James).
Under this proposed plan, Europe and North America will get one seat each. Let’s hypothesize that all the elected "at-large" seats went to developed world candidates. And then the affiliate seats have also traditionally gone to developed countries as well. Then we have Jimmy’s seat. Under this plan, we run the risk of having eleven of the fifteen seats dominated by developed countries. So does this mean that the remaining four seats should simply be tokens for developing countries, but to which we have no leverage because we can easily be outvoted by the other members of the Board?
Last year, I had spoken out against quotas for developing countries, since it effectively puts our representation at the mercy of the Board. I am still figuring out what would be the best way to approach this issue, especially since voting for community Board seats is by language, not by country, but I’m looking at a mixture of temporary quotas (and I stress "temporary"), developing stronger mechanisms for getting developing country Wikipedians involved in movement governance (through affiliates, stronger consultation mechanisms when discussing movement-wide issues, etc.), and weighted voting in favor of certain geographies if this is technologically possible.
Josh
JAMES JOSHUA G. LIM Bachelor of Arts in Political Science Class of 2013, Ateneo de Manila University Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines
jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com mailto:jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com | +63 (977) 831-7582 Facebook/Twitter: akiestar | Wikimedia: Sky Harbor http://about.me/josh.lim http://about.me/josh.lim
Salam
Thank you for your feedback, Josh.
This proposal did not attempt to create a developing world-dominated Board, nor is a developing world-dominated. A lack of diversity in current Board composition is of course a discomforting reality while we have a immensely growing and unimaginably potential community in the Global South.
But the key issue here is the total lack of proper representation for the Global South community, or any possibility thereof.
The issue is not about developing vs developed, white or brown, but it is about having a more proportional Board that would allow it to listen to a more diverse range of opinion when deciding important issues. A proportional Board I imagine here doesn't necessarily North-dominated, neither South-dominated. Developing countries will not take this regional seat for granted. They would still have same voting powers with their at-large and affiliates counterparts. The goal we collectively want to reach here is a balanced and adequately representative Board that can voice concerns of the global community, so a fairer and more diverse important consensus could be reached.
Under this plan, anybody can bid and win the at-large Board seat. If you're afraid that the electorate will eventually elect five at-large Trustees from Northern Hemisphere, then I can presume that there's something wrong with the non-Northern candidates. The utmost purpose of this at-large category is to ensure that the community will still have right to elect trustees in an unified voice, as well as to prevent any possibility of "Balkanization" of the Board membership. I believe in the wisdom of the crowd, and I am sure that the crowd will elect someone with clear records and trustworthy credentials, not just because he's an European or Asian.
Best,
Ramzy
*Ramzy Muliawan* Chief Editor, Majalah AKSI MAN 2 Model Pekanbaru https://aksimagazinem2m.wordpress.com/ Editor, min.wikipedia https://min.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangguno:Muhraz | id.wikipedia https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pengguna:Muhraz | meta.wikimedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Muhraz Pekanbaru, Indonesia
On 24 February 2016 at 13:40, Josh Lim jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com wrote:
While my first impression of this proposed plan is fairly positive, I do have one major concern.
Wiadomość napisana przez Ramzy Muliawan ramzymuliawan14@gmail.com w
dniu 24.02.2016, o godz. 11:47:
- Six regional seats, popularly elected by the regional communities. The
proposed "regional communities" would be North America, South and Central America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and Asia Pacific and Oceania.
- Five at-large seats, or what we call today as community seats. Like the
regional one, it will be popularly elected --- but by the whole
community.
My concern with the "at-large" seats is that if we’ve looked at the history of community Board elections, the electorate is overwhelmingly from the developed world. The candidates are also overwhelmingly from the developed world. We’ve already seen this in the current election, where despite the presence of six fine developing world candidates, myself included, the electorate settled on three white men (no offense to Dariusz, Denny and James).
Under this proposed plan, Europe and North America will get one seat each. Let’s hypothesize that all the elected "at-large" seats went to developed world candidates. And then the affiliate seats have also traditionally gone to developed countries as well. Then we have Jimmy’s seat. Under this plan, we run the risk of having eleven of the fifteen seats dominated by developed countries. So does this mean that the remaining four seats should simply be tokens for developing countries, but to which we have no leverage because we can easily be outvoted by the other members of the Board?
Last year, I had spoken out against quotas for developing countries, since it effectively puts our representation at the mercy of the Board. I am still figuring out what would be the best way to approach this issue, especially since voting for community Board seats is by language, not by country, but I’m looking at a mixture of temporary quotas (and I stress "temporary"), developing stronger mechanisms for getting developing country Wikipedians involved in movement governance (through affiliates, stronger consultation mechanisms when discussing movement-wide issues, etc.), and weighted voting in favor of certain geographies if this is technologically possible.
Josh
JAMES JOSHUA G. LIM Bachelor of Arts in Political Science Class of 2013, Ateneo de Manila University Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines
jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com mailto:jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com | +63 (977) 831-7582 Facebook/Twitter: akiestar | Wikimedia: Sky Harbor http://about.me/josh.lim http://about.me/josh.lim _______________________________________________ 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
Thank you for the diverse input. A few points to Razmy's proposal.
I have trouble with suggestions that state "we can ensure diversity by creating regional seats". First, why these regions? What does each region seat represent? Potential readers? Actual readers? Human population at large? Why not number of active editors? Without deciding that we do not know whether the regions you suggest make any sense.
Second, why regions at all? How do regions ensure that we have a diversity in age? Sex? Gender? Wealth? Religion? Cultural background? Educational background? Diversity has not only the aspect of being from a specific region, there is so much more to that.
Also, the increase in number of Trustees makes the Board more expensive and more ineffective. I would be rather unhappy with such an increase. It is hard enough to get anything done at the current size. I would appreciate any proposal that reduces the number of Trustees, not increases it.
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 1:45 AM, Ramzy Muliawan ramzymuliawan14@gmail.com wrote:
This proposal did not attempt to create a developing world-dominated Board, nor is a developing world-dominated.
"Nor is a developed world-dominated."
Sorry, my bad. _______________________________________________ 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
I disagree very much with Dariusz on this topic (as he knows). I think that a body that is able to speak for the movement as a whole would be extremely beneficial in order to relieve the current Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation from that role. It simply cannot - and indeed, legally must not - fulfill this role.
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that will be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation - not to the movement. If there is a decision to be made where there is a conflict between the Movement or one of the Communities with the Foundation, the Board members have to decide in favor of the Foundation. They are not only trained to so, they have actually pledged to do so.
- the Board members have fiduciary responsibilities. No, we cannot just talk about what we are doing. As said, the loyalty of a Board member is towards the organization, not the movement.
- the Board members that are elected by the communities or through chapters represent the voice of the communities or the chapters. That's not the case. All Board members are equal, and have the same duties and rights. Our loyalty is towards the organization, not towards the constituency that voted for us.
These things are not like this because the Wikimedia Foundation has decided in a diabolic plan for world domination to write the rules in such a way. These things are so because US laws - either federal or state laws, I am not a lawyer and so I might be babbling nonsense here anyway, but this is my understanding - requires a Board of Trustees to have these legal obligations. This is nothing invented by the WMF in its early days, but rather the standard framework for US non-profits.
Now, sure, you may say that this doesn't really matter, the Foundation and the Movement should always be aligned. And where this is usually the case, in those few cases where it is not it will lead to a massive burn.
Once you are on the Board, you do not represent the Communities, the Chapters, your favourite Wikimedia project, you are not the representative and defender of Wikispecies or the avatar of Wiktionary - no, you are a Trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and your legal obligations and duties are defined by the Bylaws and the applicable state and federal laws.
So, whoever argues that the Board of Trustees is to be the representative of the communities has still to explain to me how to avoid this conundrum. Simply increasing the number of community elected seats won't change anything in a sustaining way.
This is why I very much sympathize with the introduction of a new body that indeed represents the communities, and whose loyalty is undivided to the Movement as a whole. I currently do not see any body that in the Wikimedia movement that would have the moral authority to discuss e.g. whether Wikiversity should be set up as a project independent of the Wikimedia movement, whether Wikisource would deserve much more resources, whether Stewards have sufficient authority, whether the German Wikimedia chapter has to submit itself to the FDC proposal, whether a restart of the Croatian Wikipedia is warranted, etc. I am quite sure that none of these questions are appropriate for the Board of Trustees, but I would love to hear the opinion of others on this.
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 4:35 PM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thank you for the diverse input. A few points to Razmy's proposal.
I have trouble with suggestions that state "we can ensure diversity by creating regional seats". First, why these regions? What does each region seat represent? Potential readers? Actual readers? Human population at large? Why not number of active editors? Without deciding that we do not know whether the regions you suggest make any sense.
Second, why regions at all? How do regions ensure that we have a diversity in age? Sex? Gender? Wealth? Religion? Cultural background? Educational background? Diversity has not only the aspect of being from a specific region, there is so much more to that.
Also, the increase in number of Trustees makes the Board more expensive and more ineffective. I would be rather unhappy with such an increase. It is hard enough to get anything done at the current size. I would appreciate any proposal that reduces the number of Trustees, not increases it.
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 1:45 AM, Ramzy Muliawan <ramzymuliawan14@gmail.com
wrote:
This proposal did not attempt to create a developing world-dominated Board, nor is a developing world-dominated.
"Nor is a developed world-dominated."
Sorry, my bad. _______________________________________________ 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
That's an excellent post. Thank you for the clarity. I, too, support the creation of a body to represent the volunteer community.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:23 AM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I disagree very much with Dariusz on this topic (as he knows). I think that a body that is able to speak for the movement as a whole would be extremely beneficial in order to relieve the current Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation from that role. It simply cannot - and indeed, legally must not - fulfill this role.
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that will be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation - not
to the movement. If there is a decision to be made where there is a conflict between the Movement or one of the Communities with the Foundation, the Board members have to decide in favor of the Foundation. They are not only trained to so, they have actually pledged to do so.
- the Board members have fiduciary responsibilities. No, we cannot just
talk about what we are doing. As said, the loyalty of a Board member is towards the organization, not the movement.
- the Board members that are elected by the communities or through chapters
represent the voice of the communities or the chapters. That's not the case. All Board members are equal, and have the same duties and rights. Our loyalty is towards the organization, not towards the constituency that voted for us.
These things are not like this because the Wikimedia Foundation has decided in a diabolic plan for world domination to write the rules in such a way. These things are so because US laws - either federal or state laws, I am not a lawyer and so I might be babbling nonsense here anyway, but this is my understanding - requires a Board of Trustees to have these legal obligations. This is nothing invented by the WMF in its early days, but rather the standard framework for US non-profits.
Now, sure, you may say that this doesn't really matter, the Foundation and the Movement should always be aligned. And where this is usually the case, in those few cases where it is not it will lead to a massive burn.
Once you are on the Board, you do not represent the Communities, the Chapters, your favourite Wikimedia project, you are not the representative and defender of Wikispecies or the avatar of Wiktionary - no, you are a Trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and your legal obligations and duties are defined by the Bylaws and the applicable state and federal laws.
So, whoever argues that the Board of Trustees is to be the representative of the communities has still to explain to me how to avoid this conundrum. Simply increasing the number of community elected seats won't change anything in a sustaining way.
This is why I very much sympathize with the introduction of a new body that indeed represents the communities, and whose loyalty is undivided to the Movement as a whole. I currently do not see any body that in the Wikimedia movement that would have the moral authority to discuss e.g. whether Wikiversity should be set up as a project independent of the Wikimedia movement, whether Wikisource would deserve much more resources, whether Stewards have sufficient authority, whether the German Wikimedia chapter has to submit itself to the FDC proposal, whether a restart of the Croatian Wikipedia is warranted, etc. I am quite sure that none of these questions are appropriate for the Board of Trustees, but I would love to hear the opinion of others on this.
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 4:35 PM, Denny Vrandecic <dvrandecic@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Thank you for the diverse input. A few points to Razmy's proposal.
I have trouble with suggestions that state "we can ensure diversity by creating regional seats". First, why these regions? What does each region seat represent? Potential readers? Actual readers? Human population at large? Why not number of active editors? Without deciding that we do not know whether the regions you suggest make any sense.
Second, why regions at all? How do regions ensure that we have a
diversity
in age? Sex? Gender? Wealth? Religion? Cultural background? Educational background? Diversity has not only the aspect of being from a specific region, there is so much more to that.
Also, the increase in number of Trustees makes the Board more expensive and more ineffective. I would be rather unhappy with such an increase. It is hard enough to get anything done at the current size. I would
appreciate
any proposal that reduces the number of Trustees, not increases it.
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 1:45 AM, Ramzy Muliawan <
ramzymuliawan14@gmail.com
wrote:
This proposal did not attempt to create a developing world-dominated Board, nor is a developing world-dominated.
"Nor is a developed world-dominated."
Sorry, my bad. _______________________________________________ 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
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On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that will be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation - not
to the movement.
Hi Denny,
Blue Avocado, the non-profit magazine, offers a somewhat different view. They have published a board-member "contract" to give non-profit directors an idea of what's expected of them. It includes:
"... I will interpret our constituencies' needs and values to the organization, speak out for their interests, and on their behalf, hold the organization accountable. " [1]
Sarah
[1] http://www.blueavocado.org/content/board-member-contract
Sarah, if the volunteer community was organised and had its own, functional representative body that had the community's trust and respect, that would, to some degree, correct the present asymmetry between us and the WMF.
Our only rights in relation to them are to fork or leave. While we are atomised, the latter is our only option. Organised, forking becomes a serious possibility. Of course, I hope it never comes to that. But without that possibility, we are in the position of just having to take whatever from the WMF - good and bad.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:47 AM, SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic <dvrandecic@wikimedia.org
wrote:
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that will be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation -
not
to the movement.
Hi Denny,
Blue Avocado, the non-profit magazine, offers a somewhat different view. They have published a board-member "contract" to give non-profit directors an idea of what's expected of them. It includes:
"... I will interpret our constituencies' needs and values to the organization, speak out for their interests, and on their behalf, hold the organization accountable. " [1]
Sarah
[1] http://www.blueavocado.org/content/board-member-contract _______________________________________________ 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
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 7:09 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Sarah, if the volunteer community was organised and had its own, functional representative body that had the community's trust and respect, that would, to some degree, correct the present asymmetry between us and the WMF.
Our only rights in relation to them are to fork or leave. While we are atomised, the latter is our only option. Organised, forking becomes a serious possibility. Of course, I hope it never comes to that. But without that possibility, we are in the position of just having to take whatever from the WMF - good and bad.
Anthony Cole
Anthony, I do agree that the community should organize.
I would prefer to see the Foundation become a membership organization with different bylaws so that we are actually electing the trustees. A separate body would be good, although the Board could ignore that body too if it wanted. But yes, any kind of organizing is better than the present situation.
Sarah
Sarah, I'd prefer to see the "keeping the servers running" role completely separate from the community. As an organised community, if we become dissatisfied with the service being provided by the WMF, we could just sack them (or not renew their contract) and take on a new infrastructure contractor to "keep the servers running." Organised, we - the people who actually created this thing and actively maintain it - could set the course for its development.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:09 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Sarah, if the volunteer community was organised and had its own, functional representative body that had the community's trust and respect, that would, to some degree, correct the present asymmetry between us and the WMF.
Our only rights in relation to them are to fork or leave. While we are atomised, the latter is our only option. Organised, forking becomes a serious possibility. Of course, I hope it never comes to that. But without that possibility, we are in the position of just having to take whatever from the WMF - good and bad.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:47 AM, SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic < dvrandecic@wikimedia.org> wrote:
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that
will
be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation -
not
to the movement.
Hi Denny,
Blue Avocado, the non-profit magazine, offers a somewhat different view. They have published a board-member "contract" to give non-profit directors an idea of what's expected of them. It includes:
"... I will interpret our constituencies' needs and values to the organization, speak out for their interests, and on their behalf, hold the organization accountable. " [1]
Sarah
[1] http://www.blueavocado.org/content/board-member-contract _______________________________________________ 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
WMF is a technology company. We are an encyclopaedia, an educational institution. We need them like I need a mechanic to keep my car on the road. That they have control of the encyclopaedia's budget is an absurdity. The donors want to donate to (and think they are donating to) the builders of an encyclopaedia, not the tech guy that maintains our laptops.
Your model - essentially taking over the WMF by turning it into a membership organisation, and then into something that represents the aims of encyclopaedia-makers - would have the same result as starting a membership organisation de novo, except for two things.
1. I really like the idea of outsourcing our tech needs, so we can swap to new servers and a new tech team when we get fed up with the service being provided by the WMF.
2. Millions of dollars already sitting in the WMF's bank accounts. Following the model proposed by Denny would leave a fairly ordinary tech contractor with bulging coffers. It would be nice to be able to take most of that with us, should we choose to change tech contractors. Hopefully we could publicly shame them into handing it over.
