Thanks again for your responses, Denny. I think it really helps to get a clearer perspective on things "on the inside", and that informs the kind of things we need to think and talk about as a company and as a movement.

I know it's a super awkward position to be putting all of you in, especially at this juncture. I hope we'll all get through this sanely and we can talk about ways to better align our various structures to our needs with less immediate stress.

-- brion On Feb 25, 2016 9:16 AM, "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

---

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