Hello friends,
It's only 7 days left for Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021 (WMWM) registration
to be closed. We got a good number of submissions and the program committee
selected important ones and published the program schedule here.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Program
You can attend any session or you can attend all the sessions according to
your suitable time and interest. For attending the events you have to
register yourself here below link
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Registration
Regards,
Jayanta Nath
on behalf of the Wikimedia Wikimeet 2021 team.
(long email incoming)
Dear Wikimedians of Nepal,
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is organizing a call for
feedback about community selection processes between February 1 and March
14. Below you will find the problem statement and various ideas from the
Board to address it. We are offering multiple channels for questions and
feedback. With the help of a team of community facilitators, we are
organizing multiple conversations with multiple groups in multiple
languages.
During this call for feedback we publish weekly reports and we draft the
final report that will be delivered to the Board. With the help of this
report, the Board will approve the next steps to organize the selection of
six community seats in the upcoming months. Three of these seats are due
for renewal and three are new, recently approved.
*Participate in this call for feedback and help us form a more diverse and
better performing Board of Trustees!*
*Problems:* While the Wikimedia Foundation and the movement have grown
about five times in the past ten years, the Board’s structure and processes
have remained basically the same. As the Board is designed today, we have a
problem of capacity, performance, and lack of representation of the
movement’s diversity. This problem was identified in the Board’s 2019
governance review, along with recommendations for how to address it.
To solve the problem of capacity, we have agreed to increase the Board size
to a maximum of 16 trustees (it was 10). Regarding performance and
diversity, we have approved criteria to evaluate new Board candidates. What
is missing is a process to promote community candidates that represent the
diversity of our movement and have the skills and experience to perform
well on the Board of a complex global organization.
Our current processes to select individual volunteer and affiliate seats
have some limitations. Direct elections tend to favor candidates from the
leading language communities, regardless of how relevant their skills and
experience might be in serving as a Board member, or contributing to the
ability of the Board to perform its specific responsibilities. It is also a
fact that the current processes have favored volunteers from North America
and Western Europe. Meanwhile, our movement has grown larger and more
complex, our technical and strategic needs have increased, and we have new
and more difficult policy challenges around the globe. As well, our
Movement Strategy recommendations urge us to increase our diversity and
promote perspectives from other regions and other social backgrounds.
In the upcoming months, we need to renew three community seats and appoint
three more community members in the new seats. What process can we all
design to promote and choose candidates that represent our movement and are
prepared with the experience, skills, and insight to perform as trustees?
*Ideas:* The Board has discussed several ideas to overcome the problems
mentioned above. Some of these ideas could be taken and combined, and some
discarded. Other ideas coming from the call for feedback could be
considered as well. The ideas are:
1. *Ranked voting system*. Complete the move to a single transferable
vote system, already used to appoint affiliate-selected seats, which is
designed to best capture voters’ preferences.
2. *Quotas*. Explore the possibility of introducing quotas to ensure
certain types of diversity in the Board (details about these quotas to be
discussed in this call for feedback).
3. *Call for types of skills and experiences*. When the Board makes a
new call for candidates, they would specify types of skills and experiences
especially sought.
4. *Vetting of candidates*. Potential candidates would be assessed using
the Trustee Evaluation Form and would be confirmed or not as eligible
candidates.
5. *Board-delegated selection committee*. The community would nominate
candidates that this committee would assess and rank using the Trustee
Evaluation Form. This committee would have community elected members and
Board appointed members.
6. *Community-elected selection committee*. The community would directly
elect the committee members. The committee would assess and rank candidates
using the Trustee Evaluation Form.
7. *Election of confirmed candidates.* The community would vote for
community nominated candidates that have been assessed and ranked using the
Trustee Evaluation Form. The Board would appoint the most voted candidates.
8. *Direct appointment of confirmed candidates*. After the selection
committee produces a ranked list of community nominated candidates, the
Board would appoint the top-ranked candidates directly.
*Call for feedback:* The call for feedback[1] runs from February 1 until
the end of March 14. We are looking for a broad representation of opinions.
We are interested in the reasoning and the feelings behind your opinions.
In a conversation like this one, details are important. We want to support
good conversations where everyone can share and learn from others. We want
to hear from those who understand Wikimedia governance well and are already
active in movement conversations. We also want to hear from people who do
not usually contribute to discussions. Especially those who are active in
their own roles, topics, languages or regions, but usually not in, say, a
call for feedback on Meta.
You can participate by joining the Telegram chat group[2], and giving
feedback on any of the talk pages on Meta-Wiki. We are welcoming the
organisation of conversations in any language and in any channel. If you
want us to organize a conversation or a meeting for your wiki project or
your affiliate, please write to me. I will also reach out to communities
and affiliates to soon have focused group discussions.
An office hour[3] is also happening tomorrow from 5:45 pm to 6:45 pm (Nepal
time) to discuss this topic. Access link will be available 15 minutes
before the scheduled time. In case you are not able to make it, please
don't worry, there will be more discussions and meetings in the next few
weeks.
Regards,
Krishna Chaitanya
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call…
[2] https://t.me/wmboardgovernancechat
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call…
Dear Wikimedians of Nepal,
As mentioned in my previous email on 23 January, the call for feedback
regarding changes to WMF Board’s governance structure and processes, is
going to start on 1 February and will run until March 14. Information about
the same will soon be available at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call…
[1].
All through the call for feedback, there will be three rounds of office
hours. The first round will be on 2 February (Tuesday). While there will be
three sessions with the same content (to be inclusive of various time
zones), the most feasible one for Nepal would be from 5:45 pm to 6:45 pm
(Nepal time). I will follow-up with actual joining instructions soon.