George, the WMF, particularly under the Sue/Erik regime - but as best as I can tell from its very beginning - has had a propensity to privilege its view of what's best over the community's view. Superprotect. Visual editor. When the community has pushed back at WMF behaviour that suits the WMF, that the WMF thinks helps them in their mission, the WMF has historically just gone ahead and ignored what the community sees as being in the encyclopaedia's best interest. This bunch of tech geeks and silicon valley entrepreneurs holds the whip hand in this relationship. It really should be the other way round. Denny's model; Sarah's model. I don't really care. But this tail-wagging-dog thing is just not right.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Sarah, I'd prefer to see the "keeping the servers running" role completely separate from the community. As an organised community, if we become dissatisfied with the service being provided by the WMF, we could just sack them (or not renew their contract) and take on a new infrastructure contractor to "keep the servers running." Organised, we - the people who actually created this thing and actively maintain it - could set the course for its development.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:09 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Sarah, if the volunteer community was organised and had its own, functional representative body that had the community's trust and respect, that would, to some degree, correct the present asymmetry between us and the WMF.
Our only rights in relation to them are to fork or leave. While we are atomised, the latter is our only option. Organised, forking becomes a serious possibility. Of course, I hope it never comes to that. But without that possibility, we are in the position of just having to take whatever from the WMF - good and bad.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:47 AM, SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic < dvrandecic@wikimedia.org> wrote:
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that
will
be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation
- not
to the movement.
Hi Denny,
Blue Avocado, the non-profit magazine, offers a somewhat different view. They have published a board-member "contract" to give non-profit directors an idea of what's expected of them. It includes:
"... I will interpret our constituencies' needs and values to the organization, speak out for their interests, and on their behalf, hold the organization accountable. " [1]
Sarah
[1] http://www.blueavocado.org/content/board-member-contract _______________________________________________ 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
Sorry, the above post is initially addressing Sarah.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 11:01 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
WMF is a technology company. We are an encyclopaedia, an educational institution. We need them like I need a mechanic to keep my car on the road. That they have control of the encyclopaedia's budget is an absurdity. The donors want to donate to (and think they are donating to) the builders of an encyclopaedia, not the tech guy that maintains our laptops.
Your model - essentially taking over the WMF by turning it into a membership organisation, and then into something that represents the aims of encyclopaedia-makers - would have the same result as starting a membership organisation de novo, except for two things.
- I really like the idea of outsourcing our tech needs, so we can swap to
new servers and a new tech team when we get fed up with the service being provided by the WMF.
- Millions of dollars already sitting in the WMF's bank accounts.
Following the model proposed by Denny would leave a fairly ordinary tech contractor with bulging coffers. It would be nice to be able to take most of that with us, should we choose to change tech contractors. Hopefully we could publicly shame them into handing it over.
George, the WMF, particularly under the Sue/Erik regime - but as best as I can tell from its very beginning - has had a propensity to privilege its view of what's best over the community's view. Superprotect. Visual editor. When the community has pushed back at WMF behaviour that suits the WMF, that the WMF thinks helps them in their mission, the WMF has historically just gone ahead and ignored what the community sees as being in the encyclopaedia's best interest. This bunch of tech geeks and silicon valley entrepreneurs holds the whip hand in this relationship. It really should be the other way round. Denny's model; Sarah's model. I don't really care. But this tail-wagging-dog thing is just not right.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Sarah, I'd prefer to see the "keeping the servers running" role completely separate from the community. As an organised community, if we become dissatisfied with the service being provided by the WMF, we could just sack them (or not renew their contract) and take on a new infrastructure contractor to "keep the servers running." Organised, we - the people who actually created this thing and actively maintain it - could set the course for its development.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:09 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Sarah, if the volunteer community was organised and had its own, functional representative body that had the community's trust and respect, that would, to some degree, correct the present asymmetry between us and the WMF.
Our only rights in relation to them are to fork or leave. While we are atomised, the latter is our only option. Organised, forking becomes a serious possibility. Of course, I hope it never comes to that. But without that possibility, we are in the position of just having to take whatever from the WMF - good and bad.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:47 AM, SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic < dvrandecic@wikimedia.org> wrote:
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that
will
be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation
- not
to the movement.
Hi Denny,
Blue Avocado, the non-profit magazine, offers a somewhat different view. They have published a board-member "contract" to give non-profit directors an idea of what's expected of them. It includes:
"... I will interpret our constituencies' needs and values to the organization, speak out for their interests, and on their behalf, hold the organization accountable. " [1]
Sarah
[1] http://www.blueavocado.org/content/board-member-contract _______________________________________________ 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
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 9:01 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Hopefully we could publicly shame them into handing it over.
I believe that public shaming as a tool went out of vogue in most civil societies quite a bit ago.
I think it should be out of vogue on this list as well.
Hi Keegan.
If the volunteers who make the encyclopaedia shifted their work, en masse, to servers hosted elsewhere, I would hope the WMF would do the right thing with the money they have accumulated - let's face it shall we - either directly via Wikipedia banners or indirectly via the goodwill the encyclopaedia-makers have generated. If the WMF decides to hold on to all that moolah, shame on them.
But I assume it won't come to that: neither the parting of the ways nor, if that does come to pass, the WMF keeping the money.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 11:14 AM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 9:01 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Hopefully we could publicly shame them into handing it over.
I believe that public shaming as a tool went out of vogue in most civil societies quite a bit ago.
I think it should be out of vogue on this list as well.
-- ~Keegan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
This is my personal email address. Everything sent from this email address is in a personal capacity. _______________________________________________ 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
On Feb 24, 2016, at 7:01 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
George, the WMF, particularly under the Sue/Erik regime - but as best as I can tell from its very beginning - has had a propensity to privilege its view of what's best over the community's view. Superprotect. Visual editor. When the community has pushed back at WMF behaviour that suits the WMF, that the WMF thinks helps them in their mission, the WMF has historically just gone ahead and ignored what the community sees as being in the encyclopaedia's best interest. This bunch of tech geeks and silicon valley entrepreneurs holds the whip hand in this relationship. It really should be the other way round. Denny's model; Sarah's model. I don't really care. But this tail-wagging-dog thing is just not right.
There are several ways to look at this. One includes the view that the Foundation and Board exist to protect and encourage the Movement, not just the loudest editor communities. And that there are wider issues for the Movement, including things for users, things keeping users from editing, and things pushing people out of active editing that the Board and Foundation rightly should be paying a lot of attention to.
There are both valid issues the editor community has objected to, and things the editor community (enwiki at least) is grossly dysfunctional about that the Board and Foundation must still focus on. Both separation for perspective and feedback and relationship care are needed.
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone
Out of curiosity, why are all of these proposals so focused on people who click the edit button. The overwhelming percentage of our users (half a billion a month, if I recall correctly) never click that button. The vast majority of our donors never click that button. The massive majority of active and very active editors don't participate in Board selection activities. I won't say that the editing community is unimportant - in fact I believe it is extremely important - but every proposal that is coming forward seems exclusively focused on "empowering" a small percentage of the editing group over all other stakeholders. I'd like to see some suggestions that are more balanced.
Risker
On 24 February 2016 at 22:27, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 24, 2016, at 7:01 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
George, the WMF, particularly under the Sue/Erik regime - but as best as
I
can tell from its very beginning - has had a propensity to privilege its view of what's best over the community's view. Superprotect. Visual
editor.
When the community has pushed back at WMF behaviour that suits the WMF, that the WMF thinks helps them in their mission, the WMF has historically just gone ahead and ignored what the community sees as being in the encyclopaedia's best interest. This bunch of tech geeks and silicon
valley
entrepreneurs holds the whip hand in this relationship. It really should
be
the other way round. Denny's model; Sarah's model. I don't really care.
But
this tail-wagging-dog thing is just not right.
There are several ways to look at this. One includes the view that the Foundation and Board exist to protect and encourage the Movement, not just the loudest editor communities. And that there are wider issues for the Movement, including things for users, things keeping users from editing, and things pushing people out of active editing that the Board and Foundation rightly should be paying a lot of attention to.
There are both valid issues the editor community has objected to, and things the editor community (enwiki at least) is grossly dysfunctional about that the Board and Foundation must still focus on. Both separation for perspective and feedback and relationship care are needed.
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone _______________________________________________ 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
More focused but where I was trying to go. Thank you.
Perhaps two C level positions, Chief Editor Officer to liase and advocate there, and Chief Reader Officer to research and liase and advocate there, too.
Q: How can we identify a Reader representative we could put on the Board?
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 24, 2016, at 7:34 PM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Out of curiosity, why are all of these proposals so focused on people who click the edit button. The overwhelming percentage of our users (half a billion a month, if I recall correctly) never click that button. The vast majority of our donors never click that button. The massive majority of active and very active editors don't participate in Board selection activities. I won't say that the editing community is unimportant - in fact I believe it is extremely important - but every proposal that is coming forward seems exclusively focused on "empowering" a small percentage of the editing group over all other stakeholders. I'd like to see some suggestions that are more balanced.
Risker
On 24 February 2016 at 22:27, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 24, 2016, at 7:01 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
George, the WMF, particularly under the Sue/Erik regime - but as best as
I
can tell from its very beginning - has had a propensity to privilege its view of what's best over the community's view. Superprotect. Visual
editor.
When the community has pushed back at WMF behaviour that suits the WMF, that the WMF thinks helps them in their mission, the WMF has historically just gone ahead and ignored what the community sees as being in the encyclopaedia's best interest. This bunch of tech geeks and silicon
valley
entrepreneurs holds the whip hand in this relationship. It really should
be
the other way round. Denny's model; Sarah's model. I don't really care.
But
this tail-wagging-dog thing is just not right.
There are several ways to look at this. One includes the view that the Foundation and Board exist to protect and encourage the Movement, not just the loudest editor communities. And that there are wider issues for the Movement, including things for users, things keeping users from editing, and things pushing people out of active editing that the Board and Foundation rightly should be paying a lot of attention to.
There are both valid issues the editor community has objected to, and things the editor community (enwiki at least) is grossly dysfunctional about that the Board and Foundation must still focus on. Both separation for perspective and feedback and relationship care are needed.
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone _______________________________________________ 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
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Risker, regarding "why are all of these proposals so focused on people who click the edit button": because people who click the edit button on Wikipedia are the people who make this thing our readers love, the people responsible for the rivers of gold flowing into the WMF's bank account.
It's going to be hard enough (but doable) designing an editor membership structure that is safe from gaming by interest groups. If you can design a way to include readers in the membership, that is proofed against gaming, great, put it forward. I can't think of one.
The people who make this thing should be overseeing it, not the people who keep the servers running.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 11:46 AM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
More focused but where I was trying to go. Thank you.
Perhaps two C level positions, Chief Editor Officer to liase and advocate there, and Chief Reader Officer to research and liase and advocate there, too.
Q: How can we identify a Reader representative we could put on the Board?
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 24, 2016, at 7:34 PM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Out of curiosity, why are all of these proposals so focused on people who click the edit button. The overwhelming percentage of our users (half a billion a month, if I recall correctly) never click that button. The
vast
majority of our donors never click that button. The massive majority of active and very active editors don't participate in Board selection activities. I won't say that the editing community is unimportant - in
fact
I believe it is extremely important - but every proposal that is coming forward seems exclusively focused on "empowering" a small percentage of
the
editing group over all other stakeholders. I'd like to see some suggestions that are more balanced.
Risker
On 24 February 2016 at 22:27, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 24, 2016, at 7:01 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
George, the WMF, particularly under the Sue/Erik regime - but as best
as
I
can tell from its very beginning - has had a propensity to privilege
its
view of what's best over the community's view. Superprotect. Visual
editor.
When the community has pushed back at WMF behaviour that suits the WMF, that the WMF thinks helps them in their mission, the WMF has
historically
just gone ahead and ignored what the community sees as being in the encyclopaedia's best interest. This bunch of tech geeks and silicon
valley
entrepreneurs holds the whip hand in this relationship. It really
should
be
the other way round. Denny's model; Sarah's model. I don't really care.
But
this tail-wagging-dog thing is just not right.
There are several ways to look at this. One includes the view that the Foundation and Board exist to protect and encourage the Movement, not
just
the loudest editor communities. And that there are wider issues for the Movement, including things for users, things keeping users from editing, and things pushing people out of active editing that the Board and Foundation rightly should be paying a lot of attention to.
There are both valid issues the editor community has objected to, and things the editor community (enwiki at least) is grossly dysfunctional about that the Board and Foundation must still focus on. Both
separation
for perspective and feedback and relationship care are needed.
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone _______________________________________________ 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
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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
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Hoi, We are not an encyclopaedia. It is only one of our products. It is only one way whereby we provide content. By insisting on being focused on that part of what we do, we do an injustice to everything else. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 04:01, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
WMF is a technology company. We are an encyclopaedia, an educational institution. We need them like I need a mechanic to keep my car on the road. That they have control of the encyclopaedia's budget is an absurdity. The donors want to donate to (and think they are donating to) the builders of an encyclopaedia, not the tech guy that maintains our laptops.
Your model - essentially taking over the WMF by turning it into a membership organisation, and then into something that represents the aims of encyclopaedia-makers - would have the same result as starting a membership organisation de novo, except for two things.
- I really like the idea of outsourcing our tech needs, so we can swap to
new servers and a new tech team when we get fed up with the service being provided by the WMF.
- Millions of dollars already sitting in the WMF's bank accounts.
Following the model proposed by Denny would leave a fairly ordinary tech contractor with bulging coffers. It would be nice to be able to take most of that with us, should we choose to change tech contractors. Hopefully we could publicly shame them into handing it over.
George, the WMF, particularly under the Sue/Erik regime - but as best as I can tell from its very beginning - has had a propensity to privilege its view of what's best over the community's view. Superprotect. Visual editor. When the community has pushed back at WMF behaviour that suits the WMF, that the WMF thinks helps them in their mission, the WMF has historically just gone ahead and ignored what the community sees as being in the encyclopaedia's best interest. This bunch of tech geeks and silicon valley entrepreneurs holds the whip hand in this relationship. It really should be the other way round. Denny's model; Sarah's model. I don't really care. But this tail-wagging-dog thing is just not right.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Sarah, I'd prefer to see the "keeping the servers running" role
completely
separate from the community. As an organised community, if we become dissatisfied with the service being provided by the WMF, we could just
sack
them (or not renew their contract) and take on a new infrastructure contractor to "keep the servers running." Organised, we - the people who actually created this thing and actively maintain it - could set the
course
for its development.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:09 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Sarah, if the volunteer community was organised and had its own, functional representative body that had the community's trust and
respect,
that would, to some degree, correct the present asymmetry between us and the WMF.
Our only rights in relation to them are to fork or leave. While we are atomised, the latter is our only option. Organised, forking becomes a serious possibility. Of course, I hope it never comes to that. But
without
that possibility, we are in the position of just having to take whatever from the WMF - good and bad.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:47 AM, SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com
wrote:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic < dvrandecic@wikimedia.org> wrote:
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that
will
be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation
- not
to the movement.
Hi Denny,
Blue Avocado, the non-profit magazine, offers a somewhat different
view.
They have published a board-member "contract" to give non-profit directors an idea of what's expected of them. It includes:
"... I will interpret our constituencies' needs and values to the organization, speak out for their interests, and on their behalf, hold the
organization
accountable. " [1]
Sarah
[1] http://www.blueavocado.org/content/board-member-contract _______________________________________________ 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
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
True, Gerard. I'm pretty sure the encyclopaedia is the only successful Wikimedia project though, isn't it? I suppose Wikidata will be a success one day but, for the moment, it's the encyclopaedia that the world loves, it's the encyclopaedia that raises the income, it's the encyclopaedia that is spreading the knowledge. On those measures - public awareness and affection, income-generation, and knowledge-dissemination, all the other entities are less than a drop in the ocean compared to Wikipedia.
The people in these cottage industries that have grown up around this host - chapters, WMF, sister-projects - too often lose sight of the fact that all of them have yet to prove they have had any significant measurable impact on the distribution of knowledge.
So, forgive me if I sometimes forget to include them in my thinking.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 1:31 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, We are not an encyclopaedia. It is only one of our products. It is only one way whereby we provide content. By insisting on being focused on that part of what we do, we do an injustice to everything else. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 04:01, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
WMF is a technology company. We are an encyclopaedia, an educational institution. We need them like I need a mechanic to keep my car on the road. That they have control of the encyclopaedia's budget is an
absurdity.
The donors want to donate to (and think they are donating to) the
builders
of an encyclopaedia, not the tech guy that maintains our laptops.
Your model - essentially taking over the WMF by turning it into a membership organisation, and then into something that represents the aims of encyclopaedia-makers - would have the same result as starting a membership organisation de novo, except for two things.
- I really like the idea of outsourcing our tech needs, so we can swap
to
new servers and a new tech team when we get fed up with the service being provided by the WMF.
- Millions of dollars already sitting in the WMF's bank accounts.
Following the model proposed by Denny would leave a fairly ordinary tech contractor with bulging coffers. It would be nice to be able to take most of that with us, should we choose to change tech contractors. Hopefully
we
could publicly shame them into handing it over.
George, the WMF, particularly under the Sue/Erik regime - but as best as
I
can tell from its very beginning - has had a propensity to privilege its view of what's best over the community's view. Superprotect. Visual
editor.
