[Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation

[Ting Chen]

Hello Kropotkine_113,

since I am on the NomCom I will answer your questions.

Kropotkine_113 wrote:
> Has Matt Halprin been designated to the Board by the Nominating Commitee
> (NOMCOM) ? This is explicity required if I read correctly this page :
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announcement_Q%26A
>   
This is not correct. Essentially the NomCom should nominate the board 
members, and should do this at the end of last year. But it didn't 
worked out. There are multiple reasons for that. Basically that was the 
first time that we worked how it can work and how not. We are simply 
lack of experience. So, it didn't work out last winter. We should have 
four nominated candidates appointed to the board by the begin of 2009 
but we had only two by that time. According to the bylaw of the 
Foundation IV 6 the board can appoint trustees because of vacancy, this 
is the case. So Matt was not on the NomCom list. But we had informed the 
NomCom though about this process. After Wikimania the NomCom would 
resume its work and make suggestions for next year. So Matt would be 
included by NomCom in its list that it would suggest to the board by 
December or would drop out.

> Does he fulfill the Nomitanig Commitee selection criterion : "Membership
> in the Wikimedia community" ?
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee/Selection_criteria#General_needed_traits
>
> Where is the list of the other candidates designated by the NOMCOM ?
>   
The list of NomCom is not published because of privacy. It is a very 
simple thing. If someone is suggested on the list and he is not selected 
or he declined, in either cases can it can both be embarassing for the 
person as well as for the Foundation. So the NomCom had decided on its 
first meeting that the list would not be published and should be kept 
confidential. This would also be the case for the coming years.
> Could we see the discussions and the recommandations of the nominating
> commitee ?
>   
Because of the nature of the confidenciality of the NomCom the 
discussion are kept internal. But there are meeting minutes and the 
mailing list is archived. The NomCom published a status report which is 
published here: [1]
> Is it possible to know which member of the Board of Trustees agree this
> appointment ? Or at least juste the repartition support/against in the
> Board ?
>   
The discussion about this assignment and the voting about it would be 
published as one of the topics of the August board meeting. I want to 
respect the secratory offices role here and don't make any announcements 
prior of Kat's publication of the minutes. What I can say at this point 
is that I voted for Matt for the following reasons: First of all Jimmy 
and Michael interviewed and talked with Matt. Both of them had 
recommended him as a valuable plus for the board. The board had 
interviewed Matt in Buenos Aires, had discussed all the problems that 
may be raised or values that may be added. According of all these 
evaluations I feel no problem as voting for him. We worked with Matt in 
Buenos Aires during our strategic planning session and I feel that our 
positive evaluation was confirmed as Matt had inputted a lot of insights 
out of his experiences about procedures and measurements of success.

Ting

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_committee