[Foundation-l] Call for nominations: chapter-appointed seats on the WMF Board of Trustees

[Oliver Keyes]

(personal opinion); no, 39 chapter people voted. Hands up everyone who
voted for their chapter's trustees because they trusted their judgment in
appointing members of the WMF Board?

The rhetoric is most certainly not like that in the UK. Trustee elections
tend to be scoped as "and this is what [candidate] plans to do to extend
the wikimedia movement in the UK"; how they feel about wider governance
issues, last time, at least, didn't come into it. It is incredibly risky to
say that just because a group of individuals is trusted to run GLAM events
in a nation, we trust them to vote on board members - or we appointed them*
*for that reason.

On 1 February 2012 22:38, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 9:17 AM, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 1 February 2012 16:44, Stuart West <stuwest at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I'll give my personal view on the question, and invite others on the
> board
> >> to jump in.  I think the difference between the specific expertise seats
> >> and the appointed seats is subtle but important.
> >>
> >> My sense is that the WMF Board specific expertise seats are more focused
> >> on board operations and governance.  so the Board might do a
> >> self-assessment and identify that it needs someone with financial/audit
> >> oversight experience to serve as Board Treasurer, and then go out and
> find
> >> it. That's me.  It's also reactive and designed to fill in the gaps.
>  So we
> >> as Board decided a few years ago that we lacked sufficient insight and
> >> perspective from outside North America and Europe, so we sought out and
> >> were incredibly luck to find Bishakha.
> >>
> >> The opportunity for the two seats appointed by movement organizations
> like
> >> the chapters is broader.  Many more people are involved in identifying
> and
> >> surfacing potential candidates, so it has the potential to cast a wider
> and
> >> more thoughtful net.  And there is less constraint to meet specific
> >> governance needs, which frees up the process to focus on the people and
> >> perspectives that can have the most positive impact on our movement's
> >> pursuit of the mission.
> >>
> >> -
> >>
> >
> > This is well and good, but it gives the impression that the current three
> > elected members of the board are somehow considered not representative of
> > the movement, and that the opaque selection and appointment process for
> the
> > "chapter" seats is somehow more representative of the movement.  It
> > concerns me a lot that the 97% of active Wikimedians who are not chapter
> > members seem to not be considered part of the movement.
>
> In the 2011 community board election, less than 3400 "users" voted.[1]
>
> In the 2012 chapter board election, 39 chapters consisting of more
> than 4000 identified people will be voting.[2]
>
> Unfortunately neither process captures a large percentage of the
> active Wikimedian community.
>
> 1. see bottom of
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2011/Results/en
>
> 2. see "members" column of
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters#Existing_chapters
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
>
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-- 
Oliver Keyes
Community Liaison, Product Development
Wikimedia Foundation