When the community has pushed back at WMF behaviour that suits the WMF, that the WMF thinks helps them in their mission, the WMF has historically just gone ahead and ignored what the community sees as being in the encyclopaedia's best interest. This bunch of tech geeks and silicon
valley
entrepreneurs holds the whip hand in this relationship. It really should
be
the other way round. Denny's model; Sarah's model. I don't really care.
But
this tail-wagging-dog thing is just not right.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Sarah, I'd prefer to see the "keeping the servers running" role
completely
separate from the community. As an organised community, if we become dissatisfied with the service being provided by the WMF, we could just
sack
them (or not renew their contract) and take on a new infrastructure contractor to "keep the servers running." Organised, we - the people
who
actually created this thing and actively maintain it - could set the
course
for its development.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:09 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Sarah, if the volunteer community was organised and had its own, functional representative body that had the community's trust and
respect,
that would, to some degree, correct the present asymmetry between us
and
the WMF.
Our only rights in relation to them are to fork or leave. While we are atomised, the latter is our only option. Organised, forking becomes a serious possibility. Of course, I hope it never comes to that. But
without
that possibility, we are in the position of just having to take
whatever
from the WMF - good and bad.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:47 AM, SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com
wrote:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic < dvrandecic@wikimedia.org> wrote:
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things
that
will
be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the
Foundation
- not
to the movement.
Hi Denny,
Blue Avocado, the non-profit magazine, offers a somewhat different
view.
They have published a board-member "contract" to give non-profit directors an idea of what's expected of them. It includes:
"... I will interpret our constituencies' needs and values to the organization, speak out for their interests, and on their behalf, hold the
organization
accountable. " [1]
Sarah
[1] http://www.blueavocado.org/content/board-member-contract _______________________________________________ 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
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
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
Hoi, You are wrong. The English Wikipedia is only brutally big. Wikidata is slowly but surely becoming one of the most important resources for data on the Internet. Commons is the biggest dysfunctional repository of freely licensed material. Wikisource is where for many languages much of the books end up (for want of new books and for the cost of publishing).
Really. If projects like Wikidata and Commons received proper attention to give them the credit they are due, they would improve exponentially while more attention to Wikipedia only improves things marginally.
People who are one track ponies about Wikipedia are in fact clueless. They forget about what we stand for; sharing the sum of all knowledge. That sum of all knowledge is better represented in both Commons and Wikidata. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 07:17, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
True, Gerard. I'm pretty sure the encyclopaedia is the only successful Wikimedia project though, isn't it? I suppose Wikidata will be a success one day but, for the moment, it's the encyclopaedia that the world loves, it's the encyclopaedia that raises the income, it's the encyclopaedia that is spreading the knowledge. On those measures - public awareness and affection, income-generation, and knowledge-dissemination, all the other entities are less than a drop in the ocean compared to Wikipedia.
The people in these cottage industries that have grown up around this host
- chapters, WMF, sister-projects - too often lose sight of the fact that
all of them have yet to prove they have had any significant measurable impact on the distribution of knowledge.
So, forgive me if I sometimes forget to include them in my thinking.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 1:31 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, We are not an encyclopaedia. It is only one of our products. It is only
one
way whereby we provide content. By insisting on being focused on that
part
of what we do, we do an injustice to everything else. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 04:01, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
WMF is a technology company. We are an encyclopaedia, an educational institution. We need them like I need a mechanic to keep my car on the road. That they have control of the encyclopaedia's budget is an
absurdity.
The donors want to donate to (and think they are donating to) the
builders
of an encyclopaedia, not the tech guy that maintains our laptops.
Your model - essentially taking over the WMF by turning it into a membership organisation, and then into something that represents the
aims
of encyclopaedia-makers - would have the same result as starting a membership organisation de novo, except for two things.
- I really like the idea of outsourcing our tech needs, so we can swap
to
new servers and a new tech team when we get fed up with the service
being
provided by the WMF.
- Millions of dollars already sitting in the WMF's bank accounts.
Following the model proposed by Denny would leave a fairly ordinary
tech
contractor with bulging coffers. It would be nice to be able to take
most
of that with us, should we choose to change tech contractors. Hopefully
we
could publicly shame them into handing it over.
George, the WMF, particularly under the Sue/Erik regime - but as best
as
I
can tell from its very beginning - has had a propensity to privilege
its
view of what's best over the community's view. Superprotect. Visual
editor.
When the community has pushed back at WMF behaviour that suits the WMF, that the WMF thinks helps them in their mission, the WMF has
historically
just gone ahead and ignored what the community sees as being in the encyclopaedia's best interest. This bunch of tech geeks and silicon
valley
entrepreneurs holds the whip hand in this relationship. It really
should
be
the other way round. Denny's model; Sarah's model. I don't really care.
But
this tail-wagging-dog thing is just not right.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Sarah, I'd prefer to see the "keeping the servers running" role
completely
separate from the community. As an organised community, if we become dissatisfied with the service being provided by the WMF, we could
just
sack
them (or not renew their contract) and take on a new infrastructure contractor to "keep the servers running." Organised, we - the people
who
actually created this thing and actively maintain it - could set the
course
for its development.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:09 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Sarah, if the volunteer community was organised and had its own, functional representative body that had the community's trust and
respect,
that would, to some degree, correct the present asymmetry between us
and
the WMF.
Our only rights in relation to them are to fork or leave. While we
are
atomised, the latter is our only option. Organised, forking becomes
a
serious possibility. Of course, I hope it never comes to that. But
without
that possibility, we are in the position of just having to take
whatever
from the WMF - good and bad.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:47 AM, SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com
wrote:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic < dvrandecic@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things
that
will > be true now matter how much you reorganize it: > > - the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the
Foundation
- not
> to the movement. > > Hi Denny,
Blue Avocado, the non-profit magazine, offers a somewhat different
view.
They have published a board-member "contract" to give non-profit directors an idea of what's expected of them. It includes:
"... I will interpret our constituencies' needs and values to the organization, speak out for their interests, and on their behalf, hold the
organization
accountable. " [1]
Sarah
[1] http://www.blueavocado.org/content/board-member-contract _______________________________________________ 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>
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
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Yes, I guess Commons is kind of useful - as an adjunct to Wikipedia. Leaving aside its usefulness to Wikipedia, though, would anyone else notice if it disappeared tomorrow? If they did, Flickr and Google would fill any gap overnight.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 2:25 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, You are wrong. The English Wikipedia is only brutally big. Wikidata is slowly but surely becoming one of the most important resources for data on the Internet. Commons is the biggest dysfunctional repository of freely licensed material. Wikisource is where for many languages much of the books end up (for want of new books and for the cost of publishing).
Really. If projects like Wikidata and Commons received proper attention to give them the credit they are due, they would improve exponentially while more attention to Wikipedia only improves things marginally.
People who are one track ponies about Wikipedia are in fact clueless. They forget about what we stand for; sharing the sum of all knowledge. That sum of all knowledge is better represented in both Commons and Wikidata. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 07:17, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
True, Gerard. I'm pretty sure the encyclopaedia is the only successful Wikimedia project though, isn't it? I suppose Wikidata will be a success one day but, for the moment, it's the encyclopaedia that the world loves, it's the encyclopaedia that raises the income, it's the encyclopaedia
that
is spreading the knowledge. On those measures - public awareness and affection, income-generation, and knowledge-dissemination, all the other entities are less than a drop in the ocean compared to Wikipedia.
The people in these cottage industries that have grown up around this
host
- chapters, WMF, sister-projects - too often lose sight of the fact that
all of them have yet to prove they have had any significant measurable impact on the distribution of knowledge.
So, forgive me if I sometimes forget to include them in my thinking.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 1:31 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, We are not an encyclopaedia. It is only one of our products. It is only
one
way whereby we provide content. By insisting on being focused on that
part
of what we do, we do an injustice to everything else. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 04:01, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com
wrote:
WMF is a technology company. We are an encyclopaedia, an educational institution. We need them like I need a mechanic to keep my car on
the
road. That they have control of the encyclopaedia's budget is an
absurdity.
The donors want to donate to (and think they are donating to) the
builders
of an encyclopaedia, not the tech guy that maintains our laptops.
Your model - essentially taking over the WMF by turning it into a membership organisation, and then into something that represents the
aims
of encyclopaedia-makers - would have the same result as starting a membership organisation de novo, except for two things.
- I really like the idea of outsourcing our tech needs, so we can
swap
to
new servers and a new tech team when we get fed up with the service
being
provided by the WMF.
- Millions of dollars already sitting in the WMF's bank accounts.
Following the model proposed by Denny would leave a fairly ordinary
tech
contractor with bulging coffers. It would be nice to be able to take
most
of that with us, should we choose to change tech contractors.
Hopefully
we
could publicly shame them into handing it over.
George, the WMF, particularly under the Sue/Erik regime - but as best
as
I
can tell from its very beginning - has had a propensity to privilege
its
view of what's best over the community's view. Superprotect. Visual
editor.
When the community has pushed back at WMF behaviour that suits the
WMF,
that the WMF thinks helps them in their mission, the WMF has
historically
just gone ahead and ignored what the community sees as being in the encyclopaedia's best interest. This bunch of tech geeks and silicon
valley
entrepreneurs holds the whip hand in this relationship. It really
should
be
the other way round. Denny's model; Sarah's model. I don't really
care.
But
this tail-wagging-dog thing is just not right.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Sarah, I'd prefer to see the "keeping the servers running" role
completely
separate from the community. As an organised community, if we
become
dissatisfied with the service being provided by the WMF, we could
just
sack
them (or not renew their contract) and take on a new infrastructure contractor to "keep the servers running." Organised, we - the
people
who
actually created this thing and actively maintain it - could set
the
course
for its development.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:09 AM, Anthony Cole <
ahcoleecu@gmail.com>
wrote:
Sarah, if the volunteer community was organised and had its own, functional representative body that had the community's trust and
respect,
that would, to some degree, correct the present asymmetry between
us
and
the WMF.
Our only rights in relation to them are to fork or leave. While we
are
atomised, the latter is our only option. Organised, forking
becomes
a
serious possibility. Of course, I hope it never comes to that. But
without
that possibility, we are in the position of just having to take
whatever
from the WMF - good and bad.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:47 AM, SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com
wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic < > dvrandecic@wikimedia.org> > wrote: > > > To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things
that
> will > > be true now matter how much you reorganize it: > > > > - the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the
Foundation
> - not > > to the movement. > > > > Hi Denny, > > Blue Avocado, the non-profit magazine, offers a somewhat
different
view.
> They have published a board-member "contract" to give non-profit > directors > an idea of what's expected of them. It includes: > > > > "... > I will interpret our constituencies' needs and values to the > organization, > speak out for their interests, and on their behalf, hold the
organization
> accountable. > " [1] > > Sarah > > [1] http://www.blueavocado.org/content/board-member-contract > > _______________________________________________ > 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>
>
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
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Hoi, Nice that you prove my point. My point was that when proper attention would be given to Commons, it would stand proud. Important achievements have been made, because of Commons and its community we have GLAM (just as an example).
When it was possible to find images in Commons, it would no longer be dysfunctional. It is a travesty that while we discuss search in the light of the recent huha, we have important functionality from Wikidata that increases the results substantially for any and all languages and the notion that finding material in Commons (aka search) is so bad that I do not even consider Commons for illustrations for my blog..
Even on this Wikimedia-l demonstrate how limited their understanding is of what it is what we do and where we can easily even cheaply improve,
If you want 100,000 more editors for Wikipedia (any language) there is such a glaring opportunity that people do not even see it before them. It would not cost much and it will improve their well being in a meaningful way. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 07:37, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, I guess Commons is kind of useful - as an adjunct to Wikipedia. Leaving aside its usefulness to Wikipedia, though, would anyone else notice if it disappeared tomorrow? If they did, Flickr and Google would fill any gap overnight.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 2:25 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, You are wrong. The English Wikipedia is only brutally big. Wikidata is slowly but surely becoming one of the most important resources for data
on
the Internet. Commons is the biggest dysfunctional repository of freely licensed material. Wikisource is where for many languages much of the
books
end up (for want of new books and for the cost of publishing).
Really. If projects like Wikidata and Commons received proper attention
to
give them the credit they are due, they would improve exponentially while more attention to Wikipedia only improves things marginally.
People who are one track ponies about Wikipedia are in fact clueless.
They
forget about what we stand for; sharing the sum of all knowledge. That
sum
of all knowledge is better represented in both Commons and Wikidata. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 07:17, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
True, Gerard. I'm pretty sure the encyclopaedia is the only successful Wikimedia project though, isn't it? I suppose Wikidata will be a
success
one day but, for the moment, it's the encyclopaedia that the world
loves,
it's the encyclopaedia that raises the income, it's the encyclopaedia
that
is spreading the knowledge. On those measures - public awareness and affection, income-generation, and knowledge-dissemination, all the
other
entities are less than a drop in the ocean compared to Wikipedia.
The people in these cottage industries that have grown up around this
host
- chapters, WMF, sister-projects - too often lose sight of the fact
that
all of them have yet to prove they have had any significant measurable impact on the distribution of knowledge.
So, forgive me if I sometimes forget to include them in my thinking.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 1:31 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, We are not an encyclopaedia. It is only one of our products. It is
only
one
way whereby we provide content. By insisting on being focused on that
part
of what we do, we do an injustice to everything else. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 04:01, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com
wrote:
WMF is a technology company. We are an encyclopaedia, an
educational
institution. We need them like I need a mechanic to keep my car on
the
road. That they have control of the encyclopaedia's budget is an
absurdity.
The donors want to donate to (and think they are donating to) the
builders
of an encyclopaedia, not the tech guy that maintains our laptops.
Your model - essentially taking over the WMF by turning it into a membership organisation, and then into something that represents
the
aims
of encyclopaedia-makers - would have the same result as starting a membership organisation de novo, except for two things.
- I really like the idea of outsourcing our tech needs, so we can
swap
to
new servers and a new tech team when we get fed up with the service
being
provided by the WMF.
- Millions of dollars already sitting in the WMF's bank accounts.
Following the model proposed by Denny would leave a fairly ordinary
tech
contractor with bulging coffers. It would be nice to be able to
take
most
of that with us, should we choose to change tech contractors.
Hopefully
we
could publicly shame them into handing it over.
George, the WMF, particularly under the Sue/Erik regime - but as
best
as
I
can tell from its very beginning - has had a propensity to
privilege
its
view of what's best over the community's view. Superprotect. Visual
editor.
When the community has pushed back at WMF behaviour that suits the
WMF,
that the WMF thinks helps them in their mission, the WMF has
historically
just gone ahead and ignored what the community sees as being in the encyclopaedia's best interest. This bunch of tech geeks and silicon
valley
entrepreneurs holds the whip hand in this relationship. It really
should
be
the other way round. Denny's model; Sarah's model. I don't really
care.
But
this tail-wagging-dog thing is just not right.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Anthony Cole <
ahcoleecu@gmail.com>
wrote:
Sarah, I'd prefer to see the "keeping the servers running" role
completely
separate from the community. As an organised community, if we
become
dissatisfied with the service being provided by the WMF, we could
just
sack
them (or not renew their contract) and take on a new
infrastructure
contractor to "keep the servers running." Organised, we - the
people
who
actually created this thing and actively maintain it - could set
the
course
for its development.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:09 AM, Anthony Cole <
ahcoleecu@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Sarah, if the volunteer community was organised and had its own, > functional representative body that had the community's trust
and
respect,
> that would, to some degree, correct the present asymmetry
between
us
and
> the WMF. > > Our only rights in relation to them are to fork or leave. While
we
are
> atomised, the latter is our only option. Organised, forking
becomes
a
> serious possibility. Of course, I hope it never comes to that.
But
without
> that possibility, we are in the position of just having to take
whatever
> from the WMF - good and bad. > > Anthony Cole > > > On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:47 AM, SarahSV <
sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com>
wrote:
> >> On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic < >> dvrandecic@wikimedia.org> >> wrote: >> >> > To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear -
things
that
>> will >> > be true now matter how much you reorganize it: >> > >> > - the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the
Foundation
>> - not >> > to the movement. >> > >> > Hi Denny, >> >> Blue Avocado, the non-profit magazine, offers a somewhat
different
view.
>> They have published a board-member "contract" to give
non-profit
>> directors >> an idea of what's expected of them. It includes: >> >> >> >> "... >> I will interpret our constituencies' needs and values to the >> organization, >> speak out for their interests, and on their behalf, hold the
organization
>> accountable. >> " [1] >> >> Sarah >> >> [1] http://www.blueavocado.org/content/board-member-contract >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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>
>> > >
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I think we agree on the important points. There's a huge potential in Wikidata, and it looks like it's in good hands. Commons could be so much better than it is.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 3:08 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Nice that you prove my point. My point was that when proper attention would be given to Commons, it would stand proud. Important achievements have been made, because of Commons and its community we have GLAM (just as an example).
When it was possible to find images in Commons, it would no longer be dysfunctional. It is a travesty that while we discuss search in the light of the recent huha, we have important functionality from Wikidata that increases the results substantially for any and all languages and the notion that finding material in Commons (aka search) is so bad that I do not even consider Commons for illustrations for my blog..
