Thank you for your thoughtful letters (acknowledging seeing your open letter as well).
While I do not have an immediate solution to all the issues raised in your letter(s), you may be happy to know that The Board of Trustees
has recently approved a new Board Committee called the "Community Affairs Committee", which is tasked to strategically work, together with WMF staff, on many of the issues raised in your letter. Here is the Committee's Charter. If you carefully examine the Committee's responsibilities, you will see that one of them is already addressing one of the main issues raised in your letter -- prioritizing community-related consultations (which we have already started to tackle).
The committee will soon have open Office Hours, which are meant to offer a venue for the community to regularly meet & engage with Board Trustees.
This is the first time in the history of our movement when we will be experimenting with something of the sort, and we believe it could be yet another step in our efforts to facilitate better communications and relationships with the community at large. I am also hoping it will lead to alleviating some (though probably not all) of the stress that you mentioned. The CAC will be meeting this week, and will share more details about the office hours (and an answer to your open letter) as soon as we can.
Finally, while big issues may take time to address and implement, I would like to assure you that both our WMF staff and the full board (and naturally CAC members in particular), are all committed to addressing existing issues and improving our best practices as a movement. We all want the same thing -- to ensure our continued growth and success in a productive and positive way, which includes not only better community health, but also systematically addressing the needs of all our stakeholders during this global pandemic, and beyond.
Thank you again for your thoughtful letters and for all that you do for our movement, and stay safe!
Warmly,
Shani (on behalf of the CAC).
