[Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia Brasil + WMF

Ziko van Dijk zvandijk at googlemail.com
Sun Sep 4 12:26:04 UTC 2011


Hello,

I would like to know: Is the introduction of WMF people on national
boards a serious idea, or is it just a whim, a piece of loud thinking,
and does not need to be discussed further?

Kind regards
Ziko




2011/9/4 Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki at gmail.com>:
> 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
>
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-- 
Ziko van Dijk
The Netherlands
http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/



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