Even on this Wikimedia-l demonstrate how limited their understanding is of what it is what we do and where we can easily even cheaply improve,
If you want 100,000 more editors for Wikipedia (any language) there is such a glaring opportunity that people do not even see it before them. It would not cost much and it will improve their well being in a meaningful way. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 07:37, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, I guess Commons is kind of useful - as an adjunct to Wikipedia. Leaving aside its usefulness to Wikipedia, though, would anyone else
notice
if it disappeared tomorrow? If they did, Flickr and Google would fill any gap overnight.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 2:25 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, You are wrong. The English Wikipedia is only brutally big. Wikidata is slowly but surely becoming one of the most important resources for data
on
the Internet. Commons is the biggest dysfunctional repository of freely licensed material. Wikisource is where for many languages much of the
books
end up (for want of new books and for the cost of publishing).
Really. If projects like Wikidata and Commons received proper attention
to
give them the credit they are due, they would improve exponentially
while
more attention to Wikipedia only improves things marginally.
People who are one track ponies about Wikipedia are in fact clueless.
They
forget about what we stand for; sharing the sum of all knowledge. That
sum
of all knowledge is better represented in both Commons and Wikidata. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 07:17, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com
wrote:
True, Gerard. I'm pretty sure the encyclopaedia is the only
successful
Wikimedia project though, isn't it? I suppose Wikidata will be a
success
one day but, for the moment, it's the encyclopaedia that the world
loves,
it's the encyclopaedia that raises the income, it's the encyclopaedia
that
is spreading the knowledge. On those measures - public awareness and affection, income-generation, and knowledge-dissemination, all the
other
entities are less than a drop in the ocean compared to Wikipedia.
The people in these cottage industries that have grown up around this
host
- chapters, WMF, sister-projects - too often lose sight of the fact
that
all of them have yet to prove they have had any significant
measurable
impact on the distribution of knowledge.
So, forgive me if I sometimes forget to include them in my thinking.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 1:31 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, We are not an encyclopaedia. It is only one of our products. It is
only
one
way whereby we provide content. By insisting on being focused on
that
part
of what we do, we do an injustice to everything else. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 04:01, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com
wrote:
WMF is a technology company. We are an encyclopaedia, an
educational
institution. We need them like I need a mechanic to keep my car
on
the
road. That they have control of the encyclopaedia's budget is an
absurdity.
The donors want to donate to (and think they are donating to) the
builders
of an encyclopaedia, not the tech guy that maintains our laptops.
Your model - essentially taking over the WMF by turning it into a membership organisation, and then into something that represents
the
aims
of encyclopaedia-makers - would have the same result as starting
a
membership organisation de novo, except for two things.
- I really like the idea of outsourcing our tech needs, so we
can
swap
to
new servers and a new tech team when we get fed up with the
service
being
provided by the WMF.
- Millions of dollars already sitting in the WMF's bank
accounts.
Following the model proposed by Denny would leave a fairly
ordinary
tech
contractor with bulging coffers. It would be nice to be able to
take
most
of that with us, should we choose to change tech contractors.
Hopefully
we
could publicly shame them into handing it over.
George, the WMF, particularly under the Sue/Erik regime - but as
best
as
I
can tell from its very beginning - has had a propensity to
privilege
its
view of what's best over the community's view. Superprotect.
Visual
editor.
When the community has pushed back at WMF behaviour that suits
the
WMF,
that the WMF thinks helps them in their mission, the WMF has
historically
just gone ahead and ignored what the community sees as being in
the
encyclopaedia's best interest. This bunch of tech geeks and
silicon
valley
entrepreneurs holds the whip hand in this relationship. It really
should
be
the other way round. Denny's model; Sarah's model. I don't really
care.
But
this tail-wagging-dog thing is just not right.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Anthony Cole <
ahcoleecu@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Sarah, I'd prefer to see the "keeping the servers running" role completely > separate from the community. As an organised community, if we
become
> dissatisfied with the service being provided by the WMF, we
could
just
sack > them (or not renew their contract) and take on a new
infrastructure
> contractor to "keep the servers running." Organised, we - the
people
who
> actually created this thing and actively maintain it - could
set
the
course > for its development. > > Anthony Cole > > > On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:09 AM, Anthony Cole <
ahcoleecu@gmail.com>
> wrote: > >> Sarah, if the volunteer community was organised and had its
own,
>> functional representative body that had the community's trust
and
respect, >> that would, to some degree, correct the present asymmetry
between
us
and
>> the WMF. >> >> Our only rights in relation to them are to fork or leave.
While
we
are
>> atomised, the latter is our only option. Organised, forking
becomes
a
>> serious possibility. Of course, I hope it never comes to that.
But
without >> that possibility, we are in the position of just having to
take
whatever
>> from the WMF - good and bad. >> >> Anthony Cole >> >> >> On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:47 AM, SarahSV <
sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com>
wrote: >> >>> On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic < >>> dvrandecic@wikimedia.org> >>> wrote: >>> >>> > To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear -
things
that
>>> will >>> > be true now matter how much you reorganize it: >>> > >>> > - the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the
Foundation
>>> - not >>> > to the movement. >>> > >>> > Hi Denny, >>> >>> Blue Avocado, the non-profit magazine, offers a somewhat
different
view. >>> They have published a board-member "contract" to give
non-profit
>>> directors >>> an idea of what's expected of them. It includes: >>> >>> >>> >>> "... >>> I will interpret our constituencies' needs and values to the >>> organization, >>> speak out for their interests, and on their behalf, hold the organization >>> accountable. >>> " [1] >>> >>> Sarah >>> >>> [1] http://www.blueavocado.org/content/board-member-contract >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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>
>>> >> >> > _______________________________________________ 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>
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Hoi, Sorry the important point is that we should invest where the most benefit is. The Wikipedia community is toxic when you talk functionality. It is much better to spend effort where it makes a difference, where it is welcome and where it does add value. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 08:29, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
I think we agree on the important points. There's a huge potential in Wikidata, and it looks like it's in good hands. Commons could be so much better than it is.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 3:08 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, Nice that you prove my point. My point was that when proper attention
would
be given to Commons, it would stand proud. Important achievements have
been
made, because of Commons and its community we have GLAM (just as an example).
When it was possible to find images in Commons, it would no longer be dysfunctional. It is a travesty that while we discuss search in the light of the recent huha, we have important functionality from Wikidata that increases the results substantially for any and all languages and the notion that finding material in Commons (aka search) is so bad that I do not even consider Commons for illustrations for my blog..
Even on this Wikimedia-l demonstrate how limited their understanding is
of
what it is what we do and where we can easily even cheaply improve,
If you want 100,000 more editors for Wikipedia (any language) there is
such
a glaring opportunity that people do not even see it before them. It
would
not cost much and it will improve their well being in a meaningful way. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 07:37, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, I guess Commons is kind of useful - as an adjunct to Wikipedia. Leaving aside its usefulness to Wikipedia, though, would anyone else
notice
if it disappeared tomorrow? If they did, Flickr and Google would fill
any
gap overnight.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 2:25 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, You are wrong. The English Wikipedia is only brutally big. Wikidata
is
slowly but surely becoming one of the most important resources for
data
on
the Internet. Commons is the biggest dysfunctional repository of
freely
licensed material. Wikisource is where for many languages much of the
books
end up (for want of new books and for the cost of publishing).
Really. If projects like Wikidata and Commons received proper
attention
to
give them the credit they are due, they would improve exponentially
while
more attention to Wikipedia only improves things marginally.
People who are one track ponies about Wikipedia are in fact clueless.
They
forget about what we stand for; sharing the sum of all knowledge.
That
sum
of all knowledge is better represented in both Commons and Wikidata. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 07:17, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com
wrote:
True, Gerard. I'm pretty sure the encyclopaedia is the only
successful
Wikimedia project though, isn't it? I suppose Wikidata will be a
success
one day but, for the moment, it's the encyclopaedia that the world
loves,
it's the encyclopaedia that raises the income, it's the
encyclopaedia
that
is spreading the knowledge. On those measures - public awareness
and
affection, income-generation, and knowledge-dissemination, all the
other
entities are less than a drop in the ocean compared to Wikipedia.
The people in these cottage industries that have grown up around
this
host
- chapters, WMF, sister-projects - too often lose sight of the fact
that
all of them have yet to prove they have had any significant
measurable
impact on the distribution of knowledge.
So, forgive me if I sometimes forget to include them in my
thinking.
Anthony Cole
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 1:31 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, We are not an encyclopaedia. It is only one of our products. It
is
only
one
way whereby we provide content. By insisting on being focused on
that
part
of what we do, we do an injustice to everything else. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 February 2016 at 04:01, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com
wrote:
> WMF is a technology company. We are an encyclopaedia, an
educational
> institution. We need them like I need a mechanic to keep my car
on
the
> road. That they have control of the encyclopaedia's budget is
an
absurdity. > The donors want to donate to (and think they are donating to)
the
builders > of an encyclopaedia, not the tech guy that maintains our
laptops.
> > Your model - essentially taking over the WMF by turning it
into a
> membership organisation, and then into something that
represents
the
aims
> of encyclopaedia-makers - would have the same result as
starting
a
> membership organisation de novo, except for two things. > > 1. I really like the idea of outsourcing our tech needs, so we
can
swap
to > new servers and a new tech team when we get fed up with the
service
being
> provided by the WMF. > > 2. Millions of dollars already sitting in the WMF's bank
accounts.
> Following the model proposed by Denny would leave a fairly
ordinary
tech
> contractor with bulging coffers. It would be nice to be able to
take
most
> of that with us, should we choose to change tech contractors.
Hopefully
we > could publicly shame them into handing it over. > > George, the WMF, particularly under the Sue/Erik regime - but
as
best
as
I > can tell from its very beginning - has had a propensity to
privilege
its
> view of what's best over the community's view. Superprotect.
Visual
editor. > When the community has pushed back at WMF behaviour that suits
the
WMF,
> that the WMF thinks helps them in their mission, the WMF has
historically
> just gone ahead and ignored what the community sees as being in
the
> encyclopaedia's best interest. This bunch of tech geeks and
silicon
valley > entrepreneurs holds the whip hand in this relationship. It
really
should
be > the other way round. Denny's model; Sarah's model. I don't
really
care.
But > this tail-wagging-dog thing is just not right. > > > > Anthony Cole > > > On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Anthony Cole <
ahcoleecu@gmail.com>
> wrote: > > > Sarah, I'd prefer to see the "keeping the servers running"
role
> completely > > separate from the community. As an organised community, if we
become
> > dissatisfied with the service being provided by the WMF, we
could
just
> sack > > them (or not renew their contract) and take on a new
infrastructure
> > contractor to "keep the servers running." Organised, we - the
people
who > > actually created this thing and actively maintain it - could
set
the
> course > > for its development. > > > > Anthony Cole > > > > > > On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:09 AM, Anthony Cole <
ahcoleecu@gmail.com>
> > wrote: > > > >> Sarah, if the volunteer community was organised and had its
own,
> >> functional representative body that had the community's
trust
and
> respect, > >> that would, to some degree, correct the present asymmetry
between
us
and > >> the WMF. > >> > >> Our only rights in relation to them are to fork or leave.
While
we
are
> >> atomised, the latter is our only option. Organised, forking
becomes
a
> >> serious possibility. Of course, I hope it never comes to
that.
But
> without > >> that possibility, we are in the position of just having to
take
whatever > >> from the WMF - good and bad. > >> > >> Anthony Cole > >> > >> > >> On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:47 AM, SarahSV <
sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com>
> wrote: > >> > >>> On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic < > >>> dvrandecic@wikimedia.org> > >>> wrote: > >>> > >>> > To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear -
things
that > >>> will > >>> > be true now matter how much you reorganize it: > >>> > > >>> > - the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to
the
Foundation > >>> - not > >>> > to the movement. > >>> > > >>> > Hi Denny, > >>> > >>> Blue Avocado, the non-profit magazine, offers a somewhat
different
> view. > >>> They have published a board-member "contract" to give
non-profit
> >>> directors > >>> an idea of what's expected of them. It includes: > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> "... > >>> I will interpret our constituencies' needs and values to
the
> >>> organization, > >>> speak out for their interests, and on their behalf, hold
the
> organization > >>> accountable. > >>> " [1] > >>> > >>> Sarah > >>> > >>> [1]
http://www.blueavocado.org/content/board-member-contract
> >>> > >>> _______________________________________________ > >>> 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>
> >>> > >> > >> > > > _______________________________________________ > 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>
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One could argue that any action that would injure the movement would also injure the Foundation by definition. Denny is quite correct that trustees have a legal obligation to put the Foundation before anything else, however there's usually a fair bit of latitude in how that obligation is interpreted.
Cheers, Craig
On 25 February 2016 at 11:47, SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic <dvrandecic@wikimedia.org
wrote:
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that will be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation -
not
to the movement.
Hi Denny,
Blue Avocado, the non-profit magazine, offers a somewhat different view. They have published a board-member "contract" to give non-profit directors an idea of what's expected of them. It includes:
"... I will interpret our constituencies' needs and values to the organization, speak out for their interests, and on their behalf, hold the organization accountable. " [1]
Sarah
[1] http://www.blueavocado.org/content/board-member-contract _______________________________________________ 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
Craig Franklin cfranklin@halonetwork.net writes:
any action that would injure the movement would also injure the Foundation by definition. Denny is quite correct that trustees have a legal obligation to put the Foundation before anything else, however there's usually a fair bit of latitude in how that obligation is interpreted.
Yes.
DGG writes:
Rather, the movement is to create a model of free human interaction and work, and the initial way of exemplifying this is in the various versions of the encyclopedia.
+100. Edit this a bit and it will be a perfect quote.
a model of free cooperative expression of the manifestations of human intellectual work and creativity... is fundamentally and radically in conflict with such formal organization...
< To the extent we need it, it is only to serve some limited purposes
necessary in the economic and legal world as it is.
<
Unfortunately... human history shows that structures intended to have such limited supporting purposes do not easily remain in this limited role
I appreciate this long view. It is true, similar to the arc that leads to policy creep even where it is counterprouctive; and each requires steady awareness to balance.
On 2/25/16 2:14 AM, Craig Franklin wrote:
One could argue that any action that would injure the movement would also injure the Foundation by definition. Denny is quite correct that trustees have a legal obligation to put the Foundation before anything else, however there's usually a fair bit of latitude in how that obligation is interpreted.
This is effectively my view. Trustees have an unavoidable fiduciary duty to the Foundation - it's the law, and it brings with it certain responsibilities. First among those responsibilities is to recognize and support the ecosystem of editors, GLAM folks, chapters, staff, fellow traveler organizations, readers, etc. which makes that possible.
In an organization where the purpose and Bylaws explicitly (Article II) call for it to be supporting the movement, the Board should be balancing that aspect anyways.
Yes, the Board cares for the Foundation, but the Foundation cares for the Movement, and if it stops doing that it's off chartered purpose and the Board needs to intervene.
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 24, 2016, at 5:47 PM, SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that will be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation - not
to the movement.
Hi Denny,
Blue Avocado, the non-profit magazine, offers a somewhat different view. They have published a board-member "contract" to give non-profit directors an idea of what's expected of them. It includes:
"... I will interpret our constituencies' needs and values to the organization, speak out for their interests, and on their behalf, hold the organization accountable. " [1]
Sarah
[1] http://www.blueavocado.org/content/board-member-contract _______________________________________________ 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
the movement is always going to be broader and more diverse both in backgrounds and interests than any possible board; the foundationis ls going to have more diverse concerns than the roles of almost any of us in the movement.
I do not se the fundamental goal of the movement is to create an encyclopedia . Nor is it even to create free intellectual resources. Rather, the movement is to create a model of free human interaction and work, and the initial way of exemplifying this is in the various versions of the encyclopedia . (It's also to create the free Wikimedia software, but the cooperative creation of free software existed long before our movement-- the encyclopedia was innovative, at least in execution and possibly even in concept--Wikimedia was not.
If we really believe in a model of free cooperative expression of the manifestations of human intellectual work and creativity, then this is fundamentally and radically in conflict with such formal organization as boards of directors or hierarchical organization patterns and employer-employee relationships. To the extent we need it, it is only to serve some limited purposes necessary in the economic and legal world as it is. Unfortunately, I think human history shows that structures intended to have such limited supporting purposes do not easily remain in this limited role--those who prefer to participate in them rather than participate in the volunteer non-organized side of the movement inevitably will find themselves trying to dominate, even if their personal ideologies are opposed to such domination.
There is no defense against this except the real strength of a volunteer movement--the ability to walk away and take our volunteer resources with them; the true merit of CC and similar is the ability to actually make this possible within the legal structure. That does not mean thatI advocate actually doing it, but we must maintain and remember the potential.
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 9:49 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
In an organization where the purpose and Bylaws explicitly (Article II) call for it to be supporting the movement, the Board should be balancing that aspect anyways.