During the session, we will introduce this call for feedback and will be
available for any questions and comments.
A Telegram chat group[2] to discuss and a channel[3] to receive updates
regarding this have been created. You are welcome to join them.
We are welcoming the organization of conversations in any language and in
any channel. If you want us to organize a conversation or a meeting for
your wiki project or your affiliate, please write to me.
Regards,
Krishna Chaitanya
Links:
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call…
[2] https://t.me/wmboardgovernancechat
[3] https://t.me/wmboardgovernanceannounce
Dear All,
The Access to Knowledge (A2K) team at CIS has been engaged with work on
research on Indian language Wikimedia projects as part of the APG since
2019. This year, following up on our learnings from work so far, we are
undertaking a needs assessment exercise to understand a) the awareness
about research within Indian language Wikimedia communities, and identify
existing projects if any, and b) to gather community inputs on knowledge
gaps and priority areas of focus and the role of research in addressing the
same.
We would therefore request interested community members to respond to the
needs assessment questionnaire here: https://forms.gle/2xGAUBKSVJTK7Wks9
Please respond in any Indian language as suitable. The deadline for this
exercise is February 20, 2021. For any queries do write to us on the
CIS-A2K research talk page here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:CIS-A2K/Research
User:Jayanta (CIS-A2K)
Centre for Internet and Society (CIS)
Access to Knowledge
Dear Nepali Wikimedians,
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has discussed and approved some
improvements to the Board’s governance structure and processes, in two
recent meetings on December 9 and January 8. As the governing body for
Wikimedia Foundation, we want to improve our capacity, performance, and
representation of the movement’s diversity. We have amended the Bylaws in
support of that goal.
The new Bylaws incorporate these main changes:
- *Increase of the Board size to a maximum of 16 trustees (it was 10).*
The trustee role is volunteer, unpaid. The Board thinks that more trustees
are needed to adequately cover the many areas of expertise required to
steer the Wikimedia Foundation, a +450 staff organization supporting an
international movement formed by hundreds of projects and communities.
- *Combining community- and affiliate-selected trustees into one
category.* Rather than a specified number of community-selected and a
specified number of affiliate-selected seats, the Board has determined that
8 seats on the 16-seat Board shall be “community-and-affiliate-selected”
seats. These processes are not defined in the Bylaws, and we will discuss
them separately. The Board appoints up to seven seats directly. The status
of Jimmy Wales as Community Founder Trustee remains unchanged. We have not
used the term “community-sourced” that we initially proposed and instead
now call these “communty-and-affiliate-selected” seats.
- *Maintaining a balance between community/affiliate-selected seats and
Board-selected seats.* The Board has added a safeguard to ensure that a
Board-appointed seat cannot be added if it would mean outnumbering the
community-and-affiliate-selected” seats. The Board is committed to ensuring
strong community representation.
Other changes refer to the terms and renewals of trustees, the resignation
of other staff and governance roles before joining the Board, and the
creation of an optional second Vice-Chair role. We have clarified the
Bylaws language in topics like the fiduciary duty of trustees, the CEO’s
role in meetings, the Treasurer’s duties, and the wording around the legal
requirement that the Board make final appointments to the Board - including
where there is a community/affiliate process to nominate candidates.
The Bylaws page on Foundation Wiki
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws>[1] has been updated to
include these revisions (check the diff).
The Trustee Evaluation Form
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Approving_Trustee_Evaluati…>[2]
to aid in evaluating Board candidates, initially presented as “Candidate
rubric”, has been approved by the Board.
We are organizing a multilingual call for feedback
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Boa…>[3]
to discuss the processes to select trustees from the community. The Board
will put forward a series of options for consideration and discussion, each
one intended to meet the goal of strong community processes to select
representatives, and a goal of improved skills, qualifications, and
diversity in the candidates that are ultimately appointed. This call will
start on February 1 and will run until March 14. The Foundation is
preparing a team of facilitators to ensure broad awareness, participation,
and representation across the movement.
The results of this call for feedback will inform the Board's decision
about these processes expected to come in March-April. The Board will meet
to review and approve a final selection pathway. After the pathway is
approved, we plan to start the process to renew the three overdue community
trustee seats and appoint the three new ones.
Please let me know if you have any questions. I will be facilitating the
conversations related to this in the South Asian region during the call
feedback.
Regards,
Krishna Chaitanya
Board Governance Facilitator
Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws
[2]
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Approving_Trustee_Evaluati…
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Boa…
Hello everyone,
We are excited to announce that registration for participation has been
opened for Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021, the upcoming online wiki-event
which is to be conducted from 19 – 21 February 2021 during the occasion of
International Mother Language Day. The registration will remain open until
16 February 2021.
You can register yourself here -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Registration
If you have any questions or comments please contact
wmwm(a)cis-india.org Otherwise,
please continue to follow our program and developments on Wikimedia
wikimeet 2021 on meta-wiki.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021
Please help us by forwarding this email to relevant lists!
Jayanta Nath
Hello everyone,
We are excited to announce that submission for session proposals has been
opened for Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021, the upcoming online wiki-event
which is to be conducted from 19 – 21 February 2021 during the occasion of
International Mother Language Day. The submission will remain open until 24
January 2021.
You can submit your session proposals here -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions
A program team has been formed recently from highly experienced Wikimedia
volunteers within and outside India. It is currently under the process of
expansion to include more diversity in the team. The team will evaluate the
submissions, accept, modify or reject them, design and finalise the program
schedule by the end of January 2021. Details about the team will come soon.
We are sure that you will share some of your most inspiring stories and
conduct some really exciting sessions during the event. Best of luck for
your submissions!
Regards,
Jayanta
On behalf of WMWM India 2021