[Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia Brasil + WMF

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Florence Devouard, 02/09/2011 21:11:
 > You seek to remove "perceived" conflicts of interest, even if that means
 > creating "real" conflicts of interest ?
 >
 > Because there would be conflict of interest and rather BIG ONES.
 >
 > We are facing rather severe challenges right now. Let's say it straight,
 > Wikimedia Foundation is simply trying to absorb/control the chapters as
 > is they were simple bureaux of the WMF locally and chapters kind of
 > disagree with WMF idea that centralization is a good move for the
 > mouvement...

Actually it can be considered quite a coherent plan: if the chapters are 
completely controlled by the WMF, like local branches of a corporation 
but with more subtle means, then there's no conflict of interest, 
perceived (by whom?) or real.
I don't understand, by the way, why the perceived "conflict of interest" 
should be perceived as high right now, and in need of being reduced; the 
topic seems a bit surreal, Florence gave better examples and context of 
real COI issues.

Michael Snow, 02/09/2011 22:02:
> If the point is to improve communication, then a more practical approach
> might be to designate "observers" who are not given authority but merely
> sit in with a chapter board.

I don't consider this practical, rather ideal: it's impossible to 
appoint voting (and working) board members, as explained by Ilario, 
Florence and others; at least observers are ideally possible. Assuming 
that they are not spies of another organization (!) but they're there 
because they know the language, the chapter and its problems, and they 
are willing to help with suggestions, who wouldn't be happy to have 
them? But even considering only the language problem mentioned by BYria, 
this is going to be quite difficult and the WMF is most likely not able 
to find suitable observers; the ChapCom /could/ be able to. I bet that 
WMIT board would be super-happy to have e.g. Delphine as observer, if 
she wanted to follow yet another mailing list and bunch of meetings; but 
despite her preternatural ability to find discussions (among thousands 
on our members mailing list) where she can give useful feedback, this 
doesn't seem a safe assumption even in this lucky context.
But we're going more and more offtopic.

Theo10011, 02/09/2011 21:25:
 > I
 > would argue that the onus is on WMF to aid in communication, there is 
still
 > not a single dedicated person on staff for chapter coordination/outreach,
 > instead most Chapter relation/oversight comes from an unusual overlap of
 > Global Development, Communications department and rarely Community
 > department. Let me put this in perspective, there are 3 Storytellers, a
 > Strategy department, dedicated researchers, full-time on staff but not a
 > single person to deal with chapters who have been around for several 
years.
 >
 > If a board of chapters composed of volunteers who have to solely rely 
on the
 > foundation for activities have to do a better job in communications, the
 > Foundation has to do its part first.

Perhaps this can take us a bit more on topic.
There's indeed a big confusion about WMF staff responsibilities and it 
would be interesting to know how the "Outreach" and the "Global South" 
departments will work together, why they're separated despite the 
overlaps etc. Brasil could be a good example to see whether the local 
office will just be yet another layer of complexity or rather a useful 
single point of contact and catalyst for the local chapter and community.

I've been following the WMF Brasil office activities on Meta for several 
months now (almost a year) and I don't understand completely how local 
activities have been organized and what impact they had so far, so I 
don't know what's the best approach, but the letter by  Wikimedia Brasil 
is very good in its approach if not in the details. To actually involve 
the local community and chapter in the activities, besides generic 
transparency which often doesn't actually give room to useful feedback, 
we could imagine something like an advisory board or scientific 
committee (not executive), appointed by the local chapter (and which 
could just be the chapter board of trustees, to start with), which would 
assist and somehow oversee the local office, with frequent reciprocal 
reports and feedback at least.

Nemo