Yes, the Board cares for the Foundation, but the Foundation cares for the Movement, and if it stops doing that it's off chartered purpose and the Board needs to intervene.
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 24, 2016, at 5:47 PM, SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic <
dvrandecic@wikimedia.org>
wrote:
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that
will
be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation -
not
to the movement.
Hi Denny,
Blue Avocado, the non-profit magazine, offers a somewhat different view. They have published a board-member "contract" to give non-profit
directors
an idea of what's expected of them. It includes:
"... I will interpret our constituencies' needs and values to the
organization,
speak out for their interests, and on their behalf, hold the organization accountable. " [1]
Sarah
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Denny Vrandecic wrote:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation -
not to the movement. If there is a decision to be made where there is a conflict between the Movement or one of the Communities with the Foundation, the Board members have to decide in favor of the Foundation. They are not only trained to so, they have actually pledged to do so.
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is responsible for the appointment of the Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director; the Executive Director carries out the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation (which is included in the bylaws) on a day-to-day basis. My understanding is that any decision by the Wikimedia Foundation staff is reviewable by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. In cases of disagreement between the Wikimedia editing community and the Wikimedia Foundation staff, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is the ultimate authority. The physical servers are owned and operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., which is managed by this Board of Trustees.
The theory of checks and balances worked a lot better when I thought that some of the Board of Trustees seats were elected, and not simply nominated.
Regarding the current situation within the Wikimedia Foundation, you and your nine colleagues are most certainly responsible for ensuring that the Wikimedia Foundation (the corporate entity) can function smoothly. If large numbers of Wikimedia Foundation staff are unhappy with your group's Executive Director appointment, that's very clearly your group's and the Executive Director's problem to immediately resolve.
Given the Wikimedia Foundation's current role in keeping the Wikimedia Web properties online, if the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is failing to keep the Wikimedia Foundation running smoothly, it also becomes others' problem to immediately resolve.
While I think some of this conversation is interesting and worth having, the house is currently aflame and the Wikimedia movement (including Wikimedia Foundation staff and the Wikimedia editing community) awaits word from the Board of Trustees about whether we'll be putting that fire out or letting it burn.
It also seems worth noting that the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees can and does enact resolutions that apply to the Wikimedia editing community. Most other Wikimedia movement entities, such as Wikimedia Deutschland or WikiWomen's User Group, do not have this power. The one exception I could think of was that the Wikimedia movement has enacted some global policies at Meta-Wiki, but these have less force and effect than a Board of Trustees resolution.
- the Board members have fiduciary responsibilities. No, we cannot just
talk about what we are doing. As said, the loyalty of a Board member is towards the organization, not the movement.
I think it would be helpful if the Wikimedia Foundation legal team could lay out exactly what can and cannot be made public for legal reasons. I have a feeling that a lot more is being kept private than needs to be.
I currently do not see any body that in the Wikimedia movement that would have the moral authority to discuss e.g. whether Wikiversity should be set up as a project independent of the Wikimedia movement, whether Wikisource would deserve much more resources, whether Stewards have sufficient authority, whether the German Wikimedia chapter has to submit itself to the FDC proposal, whether a restart of the Croatian Wikipedia is warranted, etc.
The Wikimedia community, and in particular members of the Wikiversity community, decide whether Wikiversity splits off as a separate project independent of the Wikimedia movement. Or any other group of people can take Wikiversity's content (or software!) and reuse it as they see fit.
Whether Wikisource deserves more resources is decided by people volunteering on the project. It's also a matter for the Wikimedia Foundation, in the same way that Wikipedia is. Why would you treat siblings so dissimilarly?
Stewards have sufficient authority over the wikis. I don't think anyone has an issue with the stewards, but if so, raise the issue on Meta-Wiki.
The current funding structure is such that the German Wikimedia chapter has to submit to whatever rules the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. creates in order to receive money from it. Them's the rules, given how money is donated. Changing how donations are accepted and then redistributed is a huge matter. Are you suggesting we re-open that discussion?
The Croatian Wikipedia would be (re)started if LangCom approves it. We have processes for both starting and closing Wikipedias.
MZMcBride
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I disagree very much with Dariusz on this topic (as he knows).
I must say I also disagree with you ;).
That is not to say that a community council or membership structure of some sort might not be good (I think there are some logistical challenges that are so difficult that it may not be possible... I'd rather us try to deal with things like global dispute resolution first before we try to think about some governance council... but the idea is certainly intriguing) but I think the idea that that body is 100% independent or that the board itself should not/is not speaking for the movement too is missing some of the point and being far too simplistic for the good of the org and the movement. I know you don't really mean it this way but it can easily come across as a bit of "don't look at me if this was bad for the movement I had to ignore that".
I think that a body that is able to speak for the movement as a whole would be extremely beneficial in order to relieve the current Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation from that role. It simply cannot - and indeed, legally must not - fulfill this role.
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that will be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation - not
to the movement. If there is a decision to be made where there is a conflict between the Movement or one of the Communities with the Foundation, the Board members have to decide in favor of the Foundation. They are not only trained to so, they have actually pledged to do so.
- the Board members have fiduciary responsibilities. No, we cannot just
talk about what we are doing. As said, the loyalty of a Board member is towards the organization, not the movement.
Whether the board wants it or not it DOES end up serving a leadership role in the Movement and arguably the top leadership role. Yes it has a fiduciary responsibility to the org but part of that is it also has a "duty of obedience". That duty of obedience includes, ensuring the board members "have a responsibility to be faithful to the organization’s stated mission and not to act or use its resources in incompatible ways or purposes" in addition to ensuring the org follows applicable laws. [1] So if we don't think that the Foundation has to do what's best for the movement as well then perhaps we should be reevaluating the wording of that mission.
I would say a non-profit has an obligation to wind itself down if its mission (and remaining money) is better served elsewhere (as an extreme example, but one I've certainly seen) or to transfer the copyrights out of country if that was the right move etc. A duty to the organization does not meant that you do not have a duty to the movement and so I think it is wrong to try and side step that under the umbrella of fiduciary responsibility which is much more then just money and personnel.
[Could say a lot more but probably not useful here and now :) I feel like I either need to do that over drinks or have a bit more distance between the current crisis & time to write it all down in a more coherent fashion ]
[1] http://www.trusteemag.com/display/TRU-news-article.dhtml?dcrPath=/templateda... (among many other sites)
just very short input here on the list:
A community council or membership structure representing the diversity and plurality of the movement in a democratic way would be great idea, in fact it is a much needed idea to be realized.
BUT:
This structure would need to be a true counter-balance to WMF/BoT. Therefore true power (decision-making, money etc.) would need to be transfered in appropiate ways into the responsibility of this new structure. If all the final decisionmaking would stay with the BoT and the management of WMF any such more representative council would only be a toothless thing.
Best, Jens
2016-02-25 5:21 GMT+01:00 James Alexander jamesofur@gmail.com:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic <dvrandecic@wikimedia.org
wrote:
I disagree very much with Dariusz on this topic (as he knows).
I must say I also disagree with you ;).
That is not to say that a community council or membership structure of some sort might not be good (I think there are some logistical challenges that are so difficult that it may not be possible... I'd rather us try to deal with things like global dispute resolution first before we try to think about some governance council... but the idea is certainly intriguing) but I think the idea that that body is 100% independent or that the board itself should not/is not speaking for the movement too is missing some of the point and being far too simplistic for the good of the org and the movement. I know you don't really mean it this way but it can easily come across as a bit of "don't look at me if this was bad for the movement I had to ignore that".
I think that a body that is able to speak for the movement as a whole would be
extremely
beneficial in order to relieve the current Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation from that role. It simply cannot - and indeed,
legally
must not - fulfill this role.
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that will be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation -
not
to the movement. If there is a decision to be made where there is a conflict between the Movement or one of the Communities with the Foundation, the Board members have to decide in favor of the Foundation. They are not only trained to so, they have actually pledged to do so.
- the Board members have fiduciary responsibilities. No, we cannot just
talk about what we are doing. As said, the loyalty of a Board member is towards the organization, not the movement.
Whether the board wants it or not it DOES end up serving a leadership role in the Movement and arguably the top leadership role. Yes it has a fiduciary responsibility to the org but part of that is it also has a "duty of obedience". That duty of obedience includes, ensuring the board members "have a responsibility to be faithful to the organization’s stated mission and not to act or use its resources in incompatible ways or purposes" in addition to ensuring the org follows applicable laws. [1] So if we don't think that the Foundation has to do what's best for the movement as well then perhaps we should be reevaluating the wording of that mission.
I would say a non-profit has an obligation to wind itself down if its mission (and remaining money) is better served elsewhere (as an extreme example, but one I've certainly seen) or to transfer the copyrights out of country if that was the right move etc. A duty to the organization does not meant that you do not have a duty to the movement and so I think it is wrong to try and side step that under the umbrella of fiduciary responsibility which is much more then just money and personnel.
[Could say a lot more but probably not useful here and now :) I feel like I either need to do that over drinks or have a bit more distance between the current crisis & time to write it all down in a more coherent fashion ]
[1]
http://www.trusteemag.com/display/TRU-news-article.dhtml?dcrPath=/templateda... (among many other sites) _______________________________________________ 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
I already proposed a "house of representatives" earlier to represent the stakeholders and take care of the diversity issue, appointing the BoT etc.
Regards, Thyge
2016-02-25 10:14 GMT+01:00 Jens Best best.jens@gmail.com:
just very short input here on the list:
A community council or membership structure representing the diversity and plurality of the movement in a democratic way would be great idea, in fact it is a much needed idea to be realized.
BUT:
This structure would need to be a true counter-balance to WMF/BoT. Therefore true power (decision-making, money etc.) would need to be transfered in appropiate ways into the responsibility of this new structure. If all the final decisionmaking would stay with the BoT and the management of WMF any such more representative council would only be a toothless thing.
Best, Jens
2016-02-25 5:21 GMT+01:00 James Alexander jamesofur@gmail.com:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic <
dvrandecic@wikimedia.org
wrote:
I disagree very much with Dariusz on this topic (as he knows).
I must say I also disagree with you ;).
That is not to say that a community council or membership structure of
some
sort might not be good (I think there are some logistical challenges that are so difficult that it may not be possible... I'd rather us try to deal with things like global dispute resolution first before we try to think about some governance council... but the idea is certainly intriguing)
but
I think the idea that that body is 100% independent or that the board itself should not/is not speaking for the movement too is missing some of the point and being far too simplistic for the good of the org and the movement. I know you don't really mean it this way but it can easily come across as a bit of "don't look at me if this was bad for the movement I
had
to ignore that".
I think that a body that is able to speak for the movement as a whole would be
extremely
beneficial in order to relieve the current Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation from that role. It simply cannot - and indeed,
legally
must not - fulfill this role.
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that
will
be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation -
not
to the movement. If there is a decision to be made where there is a conflict between the Movement or one of the Communities with the Foundation, the Board members have to decide in favor of the
Foundation.
They are not only trained to so, they have actually pledged to do so.
- the Board members have fiduciary responsibilities. No, we cannot just
talk about what we are doing. As said, the loyalty of a Board member is towards the organization, not the movement.
Whether the board wants it or not it DOES end up serving a leadership
role
in the Movement and arguably the top leadership role. Yes it has a fiduciary responsibility to the org but part of that is it also has a
"duty
of obedience". That duty of obedience includes, ensuring the board
members
"have a responsibility to be faithful to the organization’s stated
mission
and not to act or use its resources in incompatible ways or purposes" in addition to ensuring the org follows applicable laws. [1] So if we don't think that the Foundation has to do what's best for the movement as well then perhaps we should be reevaluating the wording of that mission.
I would say a non-profit has an obligation to wind itself down if its mission (and remaining money) is better served elsewhere (as an extreme example, but one I've certainly seen) or to transfer the copyrights out
of
country if that was the right move etc. A duty to the organization does
not
meant that you do not have a duty to the movement and so I think it is wrong to try and side step that under the umbrella of fiduciary responsibility which is much more then just money and personnel.
[Could say a lot more but probably not useful here and now :) I feel
like I
either need to do that over drinks or have a bit more distance between
the
current crisis & time to write it all down in a more coherent fashion ]
[1]
http://www.trusteemag.com/display/TRU-news-article.dhtml?dcrPath=/templateda...
(among many other sites) _______________________________________________ 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
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Can I suggest that it would be really good to document some of this discussion about the WMF board composition and so on on Meta - that way it will be more apparent in future when people are thinking about this issue.
A good place might be to re-open this page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/...
Chris
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:42 AM, Thyge ltl.privat@gmail.com wrote:
I already proposed a "house of representatives" earlier to represent the stakeholders and take care of the diversity issue, appointing the BoT etc.
Regards, Thyge
2016-02-25 10:14 GMT+01:00 Jens Best best.jens@gmail.com:
just very short input here on the list:
A community council or membership structure representing the diversity
and
plurality of the movement in a democratic way would be great idea, in
fact
it is a much needed idea to be realized.
BUT:
This structure would need to be a true counter-balance to WMF/BoT. Therefore true power (decision-making, money etc.) would need to be transfered in appropiate ways into the responsibility of this new structure. If all the final decisionmaking would stay with the BoT and
the
management of WMF any such more representative council would only be a toothless thing.
Best, Jens
2016-02-25 5:21 GMT+01:00 James Alexander jamesofur@gmail.com:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:23 PM, Denny Vrandecic <
dvrandecic@wikimedia.org
wrote:
I disagree very much with Dariusz on this topic (as he knows).
I must say I also disagree with you ;).
That is not to say that a community council or membership structure of
some
sort might not be good (I think there are some logistical challenges
that
are so difficult that it may not be possible... I'd rather us try to
deal
with things like global dispute resolution first before we try to think about some governance council... but the idea is certainly intriguing)
but
I think the idea that that body is 100% independent or that the board itself should not/is not speaking for the movement too is missing some
of
the point and being far too simplistic for the good of the org and the movement. I know you don't really mean it this way but it can easily
come
across as a bit of "don't look at me if this was bad for the movement I
had
to ignore that".
I think that a body that is able to speak for the movement as a whole would be
extremely
beneficial in order to relieve the current Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation from that role. It simply cannot - and indeed,
legally
must not - fulfill this role.
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that
will
be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the
Foundation -
not
to the movement. If there is a decision to be made where there is a conflict between the Movement or one of the Communities with the Foundation, the Board members have to decide in favor of the
Foundation.
They are not only trained to so, they have actually pledged to do so.
- the Board members have fiduciary responsibilities. No, we cannot
just
talk about what we are doing. As said, the loyalty of a Board member
is
towards the organization, not the movement.
Whether the board wants it or not it DOES end up serving a leadership
role
in the Movement and arguably the top leadership role. Yes it has a fiduciary responsibility to the org but part of that is it also has a
"duty
of obedience". That duty of obedience includes, ensuring the board
members
"have a responsibility to be faithful to the organization’s stated
mission
and not to act or use its resources in incompatible ways or purposes"
in
addition to ensuring the org follows applicable laws. [1] So if we
don't
think that the Foundation has to do what's best for the movement as
well
then perhaps we should be reevaluating the wording of that mission.
I would say a non-profit has an obligation to wind itself down if its mission (and remaining money) is better served elsewhere (as an extreme example, but one I've certainly seen) or to transfer the copyrights out
of
country if that was the right move etc. A duty to the organization does
not
meant that you do not have a duty to the movement and so I think it is wrong to try and side step that under the umbrella of fiduciary responsibility which is much more then just money and personnel.
[Could say a lot more but probably not useful here and now :) I feel
like I
either need to do that over drinks or have a bit more distance between
the
current crisis & time to write it all down in a more coherent fashion ]
[1]
http://www.trusteemag.com/display/TRU-news-article.dhtml?dcrPath=/templateda...
(among many other sites) _______________________________________________ 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
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On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 2:23 AM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation - not
to the movement. If there is a decision to be made where there is a conflict between the Movement or one of the Communities with the Foundation, the Board members have to decide in favor of the Foundation. They are not only trained to so, they have actually pledged to do so.
First, I suppose it's clear to you that you won't be reelected because of this paragraph. While your legal obligations belong to WMF, your political obligations belong to those who elected you. And the paragraph above is far from being politically wise.
Second, this is the exact part of the Board's internal mythology about the enemies inside of the movement. They've been repeated since Florance and Angela leaved the Board. I suppose Jimmy is the most responsible for spreading that. What I can't understand is the fact that I don't see that too much (s)elected Board members have integrity above Jimmy's rumors threshold.
Third, may you give to me *one* example of movement being in confrontation with WMF's legal foundations, thus requiring Board to react to protect WMF against the evil community?
On 25 February 2016 at 12:13, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote: ...
Second, this is the exact part of the Board's internal mythology about the enemies inside of the movement. They've been repeated since Florance and Angela leaved the Board. I suppose Jimmy is the most responsible for spreading that. What I can't understand is the fact that I don't see that too much (s)elected Board members have integrity above Jimmy's rumors threshold.
Third, may you give to me *one* example of movement being in confrontation with WMF's legal foundations, thus requiring Board to react to protect WMF against the evil community?
