Hello all,
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is organizing a call for feedback[1] about community selection processes between February 1 and March 14. 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. 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. In the upcoming months, we need to renew three community seats and appoint three more community members in the new seats. This call for feedback is to see what processes can we all collaboratively design to promote and choose candidates that represent our movement and are prepared with the experience, skills, and insight to perform as trustees?
In this regard, two rounds of feedback meetings are being hosted to collect feedback from the technical communities in Wikimedia. Two rounds are being hosted with the same agenda, to accomodate people from various time zones across the globe. We will be discussing ideas proposed by the Board and the community to address the above mentioned problems. Please sign-up according to whatever is most comfortable to you. You are welcome to participate in both as well!
Round 1 - Feb 25, 4:00 pm UTC[2] Round 2 - Mar 4, 4:00 am UTC[3] Sign-up and meeting details: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_...
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Best, Krishna Chaitanya
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_... [2] https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1614268826 [3] https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1614830440
Hello all,
The first meeting will start in three hours from now, at 4:00 pm UTC.
For the community's seats on WMF's Board, here are a few questions that we can discuss during the meeting;
- How would this regional quota be defined? How would it affect the community voting processes expected this year? - What if… the Board would specify a set of skills wanted in community candidates selected this year? - How could the current practices be changed to promote the nomination and selection of candidates with fitting skills and community support? What role should the Trustee Evaluation Form play? - What if the Board would rely on a community-led vetting process? - Board - Global Council - Hubs: - How could the different s/election processes of these bodies be organized? - How would it be possible to reach out to potential candidates, getting apt volunteers for each body, without confusing or exhausting everyone?
The meeting link is https://meet.google.com/svk-fvyn-wkj
Regards, Krishna Chaitanya
On Sun, Feb 21, 2021 at 7:20 PM Krishna Chaitanya Velaga < kcvelaga-ctr@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hello all,
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is organizing a call for feedback[1] about community selection processes between February 1 and March 14. 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. 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. In the upcoming months, we need to renew three community seats and appoint three more community members in the new seats. This call for feedback is to see what processes can we all collaboratively design to promote and choose candidates that represent our movement and are prepared with the experience, skills, and insight to perform as trustees?
In this regard, two rounds of feedback meetings are being hosted to collect feedback from the technical communities in Wikimedia. Two rounds are being hosted with the same agenda, to accomodate people from various time zones across the globe. We will be discussing ideas proposed by the Board and the community to address the above mentioned problems. Please sign-up according to whatever is most comfortable to you. You are welcome to participate in both as well!
Round 1 - Feb 25, 4:00 pm UTC[2] Round 2 - Mar 4, 4:00 am UTC[3] Sign-up and meeting details: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_...
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Best, Krishna Chaitanya
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_... [2] https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1614268826 [3] https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1614830440
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org