I'm probably a good example of when 'the Board' thought they needed to protect the WMF against a prominent community member. At the time when I was inaugural Chair of the Chapters Association, I was informally advised by two board members that Jimmy briefed the WMF board against me, though I was never copied. Now after a couple of years of gossip since these events, I have no doubt that I was investigated by WMF legal. The WMF has publicly refused to copy me with their reports or internal emails about me, or to confirm whether they do or do not still have reports on record.
Denny's email is correct in many respects, with our experience over the last ten years, it is hard to imagine the WMF changing in a way that would allow a Wikimedia community focused organization to have sufficient resources or political power to be able to hold the Foundation to account. In the current set up, the WMF at the top level would only see a strategic threat and WMF legal would advise against allowing the risk. Individuals within the WMF do believe otherwise, some have always been vocal about it, however while Jimmy sits on the board as a voting trustee and has sufficient power or charisma to suppress dissent within the board, changing to more healthy attitudes is impossible.
In the next round of elections, perhaps we should be looking for a WMF trustee with sufficient character to push through real change over a few months, rather than the current board who think that vaguely talking about change happening in 2017, or 2018, or just waiting until the old guard is ready to retire, is radical enough. I would be delighted to see Christophe be the next Chair, as a young man with plenty of hard earned political scars and impressive achievements, though he may have nicer ways of spending his time.
Fae
Le 25/02/16 13:13, Milos Rancic a écrit :
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 2:23 AM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation - not
to the movement. If there is a decision to be made where there is a conflict between the Movement or one of the Communities with the Foundation, the Board members have to decide in favor of the Foundation. They are not only trained to so, they have actually pledged to do so.
First, I suppose it's clear to you that you won't be reelected because of this paragraph. While your legal obligations belong to WMF, your political obligations belong to those who elected you. And the paragraph above is far from being politically wise.
Second, this is the exact part of the Board's internal mythology about the enemies inside of the movement. They've been repeated since Florance and Angela leaved the Board.
Amusingly... when we were first elected, Angela was the representant of non-contributing members (the term to say they did not pay a fee to be members) whilst I was representant of contributing members (the ones who paid a fee. Hmmmmm)
I suppose Jimmy is the most
responsible for spreading that. What I can't understand is the fact that I don't see that too much (s)elected Board members have integrity above Jimmy's rumors threshold.
You are not very clear here Milos. Can you rephrase ? Thanks
Flo
Third, may you give to me *one* example of movement being in confrontation with WMF's legal foundations, thus requiring Board to react to protect WMF against the evil community?
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 1:53 PM, Florence Devouard fdevouard@gmail.com wrote:
responsible for spreading that. What I can't understand is the fact that I don't see that too much (s)elected Board members have integrity above Jimmy's rumors threshold.
You are not very clear here Milos. Can you rephrase ? Thanks
OK, likely the influence of my Serbian syntax and semantics...
I wanted to say that there are not a lot (that's a kind of euphemism for "few"; the only clearly visible of them being Dariusz) Board members since your and Angela's departure (a decade?) that have personal integrity which could resist Jimmy's rumors.
I suppose Jimmy is the most responsible for spreading that. What I can't understand is the fact that I don't see that too much (s)elected Board members have integrity above Jimmy's rumors threshold.
And the first part, as it wasn't well formatted initially: There is specific Board culture, transferred from generation to generation of Board members. The culture of siege, where the community is the archenemy. As Denny is repeating the same thing I heard from some of the previous Board members, while Jimmy is the only one with more than year and half of being in the Board, I suppose it's about Jimmy.
The second option is possibility that that culture is so strong, that it already assimilated almost everybody else up to the level of being able to transfer the mythology to Denny.
The third option is possibility that Jan-Bart and Stu have such powers, that they were able to indoctrinate Denny for six months of being together in the Board.
I think the first option is the most reasonable one.
On 2/25/16 1:08 PM, Milos Rancic wrote:
And the first part, as it wasn't well formatted initially: There is specific Board culture, transferred from generation to generation of Board members. The culture of siege, where the community is the archenemy.
As the longest standing member of the board of directors, I can say that this is categorically not true. The board does not view the community as a whole as the archenemy, not even a small enemy, not even as a problem.
The community is our greatest strength and the sole source of the greatness that is Wikipedia and all the Wikimedia projects. This is something that everyone I have ever known on the board believes, and something that I have passionately advocated for over the years.
That doesn't mean that every single person in the community agrees about everything at all times, and when people disagree - particularly about matters of empirical fact - they can't all be right at the same time.
As Denny is repeating the same thing I heard from some of the previous Board members, while Jimmy is the only one with more than year and half of being in the Board, I suppose it's about Jimmy.
Well, that's pretty hilarious. I laughed when I read this. No, virtually nothing is about me. The most consistent criticism I have received from board members over the years is that I don't put forward my own views forcefully, and tend to be a very moderate board member. Indeed, I actively try to seek the middle ground and find harmonious compromise solutions.
The idea of me as a Machiavellian manipulator secretly controlling the board to ram through my own ideas is... well, it made me laugh out loud.
The second option is possibility that that culture is so strong, that it already assimilated almost everybody else up to the level of being able to transfer the mythology to Denny.
The third option is possibility that Jan-Bart and Stu have such powers, that they were able to indoctrinate Denny for six months of being together in the Board.
The fourth option is that you are just simply wrong about the facts. The board is not opposed to the community.
Even the statement that Denny made which seemed to confirm for you this silly idea is one that he's already retracted and clarified. I'd like to speak to that specific point.
Board members sign a pledge acknowledging our legal responsibilities. Those responsibilities mean that board members should NOT act as political operators, trying to get advantage for their voting base against others. This means that chapter representatives aren't on the board to push the interests of chapters over other parts of the movement. This means that editor-elected representatives aren't on the board to push the interests of editors over other parts of the movement. This means that appointed members aren't on the board to push whatever agendas they may have in other parts of their lives.
No, instead we are all bound by both morality and the law to understand the whole of the movement and the Foundation's role in it. My personal view is that there is no valid concept of "the Foundation's interests versus the movement/community interests" because the Foundation is nothing without the movement/community (considered very broadly indeed), and the lead organization within the movement/community.
I commented this recently on the concept of "investment in technology VERSUS investment in the community" - I think that's a false alternative. Investment in technology to benefit the community versus investment in other things to benefit the community is a valid and difficult policy decision, a decision that has to be measured thoughtfully against our longterm goals as a movement.
Pitting the community versus the Foundation - if anyone at the Foundation is doing that, they are doing the wrong thing. Pitting teh Foundation versus the community - if anyone in the community is doing that, they are mistaken. (Note: identifying and talking about cases where the Foundation has failed the community is not pitting the Foundation against the community - it's earnestly working to help the Foundation do a better job - it should proceed vigorously.)
--Jimbo
Denny, thanks for sharing your thoughts, and there's a lot I agree with and more I can empathize with.
What I will disagree on is with the notion that the board has to take the org's side against the movement by definition. It is my understanding that the board has the role of oversight of the org -- that is, it's the board's job to ensure that the Foundation is effectively accomplishing the goals it was created to perform.
WMF is not a for-profit company where that success boils down to shareholder price. It's a non-profit founded to improve the world's access to knowledge.
It's important for us to remember that the WMF is a tool, a means to an end, not an end of itself. That tool has cracks in it and needs to be repaired, and it is the board's unique responsibility to ensure that happens if the executive cannot.
-- brion On Feb 24, 2016 5:24 PM, "Denny Vrandecic" dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I disagree very much with Dariusz on this topic (as he knows). I think that a body that is able to speak for the movement as a whole would be extremely beneficial in order to relieve the current Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation from that role. It simply cannot - and indeed, legally must not - fulfill this role.
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that will be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation - not
to the movement. If there is a decision to be made where there is a conflict between the Movement or one of the Communities with the Foundation, the Board members have to decide in favor of the Foundation. They are not only trained to so, they have actually pledged to do so.
- the Board members have fiduciary responsibilities. No, we cannot just
talk about what we are doing. As said, the loyalty of a Board member is towards the organization, not the movement.
- the Board members that are elected by the communities or through chapters
represent the voice of the communities or the chapters. That's not the case. All Board members are equal, and have the same duties and rights. Our loyalty is towards the organization, not towards the constituency that voted for us.
These things are not like this because the Wikimedia Foundation has decided in a diabolic plan for world domination to write the rules in such a way. These things are so because US laws - either federal or state laws, I am not a lawyer and so I might be babbling nonsense here anyway, but this is my understanding - requires a Board of Trustees to have these legal obligations. This is nothing invented by the WMF in its early days, but rather the standard framework for US non-profits.
Now, sure, you may say that this doesn't really matter, the Foundation and the Movement should always be aligned. And where this is usually the case, in those few cases where it is not it will lead to a massive burn.
Once you are on the Board, you do not represent the Communities, the Chapters, your favourite Wikimedia project, you are not the representative and defender of Wikispecies or the avatar of Wiktionary - no, you are a Trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and your legal obligations and duties are defined by the Bylaws and the applicable state and federal laws.
So, whoever argues that the Board of Trustees is to be the representative of the communities has still to explain to me how to avoid this conundrum. Simply increasing the number of community elected seats won't change anything in a sustaining way.
This is why I very much sympathize with the introduction of a new body that indeed represents the communities, and whose loyalty is undivided to the Movement as a whole. I currently do not see any body that in the Wikimedia movement that would have the moral authority to discuss e.g. whether Wikiversity should be set up as a project independent of the Wikimedia movement, whether Wikisource would deserve much more resources, whether Stewards have sufficient authority, whether the German Wikimedia chapter has to submit itself to the FDC proposal, whether a restart of the Croatian Wikipedia is warranted, etc. I am quite sure that none of these questions are appropriate for the Board of Trustees, but I would love to hear the opinion of others on this.
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 4:35 PM, Denny Vrandecic <dvrandecic@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Thank you for the diverse input. A few points to Razmy's proposal.
I have trouble with suggestions that state "we can ensure diversity by creating regional seats". First, why these regions? What does each region seat represent? Potential readers? Actual readers? Human population at large? Why not number of active editors? Without deciding that we do not know whether the regions you suggest make any sense.
Second, why regions at all? How do regions ensure that we have a
diversity
in age? Sex? Gender? Wealth? Religion? Cultural background? Educational background? Diversity has not only the aspect of being from a specific region, there is so much more to that.
Also, the increase in number of Trustees makes the Board more expensive and more ineffective. I would be rather unhappy with such an increase. It is hard enough to get anything done at the current size. I would
appreciate
any proposal that reduces the number of Trustees, not increases it.
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 1:45 AM, Ramzy Muliawan <
ramzymuliawan14@gmail.com
wrote:
This proposal did not attempt to create a developing world-dominated Board, nor is a developing world-dominated.
"Nor is a developed world-dominated."
Sorry, my bad. _______________________________________________ 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
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On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 2:48 PM, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
What I will disagree on is with the notion that the board has to take the org's side against the movement by definition. It is my understanding that the board has the role of oversight of the org -- that is, it's the board's job to ensure that the Foundation is effectively accomplishing the goals it was created to perform.
As much as I agree with Brion, probably Denny's message is telling us a lot. I haven't read carefully the WMF Board Pledge of personal commitment, but this is not the first time this issue is discussed: see for example Cristian mail, two months ago, tackling the very specific thing. [1]
Maybe the Board "feels" a lot of pressure about this, and this is a problem on itself. We all know that "toxicity" of an environment doesn't need laws or written rules, but people being people, social pressure, etc. If Board members feels without power, bound to the WMF and not the Movement, that's a real problem we need to look into.
Aubrey
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-December/080600.html
Denny, with all due respect, I think you have things backwards.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Pledge_of_personal_commitment
"committed to Wikimedia Foundation’s goal to establish and maintain the highest level of public confidence in its accountability"
Your interpretation seems to be "committed to Wikimedia Foundation". But you need to read that whole sentence. The *goal* of the Foundation, to maintain the highest level of public confidence, is the important part. This goal can be threatened by members of the Foundation, and defended by members of the movement at large. Which is what's happening right now, and which is why your interpretation is met with such disagreement.
"In every instance in which I represent the Wikimedia Foundation, I will conduct my activities in a manner to best promote the interests of Wikimedia Foundation."
Again, the *interests* of the Foundation, not the Foundation itself. Which, again, are threatened by this crisis.
I hope this has just been a temporary lapse in understanding that you are suffering from due to difficult times and elevated emotions. But it's clear that we need the board to protect the movement, which of course is the *interest* and *goal* of the Foundation.
I am a relatively insignificant staff member, sure. But still, I want to say to the community at large that most of my friends and people I've talked to are fully committed to the movement, and not to some abstract useless loyalty to a Foundation that does not operate in the movement's best interest. But that does not mean that the crisis we face now is a simple cut and dry problem. The movement includes many voices that are not heard on this list, and we have to think hard about how to account for all those voices, and do the best thing for free and open knowledge.
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:54 AM, Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 2:48 PM, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
What I will disagree on is with the notion that the board has to take the org's side against the movement by definition. It is my understanding
that
the board has the role of oversight of the org -- that is, it's the
board's
job to ensure that the Foundation is effectively accomplishing the goals
it
was created to perform.
As much as I agree with Brion, probably Denny's message is telling us a lot. I haven't read carefully the WMF Board Pledge of personal commitment, but this is not the first time this issue is discussed: see for example Cristian mail, two months ago, tackling the very specific thing. [1]
Maybe the Board "feels" a lot of pressure about this, and this is a problem on itself. We all know that "toxicity" of an environment doesn't need laws or written rules, but people being people, social pressure, etc. If Board members feels without power, bound to the WMF and not the Movement, that's a real problem we need to look into.
Aubrey
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-December/080600.html _______________________________________________ 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
On Feb 25, 2016 6:55 AM, "Andrea Zanni" zanni.andrea84@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 2:48 PM, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org
wrote:
What I will disagree on is with the notion that the board has to take
the
org's side against the movement by definition. It is my understanding
that
the board has the role of oversight of the org -- that is, it's the
board's
job to ensure that the Foundation is effectively accomplishing the
goals it
was created to perform.
As much as I agree with Brion, probably Denny's message is telling us a lot. I haven't read carefully the WMF Board Pledge of personal commitment, but this is not the first time this issue is discussed: see for example Cristian mail, two months ago, tackling the very specific thing. [1]
One thing we should do is ensure that the legal obligations of a trustee of a Florida not for profit corporation are not conflated with an arbitrarily-written 'pledge of personal commitment' (or, to be sure, our own preferences).
If the pledge is poorly worded or just wrong, it should be corrected.
(IANAL, so I'll leave further talk of legal obligations to those more familiar with the topic.)
-- brion
Maybe the Board "feels" a lot of pressure about this, and this is a
problem
on itself. We all know that "toxicity" of an environment doesn't need laws or written rules, but people being people, social pressure, etc. If Board members feels without power, bound to the WMF and not the Movement, that's a real problem we need to look into.
Aubrey
[1]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-December/080600.html
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(I should clarify I don't think the pledge is necessarily wrong; it reads to me like a straightforward affirmation of the conflict of interest policy and I think it can't really be blamed for a notion of siding against the community. But if it's confusing, maybe let's consider clarifying.)
-- brion On Feb 25, 2016 7:54 AM, "Brion Vibber" bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Feb 25, 2016 6:55 AM, "Andrea Zanni" zanni.andrea84@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 2:48 PM, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org
wrote:
What I will disagree on is with the notion that the board has to take
the
org's side against the movement by definition. It is my understanding
that
the board has the role of oversight of the org -- that is, it's the
board's
job to ensure that the Foundation is effectively accomplishing the
goals it
was created to perform.
As much as I agree with Brion, probably Denny's message is telling us a lot. I haven't read carefully the WMF Board Pledge of personal commitment, but this is not the first time this issue is discussed: see for example Cristian mail, two months ago, tackling the very specific thing. [1]
One thing we should do is ensure that the legal obligations of a trustee of a Florida not for profit corporation are not conflated with an arbitrarily-written 'pledge of personal commitment' (or, to be sure, our own preferences).
If the pledge is poorly worded or just wrong, it should be corrected.
(IANAL, so I'll leave further talk of legal obligations to those more familiar with the topic.)
-- brion
Maybe the Board "feels" a lot of pressure about this, and this is a
problem
on itself. We all know that "toxicity" of an environment doesn't need laws or
written
rules, but people being people, social pressure, etc. If Board members feels without power, bound to the WMF and not the Movement, that's a real problem we need to look into.
Aubrey
[1]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-December/080600.html
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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First, my ideas to reform the Board are not incompatible with a "senate-like" idea.
Second, I think that I see at least several reasons why a Senate for WIkimedia movement may not be the best way to go: 1) we already advance bureaucracy. Setting up yet another committee in a hope, that it will solve problems rarely works. It is better to improve the existing institutions. 2) Separating the movement's Senate from the WMF's Board will further advance the divide and disengagement. 3) We already have bodies, whose responsibility is oversight over the movement's resources (the FDC). After four years of lobbying for this idea, I'm really happy to see now that the WMF will be treated more like other organizations in the movement and will undergo a review. We DO NOT need more ideas to separate the WMF from the movement, we need just the opposite. In my view, the Board should gradually include oversight of the movement, rather than just the WMF. 4) The costs of having a 15-20 people Senate that meets in person twice a year match the costs of a small chapter. I don't think it makes sense, resource-wise. 5) Ultimately, Denny's proposal leads to polarizing the field into the WMF vs. everyone else. I would very much rather see a situation in which the WMF is primus inter pares.
cheers,
dj
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 8:48 AM, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
Denny, thanks for sharing your thoughts, and there's a lot I agree with and more I can empathize with.
What I will disagree on is with the notion that the board has to take the org's side against the movement by definition. It is my understanding that the board has the role of oversight of the org -- that is, it's the board's job to ensure that the Foundation is effectively accomplishing the goals it was created to perform.
WMF is not a for-profit company where that success boils down to shareholder price. It's a non-profit founded to improve the world's access to knowledge.
It's important for us to remember that the WMF is a tool, a means to an end, not an end of itself. That tool has cracks in it and needs to be repaired, and it is the board's unique responsibility to ensure that happens if the executive cannot.
-- brion On Feb 24, 2016 5:24 PM, "Denny Vrandecic" dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I disagree very much with Dariusz on this topic (as he knows). I think
that
a body that is able to speak for the movement as a whole would be
extremely
beneficial in order to relieve the current Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation from that role. It simply cannot - and indeed,
legally
must not - fulfill this role.
To make a few things about the Board of Trustees clear - things that will be true now matter how much you reorganize it:
- the Board members have duties of care and loyalty to the Foundation -
not
to the movement. If there is a decision to be made where there is a conflict between the Movement or one of the Communities with the Foundation, the Board members have to decide in favor of the Foundation. They are not only trained to so, they have actually pledged to do so.
- the Board members have fiduciary responsibilities. No, we cannot just
talk about what we are doing. As said, the loyalty of a Board member is towards the organization, not the movement.
- the Board members that are elected by the communities or through
chapters
represent the voice of the communities or the chapters. That's not the case. All Board members are equal, and have the same duties and rights.
Our
loyalty is towards the organization, not towards the constituency that voted for us.
These things are not like this because the Wikimedia Foundation has
decided
in a diabolic plan for world domination to write the rules in such a way. These things are so because US laws - either federal or state laws, I am not a lawyer and so I might be babbling nonsense here anyway, but this is my understanding - requires a Board of Trustees to have these legal obligations. This is nothing invented by the WMF in its early days, but rather the standard framework for US non-profits.
Now, sure, you may say that this doesn't really matter, the Foundation
and
the Movement should always be aligned. And where this is usually the
case,
in those few cases where it is not it will lead to a massive burn.
Once you are on the Board, you do not represent the Communities, the Chapters, your favourite Wikimedia project, you are not the
representative
and defender of Wikispecies or the avatar of Wiktionary - no, you are a Trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and your legal obligations and
duties
are defined by the Bylaws and the applicable state and federal laws.
So, whoever argues that the Board of Trustees is to be the representative of the communities has still to explain to me how to avoid this
conundrum.
Simply increasing the number of community elected seats won't change anything in a sustaining way.
This is why I very much sympathize with the introduction of a new body
that
indeed represents the communities, and whose loyalty is undivided to the Movement as a whole. I currently do not see any body that in the
Wikimedia
movement that would have the moral authority to discuss e.g. whether Wikiversity should be set up as a project independent of the Wikimedia movement, whether Wikisource would deserve much more resources, whether Stewards have sufficient authority, whether the German Wikimedia chapter has to submit itself to the FDC proposal, whether a restart of the
Croatian
Wikipedia is warranted, etc. I am quite sure that none of these questions are appropriate for the Board of Trustees, but I would love to hear the opinion of others on this.
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 4:35 PM, Denny Vrandecic <
dvrandecic@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Thank you for the diverse input. A few points to Razmy's proposal.
I have trouble with suggestions that state "we can ensure diversity by creating regional seats". First, why these regions? What does each
region
seat represent? Potential readers? Actual readers? Human population at large? Why not number of active editors? Without deciding that we do
not
know whether the regions you suggest make any sense.
Second, why regions at all? How do regions ensure that we have a
diversity
in age? Sex? Gender? Wealth? Religion? Cultural background? Educational background? Diversity has not only the aspect of being from a specific region, there is so much more to that.
Also, the increase in number of Trustees makes the Board more expensive and more ineffective. I would be rather unhappy with such an increase.
It
is hard enough to get anything done at the current size. I would
appreciate
any proposal that reduces the number of Trustees, not increases it.
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 1:45 AM, Ramzy Muliawan <
ramzymuliawan14@gmail.com
wrote:
This proposal did not attempt to create a developing world-dominated Board, nor is a developing world-dominated.
"Nor is a developed world-dominated."
Sorry, my bad. _______________________________________________ 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
,
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On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 4:01 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak djemielniak@wikimedia.org wrote:
First, my ideas to reform the Board are not incompatible with a "senate-like" idea.
Second, I think that I see at least several reasons why a Senate for WIkimedia movement may not be the best way to go:
- we already advance bureaucracy. Setting up yet another committee in a
hope, that it will solve problems rarely works. It is better to improve the existing institutions. 2) Separating the movement's Senate from the WMF's Board will further advance the divide and disengagement. 3) We already have bodies, whose responsibility is oversight over the movement's resources (the FDC). After four years of lobbying for this idea, I'm really happy to see now that the WMF will be treated more like other organizations in the movement and will undergo a review. We DO NOT need more ideas to separate the WMF from the movement, we need just the opposite. In my view, the Board should gradually include oversight of the movement, rather than just the WMF. 4) The costs of having a 15-20 people Senate that meets in person twice a year match the costs of a small chapter. I don't think it makes sense, resource-wise. 5) Ultimately, Denny's proposal leads to polarizing the field into the WMF vs. everyone else. I would very much rather see a situation in which the WMF is primus inter pares.
Once again I got instinct to find appropriate literature, which describes properly contemporary bureaucratic nonsense and doublespeak. But I will resist this time.
FDC was the product of long-term struggle between chapters on one side and Board, ED and staff on the other one. That will be always the case until we get the unified global body, which democratically represents all of the stakeholders.
Thus, not the senate, but assembly is the right form of our organization: assembly which would select *paid* Board members. Besides the load, I want Board members to be accountable to Wikimedians, not to the for-profit or non-profit entities which give them money.
Yes, it's scary to be accountable to people you lead. I completely understand that.
The costs of having 100 people assembly won't be significant at all. First of all, the most of the people in such large body would be anyways mostly consisted of those going to Wikimedia Conference and Wikimania. If you really care about money, scale the initial body to 40-50 and ask all chapters that sending three or more people to those conferences to contribute expenses for one to such body. If you put that way, the costs could rise up to ~5%, if they raise at all.
So, please, reconsider your ideas on the line: from speaking about bad bureaucracy, while in fact increasing inefficient one -- to thinking about efficient, democratically accountable bureaucracy, with everybody content by its construction.
It appears in my vision that "more oversight" will practically mean creation of "Community Oversight Committee", which would be used as one more excuse, while their members would be politely intimidated not to talk anything "too hard" to the others, under the excuses of loyalty to anybody else than the movement itself.
Said everything above, I have to express that I am pissed off by the fact that the Board members are constructive as long as they are under high level of pressure. Whenever you feel a bit more empowered, I hear just the excuses I've been listening for a decade.
Please, let us know how do you want to talk with us in the way that we see that the communication is constructive.
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Thus, not the senate, but assembly is the right form of our organization: assembly which would select *paid* Board members. Besides the load, I want Board members to be accountable to Wikimedians, not to the for-profit or non-profit entities which give them money.
I am not, and have not been employed by any Wikimedia organization.
Yes, it's scary to be accountable to people you lead. I completely understand that.
I have no idea where you get this idea from in my letter. I am not scared to be accountable to people I lead, and I hope I have stated my readiness in this department clearly.
The costs of having 100 people assembly won't be significant at all. First of all, the most of the people in such large body would be anyways mostly consisted of those going to Wikimedia Conference and Wikimania. If you really care about money, scale the initial body to 40-50 and ask all chapters that sending three or more people to those conferences to contribute expenses for one to such body. If you put that way, the costs could rise up to ~5%, if they raise at all.
If you envisage a large, 100 people assembly during Wikimania or Wikimedia Conference, then indeed it is possible to arrange without significant additional cost. However, I believe this is basically an entirely different idea than the one Denny described (or at least the one I understood we're discussing). An assembly would be a body who would voice their opinion only once a year in practice, most likely. I'm not sure what exactly would it do, but surely it would be difficult for it to agree/vote on situations happening within a span of weeks, rather than months.
So, please, reconsider your ideas on the line: from speaking about bad bureaucracy, while in fact increasing inefficient one -- to thinking about efficient, democratically accountable bureaucracy, with everybody content by its construction.
I am not convinced if a body of 100 people meeting once a year is an efficient way to reduce bureaucracy. Of course views may differ.
Said everything above, I have to express that I am pissed off by the fact that the Board members are constructive as long as they are under high level of pressure. Whenever you feel a bit more empowered, I hear just the excuses I've been listening for a decade.
I am saddened you have this perception. https://xkcd.com/552/
Please, let us know how do you want to talk with us in the way that we see that the communication is constructive.
That is a good topic for a separate thread! Currently, the list we use is limited to 1500 English speakers.
An idea that I have been trying to champion for a while was also community-liaisons: community elected people whose responsibility is day-to-day communication with the WMF and back. This would not be a decisive role, and it is independent from whether we have a senate or assembly or not, but could at least increase the reach of communication and decision making in some areas.
Also, discourse is a platform that perhaps will take off at some point.
dj
Thanks to all the answers to my response. I am still reading them, and I probably will not be able to answer to all in a timely manner (I have to work, after all), but I wanted to make a few things clearer, quickly:
Milos, I indeed do not care about reelection. And if I have to choose between truth and political wisdom, I hope to continue to choose the first.
More importantly, Milos, I did a massive error in my formulation, as I know realize, which lead to a misunderstanding. I have to apologize for that. When I said that the Board has to make a decision in the interest of the Foundation when there is a conflict between the Communities and the Foundation, I was phrasing myself very badly, I now realize. I actually did not mean a direct conflict between a single Community and the Foundation, i.e. with these two as being directly opposed to each other and fighting over something, but rather the more complicated case of a decision where there is a conflict of interests between the Foundation and the Movement-at-large, the Board is obliged to decide in the best interest of the Foundation.
I do not buy in the mythology of an "evil community" at all. I do not even buy into the mythology of a great divide between the communities and the foundation. There are plenty of people who are active and constructive in both, and who bridge both. The cases where the Foundation and the Movement are directly opposed to each other should be extremely rare, and, thankfully are. I don't think there was anything even close to that brought to the Board in my tenure so far.
More often though is the case that there is a third-party situation, e.g. an imminent and considerable legal threat to the Foundation. In that case, the interests of the Movement at large has to be secondary for the Board.
I regard the Movement-at-large as much more resilient than any and each of its parts. And I am thankful for that, because I think our mission is much too important to leave it with a small NGO in the Bay Area. It has to be a mission carried by every single one of us, it has to be a mission that is inclusive of every one who wants to join in realizing it.
I have overstated my point in my last mail, obviously, and also intentionally to make a point (and thanks for everyone to calling me out on that). But as many have confirmed, there is truth in this overstatement. I don't think that such situations will occur often. But when they occur, and that is what I said, they will be painful and frustrating and potentially shrouded in confidentiality / secrecy. Therefore it remains my strong belief, that reaffirming the current Board as the movement leadership body is a bad idea, because the overstated incompatibility that I have described remains.
I could imagine with a much smaller Board of Trustees, which itself is a constituent of a body representing the whole Movement. I could imagine a wholly new body to represent the whole movement. I could imagine many, many small new bodies who somehow make local decisions on the one side and bubble up to an ineffective, but extremely resilient and representative voice. I could imagine many other models. But I have a hard time to imagine the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation sincerely filling out the role of the movement leadership, due to the inherent constraints and incompatibilities between these roles. As rare as they appear, they do appear.
Dariusz, you say that a disengagement from the Foundation by the community would increase a specific Foundation versus the rest of the movement situation. I don't think that the formal composition of the Board matters as much as its role, duties, and obligations.
The German Wikimedia chapter, the one chapter I have a bit experience with, is a membership organization. The Board is elected by the members in its entirety. I don't see any claim of that Board to lead the German Wikimedia communities. I don't see that the German chapter is significantly closer to the German Wikimedia communities, or that their relation to the communities is considerably less strained, than the Foundation is to the overall communities (besides the obvious locality of their relation).
Dan, Brion, James, in particular thanks to you for arguing why my overstatement was, well, an overstatement. But I still remain convinced that the view of the Board as having the role of leading the movement is merely an accident of the fact that we have no other obvious leadership, and that the Board is being sucked into that vacuum. It is not designed to be so, and, I argue, due to the legal and formal obligations, it shouldn't.
MZMcBride, I currently lack the time to answer to your specific and excellent points in particular. Sorry. I hope to come back to it.
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 8:24 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak < djemielniak@wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Thus, not the senate, but assembly is the right form of our organization: assembly which would select *paid* Board members. Besides the load, I want Board members to be accountable to Wikimedians, not to the for-profit or non-profit entities which give them money.
I am not, and have not been employed by any Wikimedia organization.
Yes, it's scary to be accountable to people you lead. I completely understand that.
I have no idea where you get this idea from in my letter. I am not scared to be accountable to people I lead, and I hope I have stated my readiness in this department clearly.
The costs of having 100 people assembly won't be significant at all. First of all, the most of the people in such large body would be anyways mostly consisted of those going to Wikimedia Conference and Wikimania. If you really care about money, scale the initial body to 40-50 and ask all chapters that sending three or more people to those conferences to contribute expenses for one to such body. If you put that way, the costs could rise up to ~5%, if they raise at all.
If you envisage a large, 100 people assembly during Wikimania or Wikimedia Conference, then indeed it is possible to arrange without significant additional cost. However, I believe this is basically an entirely different idea than the one Denny described (or at least the one I understood we're discussing). An assembly would be a body who would voice their opinion only once a year in practice, most likely. I'm not sure what exactly would it do, but surely it would be difficult for it to agree/vote on situations happening within a span of weeks, rather than months.
So, please, reconsider your ideas on the line: from speaking about bad bureaucracy, while in fact increasing inefficient one -- to thinking about efficient, democratically accountable bureaucracy, with everybody content by its construction.
I am not convinced if a body of 100 people meeting once a year is an efficient way to reduce bureaucracy. Of course views may differ.
Said everything above, I have to express that I am pissed off by the fact that the Board members are constructive as long as they are under high level of pressure. Whenever you feel a bit more empowered, I hear just the excuses I've been listening for a decade.
I am saddened you have this perception. https://xkcd.com/552/
Please, let us know how do you want to talk with us in the way that we see that the communication is constructive.
That is a good topic for a separate thread! Currently, the list we use is limited to 1500 English speakers.
An idea that I have been trying to champion for a while was also community-liaisons: community elected people whose responsibility is day-to-day communication with the WMF and back. This would not be a decisive role, and it is independent from whether we have a senate or assembly or not, but could at least increase the reach of communication and decision making in some areas.
Also, discourse is a platform that perhaps will take off at some point.
dj _______________________________________________ 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
Hi Denny and all,
I have to register disagreement with the idea that the WMF board is duty-bound to serve the Foundation over the Wikimedia movement.
The whole purpose of the Foundation is to serve the Wikimedia free knowledge movement, as stated in the bylaws. This does not mean that WMF board members must constantly poll Wikimedia movement members on what to do, or only consider what is popular at the time.
I believe the WMF board is indeed duty-bound to support the goals the Wikimedia movement, in the way that they feel these goals would best be served over the long-term. Of course, their opinions on the best methods to achieve these goals may well differ from the majority of rank-and-file movement members at times, but it is also part of their duty to pursue what they feel is best for achieving basic movement goals.
Brion is also right that at some point in time, when the goals of the Wikimedia Foundation and movement are "accomplished", if the free knowledge paradigm is so successfully distributed throughout academia and society that it no longer makes sense to continue as a corporate entity, it would make sense to wind it up. (I don't foresee this happening for decades.)
Perhaps this is merely a translation issue of what "Movement" means in different languages, but I thought it was an important point that needed to be stated.
Also, I think the possible models on how to achieve these goals are indeed more diverse than just those on offer in San Francisco and Berlin.
Thanks, Pharos
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 12:16 PM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thanks to all the answers to my response. I am still reading them, and I probably will not be able to answer to all in a timely manner (I have to work, after all), but I wanted to make a few things clearer, quickly:
Milos, I indeed do not care about reelection. And if I have to choose between truth and political wisdom, I hope to continue to choose the first.
More importantly, Milos, I did a massive error in my formulation, as I know realize, which lead to a misunderstanding. I have to apologize for that. When I said that the Board has to make a decision in the interest of the Foundation when there is a conflict between the Communities and the Foundation, I was phrasing myself very badly, I now realize. I actually did not mean a direct conflict between a single Community and the Foundation, i.e. with these two as being directly opposed to each other and fighting over something, but rather the more complicated case of a decision where there is a conflict of interests between the Foundation and the Movement-at-large, the Board is obliged to decide in the best interest of the Foundation.
I do not buy in the mythology of an "evil community" at all. I do not even buy into the mythology of a great divide between the communities and the foundation. There are plenty of people who are active and constructive in both, and who bridge both. The cases where the Foundation and the Movement are directly opposed to each other should be extremely rare, and, thankfully are. I don't think there was anything even close to that brought to the Board in my tenure so far.
More often though is the case that there is a third-party situation, e.g. an imminent and considerable legal threat to the Foundation. In that case, the interests of the Movement at large has to be secondary for the Board.
I regard the Movement-at-large as much more resilient than any and each of its parts. And I am thankful for that, because I think our mission is much too important to leave it with a small NGO in the Bay Area. It has to be a mission carried by every single one of us, it has to be a mission that is inclusive of every one who wants to join in realizing it.
I have overstated my point in my last mail, obviously, and also intentionally to make a point (and thanks for everyone to calling me out on that). But as many have confirmed, there is truth in this overstatement. I don't think that such situations will occur often. But when they occur, and that is what I said, they will be painful and frustrating and potentially shrouded in confidentiality / secrecy. Therefore it remains my strong belief, that reaffirming the current Board as the movement leadership body is a bad idea, because the overstated incompatibility that I have described remains.
I could imagine with a much smaller Board of Trustees, which itself is a constituent of a body representing the whole Movement. I could imagine a wholly new body to represent the whole movement. I could imagine many, many small new bodies who somehow make local decisions on the one side and bubble up to an ineffective, but extremely resilient and representative voice. I could imagine many other models. But I have a hard time to imagine the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation sincerely filling out the role of the movement leadership, due to the inherent constraints and incompatibilities between these roles. As rare as they appear, they do appear.
Dariusz, you say that a disengagement from the Foundation by the community would increase a specific Foundation versus the rest of the movement situation. I don't think that the formal composition of the Board matters as much as its role, duties, and obligations.
The German Wikimedia chapter, the one chapter I have a bit experience with, is a membership organization. The Board is elected by the members in its entirety. I don't see any claim of that Board to lead the German Wikimedia communities. I don't see that the German chapter is significantly closer to the German Wikimedia communities, or that their relation to the communities is considerably less strained, than the Foundation is to the overall communities (besides the obvious locality of their relation).
Dan, Brion, James, in particular thanks to you for arguing why my overstatement was, well, an overstatement. But I still remain convinced that the view of the Board as having the role of leading the movement is merely an accident of the fact that we have no other obvious leadership, and that the Board is being sucked into that vacuum. It is not designed to be so, and, I argue, due to the legal and formal obligations, it shouldn't.
MZMcBride, I currently lack the time to answer to your specific and excellent points in particular. Sorry. I hope to come back to it.
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 8:24 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak < djemielniak@wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com
wrote:
Thus, not the senate, but assembly is the right form of our organization: assembly which would select *paid* Board members. Besides the load, I want Board members to be accountable to Wikimedians, not to the for-profit or non-profit entities which give them money.
I am not, and have not been employed by any Wikimedia organization.
Yes, it's scary to be accountable to people you lead. I completely understand that.
I have no idea where you get this idea from in my letter. I am not scared to be accountable to people I lead, and I hope I have stated my readiness in this department clearly.
The costs of having 100 people assembly won't be significant at all. First of all, the most of the people in such large body would be anyways mostly consisted of those going to Wikimedia Conference and Wikimania. If you really care about money, scale the initial body to 40-50 and ask all chapters that sending three or more people to those conferences to contribute expenses for one to such body. If you put that way, the costs could rise up to ~5%, if they raise at all.
If you envisage a large, 100 people assembly during Wikimania or
Wikimedia
Conference, then indeed it is possible to arrange without significant additional cost. However, I believe this is basically an entirely
different
idea than the one Denny described (or at least the one I understood we're discussing). An assembly would be a body who would voice their opinion
only
once a year in practice, most likely. I'm not sure what exactly would it do, but surely it would be difficult for it to agree/vote on situations happening within a span of weeks, rather than months.
So, please, reconsider your ideas on the line: from speaking about bad bureaucracy, while in fact increasing inefficient one -- to thinking about efficient, democratically accountable bureaucracy, with everybody content by its construction.
I am not convinced if a body of 100 people meeting once a year is an efficient way to reduce bureaucracy. Of course views may differ.
Said everything above, I have to express that I am pissed off by the fact that the Board members are constructive as long as they are under high level of pressure. Whenever you feel a bit more empowered, I hear just the excuses I've been listening for a decade.
I am saddened you have this perception. https://xkcd.com/552/
Please, let us know how do you want to talk with us in the way that we see that the communication is constructive.
That is a good topic for a separate thread! Currently, the list we use is limited to 1500 English speakers.
An idea that I have been trying to champion for a while was also community-liaisons: community elected people whose responsibility is day-to-day communication with the WMF and back. This would not be a decisive role, and it is independent from whether we have a senate or assembly or not, but could at least increase the reach of communication
and
decision making in some areas.
Also, discourse is a platform that perhaps will take off at some point.
dj _______________________________________________ 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
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I have to register disagreement with the idea that the WMF board is duty-bound to serve the Foundation over the Wikimedia movement.
I still feel this is more a semantic issue than a practical one.
In UK law trustees are required to put the interests of their charity first when making decisions. That means they are required to put the interests of the *objectives* of their charity first (even if it means winding up the actual charity to do so).
I don't know whether Florida law and US charity practice has the same effect as UK law does in this situation. But if it does then it makes it easier to follow Pharos's advice below (which I basically agree with)
The whole purpose of the Foundation is to serve the Wikimedia free knowledge movement, as stated in the bylaws. This does not mean that WMF board members must constantly poll Wikimedia movement members on what to do, or only consider what is popular at the time.
I believe the WMF board is indeed duty-bound to support the goals the Wikimedia movement, in the way that they feel these goals would best be served over the long-term. Of course, their opinions on the best methods to achieve these goals may well differ from the majority of rank-and-file movement members at times, but it is also part of their duty to pursue what they feel is best for achieving basic movement goals.
Brion is also right that at some point in time, when the goals of the Wikimedia Foundation and movement are "accomplished", if the free knowledge paradigm is so successfully distributed throughout academia and society that it no longer makes sense to continue as a corporate entity, it would make sense to wind it up. (I don't foresee this happening for decades.)
Perhaps this is merely a translation issue of what "Movement" means in different languages, but I thought it was an important point that needed to be stated.
Also, I think the possible models on how to achieve these goals are indeed more diverse than just those on offer in San Francisco and Berlin.
Thanks, Pharos
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 12:16 PM, Denny Vrandecic < dvrandecic@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Thanks to all the answers to my response. I am still reading them, and I probably will not be able to answer to all in a timely manner (I have to work, after all), but I wanted to make a few things clearer, quickly:
Milos, I indeed do not care about reelection. And if I have to choose between truth and political wisdom, I hope to continue to choose the
first.
More importantly, Milos, I did a massive error in my formulation, as I
know
realize, which lead to a misunderstanding. I have to apologize for that. When I said that the Board has to make a decision in the interest of the Foundation when there is a conflict between the Communities and the Foundation, I was phrasing myself very badly, I now realize. I actually
did
not mean a direct conflict between a single Community and the Foundation, i.e. with these two as being directly opposed to each other and fighting over something, but rather the more complicated case of a decision where there is a conflict of interests between the Foundation and the Movement-at-large, the Board is obliged to decide in the best interest of the Foundation.
I do not buy in the mythology of an "evil community" at all. I do not
even
buy into the mythology of a great divide between the communities and the foundation. There are plenty of people who are active and constructive in both, and who bridge both. The cases where the Foundation and the
Movement
are directly opposed to each other should be extremely rare, and, thankfully are. I don't think there was anything even close to that
brought
to the Board in my tenure so far.
More often though is the case that there is a third-party situation, e.g. an imminent and considerable legal threat to the Foundation. In that
case,
the interests of the Movement at large has to be secondary for the Board.
I regard the Movement-at-large as much more resilient than any and each
of
its parts. And I am thankful for that, because I think our mission is
much
too important to leave it with a small NGO in the Bay Area. It has to be
a
mission carried by every single one of us, it has to be a mission that is inclusive of every one who wants to join in realizing it.
I have overstated my point in my last mail, obviously, and also intentionally to make a point (and thanks for everyone to calling me out
on
that). But as many have confirmed, there is truth in this overstatement.
I
don't think that such situations will occur often. But when they occur,
and
that is what I said, they will be painful and frustrating and potentially shrouded in confidentiality / secrecy. Therefore it remains my strong belief, that reaffirming the current Board as the movement leadership
body
is a bad idea, because the overstated incompatibility that I have
described
remains.
I could imagine with a much smaller Board of Trustees, which itself is a constituent of a body representing the whole Movement. I could imagine a wholly new body to represent the whole movement. I could imagine many, many small new bodies who somehow make local decisions on the one side and bubble up to an ineffective, but extremely resilient and representative voice. I could imagine many other models. But I have a hard time to imagine the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation sincerely filling out the role of the movement leadership, due to the inherent constraints and incompatibilities between these roles. As rare as they appear, they do appear.
Dariusz, you say that a disengagement from the Foundation by the
community
would increase a specific Foundation versus the rest of the movement situation. I don't think that the formal composition of the Board matters as much as its role, duties, and obligations.
The German Wikimedia chapter, the one chapter I have a bit experience
with,
is a membership organization. The Board is elected by the members in its entirety. I don't see any claim of that Board to lead the German
Wikimedia
communities. I don't see that the German chapter is significantly closer
to
the German Wikimedia communities, or that their relation to the
communities
is considerably less strained, than the Foundation is to the overall communities (besides the obvious locality of their relation).
Dan, Brion, James, in particular thanks to you for arguing why my overstatement was, well, an overstatement. But I still remain convinced that the view of the Board as having the role of leading the movement is merely an accident of the fact that we have no other obvious leadership, and that the Board is being sucked into that vacuum. It is not designed
to
be so, and, I argue, due to the legal and formal obligations, it
shouldn't.
MZMcBride, I currently lack the time to answer to your specific and excellent points in particular. Sorry. I hope to come back to it.
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 8:24 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak < djemielniak@wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com
wrote:
Thus, not the senate, but assembly is the right form of our organization: assembly which would select *paid* Board members. Besides the load, I want Board members to be accountable to Wikimedians, not to the for-profit or non-profit entities which give them money.
I am not, and have not been employed by any Wikimedia organization.
Yes, it's scary to be accountable to people you lead. I completely understand that.
I have no idea where you get this idea from in my letter. I am not
scared
to be accountable to people I lead, and I hope I have stated my
readiness
in this department clearly.
The costs of having 100 people assembly won't be significant at all. First of all, the most of the people in such large body would be anyways mostly consisted of those going to Wikimedia Conference and Wikimania. If you really care about money, scale the initial body to 40-50 and ask all chapters that sending three or more people to those conferences to contribute expenses for one to such body. If you put that way, the costs could rise up to ~5%, if they raise at all.
If you envisage a large, 100 people assembly during Wikimania or
Wikimedia
Conference, then indeed it is possible to arrange without significant additional cost. However, I believe this is basically an entirely
different
idea than the one Denny described (or at least the one I understood
we're
discussing). An assembly would be a body who would voice their opinion
only
once a year in practice, most likely. I'm not sure what exactly would
it
do, but surely it would be difficult for it to agree/vote on situations happening within a span of weeks, rather than months.
So, please, reconsider your ideas on the line: from speaking about
bad
bureaucracy, while in fact increasing inefficient one -- to thinking about efficient, democratically accountable bureaucracy, with everybody content by its construction.
I am not convinced if a body of 100 people meeting once a year is an efficient way to reduce bureaucracy. Of course views may differ.
Said everything above, I have to express that I am pissed off by the fact that the Board members are constructive as long as they are
under
high level of pressure. Whenever you feel a bit more empowered, I
hear
just the excuses I've been listening for a decade.
I am saddened you have this perception. https://xkcd.com/552/
Please, let us know how do you want to talk with us in the way that
we
see that the communication is constructive.
That is a good topic for a separate thread! Currently, the list we use
is
limited to 1500 English speakers.
An idea that I have been trying to champion for a while was also community-liaisons: community elected people whose responsibility is day-to-day communication with the WMF and back. This would not be a decisive role, and it is independent from whether we have a senate or assembly or not, but could at least increase the reach of communication
and
decision making in some areas.
Also, discourse is a platform that perhaps will take off at some point.
dj _______________________________________________ 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
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On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:
I have to register disagreement with the idea that the WMF board is duty-bound to serve the Foundation over the Wikimedia movement.
I still feel this is more a semantic issue than a practical one.
I agree. I think Denny clarified his position nicely[1] -- and I'm glad he did, as I was also confused and a little distressed by what I initially *thought* he was saying. -Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082456.html
Lane, it’s one thing to have nominees. It’s another to win the election. Global South candidates obviously didn’t win the community-selected seat selection, so I’d approach with some skepticism the possibility that we’ll suddenly have a Board member from those regions of the world as a result of the ASBS process.
That said, it’s early. Maybe things will change this time around. But if this process didn’t lead to an ASBS member from the regions of the world Amir talked about in his e-mail, then what will?
Josh
Wiadomość napisana przez Lane Rasberry lane@bluerasberry.com w dniu 23.02.2016, o godz. 23:05:
Hello,
Could I remind you all that there is a board election in progress right now for 2 of the 10 seats? Please see details for the 2016 Affiliate-selected board seats election at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016
Amir, you said that you wanted representation from "India, China, Russia, Iran, Brazil, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Arab countries and finally, all of Africa". If you like, you may encourage anyone from those countries to seek a nomination. Also, it would be very helpful if you could encourage the Wikimedia chapters in those countries to participate in the election in any way that they could, especially by planning to vote during the upcoming voting period.
Thyge - we do have a sort of house of representatives and it has a board election happening right now.
Nominations for the board are open till March 8! Election starts March 24! Please share the message.
Thanks - if anyone has questions post on the election page.
yours,
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
On 2016-02-23 14:54, Thyge wrote:
We should not have direct elections to the board. We should have a "house of representatives" with X members from each part of the world and charged with electing the board and decide major issues like location of the WMF, changed of bylaws etc.
Regards, Thyge
I do not think it could solve the diversity issue.
To appoint the number of individuals with a set of skills and needed diversity, one needs candidates which will have needed skills and desired diversity to start with.
Our experience as a movement (and also of people in other organizations in different contexts) that these people do not always queue at the doors of the WMF office to wait for being elected. They need to be scouted, negotiated with, and convinced to be willing to sit at the board. This is what currently various companies are paid to do, and this seems to be a reasonable arrangement to me.
As far as the candidates are there, I do not see much of a difference whether the community, a selected group (like house of representatives), or the Board votes for them. And as soon as there is no difference there is also no need to make the structure more complicated. I thus conclude that this House of representatives is not needed for the Board elections.
(It might be needed for other things, which are outside the scope of this discussion).
Cheers Yaroslav
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-- Lane Rasberry user:bluerasberry on Wikipedia 206.801.0814 lane@bluerasberry.com _______________________________________________ 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
JAMES JOSHUA G. LIM Bachelor of Arts in Political Science Class of 2013, Ateneo de Manila University Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines
jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com mailto:jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com | +63 (977) 831-7582 Facebook/Twitter: akiestar | Wikimedia: Sky Harbor http://about.me/josh.lim http://about.me/josh.lim
I agree - few complicated problems can be solved once and for all - but it is possible to move in a better direction. "Better" in this context means to improve the existing lack of diversity and WWV (world wide view) of things.
I´m fine with outsourcing the search for candidates for the board to ensure that it holds the knowledge and talent required. But the decision should rest with the house of representatives - which then could be also take care of those other things needed.
Regards, Thyge
2016-02-23 15:47 GMT+01:00 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru:
On 2016-02-23 14:54, Thyge wrote:
We should not have direct elections to the board. We should have a "house of representatives" with X members from each part of the world and charged with electing the board and decide major issues like location of the WMF, changed of bylaws etc.
Regards, Thyge
I do not think it could solve the diversity issue.
To appoint the number of individuals with a set of skills and needed diversity, one needs candidates which will have needed skills and desired diversity to start with.
Our experience as a movement (and also of people in other organizations in different contexts) that these people do not always queue at the doors of the WMF office to wait for being elected. They need to be scouted, negotiated with, and convinced to be willing to sit at the board. This is what currently various companies are paid to do, and this seems to be a reasonable arrangement to me.
As far as the candidates are there, I do not see much of a difference whether the community, a selected group (like house of representatives), or the Board votes for them. And as soon as there is no difference there is also no need to make the structure more complicated. I thus conclude that this House of representatives is not needed for the Board elections.
(It might be needed for other things, which are outside the scope of this discussion).
Cheers Yaroslav
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