[Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member

[John Vandenberg]

For context (because I needed to look it up)..
I believe this vacancy is to replace the seat held by Matt Halprin,
which was not renewed at the end of December 2012.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:CurrentBoardChart

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_of_trustees needs an update too
if Matt has left the board.

The WMF board portal and noticeboard havent been updated

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Board_portal

On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 10:33 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 17, 2013 8:29 PM, "Itzik Edri" <itzik at infra.co.il> wrote:
>>
>> I don't understand. The board hired and pays to a company to find a board
>> member? Have we tried before via our networks, chapters, and via our
>> advisory board to find such a person (as been done until now?).
>
> The chapters are used to find new foundation board members. That's what the
> chapter selected board seats are for. The expert board seats are for
> providing expertise that we are missing after the community and chapters
> have selected people.

Forgive me if the current board has already communicated their plan,
and I have missed it.  Please advise me if there is a published
strategy/plan for filling this seat.  I can only find this note saying
Kat is leading this initiative, and they hope to interview candidates
in person at the chapters conference in the Milan between 18-21 April:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Board_Governance_Committee/Agenda_2012-2013#Successor_for_Matt

Following on from Thomas Dalton's explanation, which I believe is both
accurate and appropriate...

As we are approaching the board election to refill the three community
elected seats, I think it may make sense to avoid appointing someone
to the vacant expert seat until after the community elected seats are
appointed.  Shortening the list of candidates is a good idea for 18-21
April, but the expert seat should used to maximise the skills and
experiences of the board, filling as many gaps in the board as
possible.  Those gaps can't be fully identified until the community
elected seats are filled.

The community elected seats will provide the board with three people
that the community believes are important additions.  In some cases
these seats may be filled by people whose skillsets and experiences
were identified by the community as needed on the board, but the
nature of the process is that skillset balance is hard to control via
these community seats.

The process ensures that many potential candidates do not even enter
the board election, the wiki user interface hamstrings the candidates
who are not well versed in wiki editing and the wiki discussion
format, so these seats typically go to people who have 10,000+ edits
and are well respected in our community, which limits the field quite
a bit.  The community may also vote for someone who has very similar
skills and experience to someone already on the board, and it would be
a very bold board that invalidates the election result on that basis.

The expert seat is an opportunity to select a person based on the
skillset that is found to be missing on the board, and that should
happen _after_ the skills and experience of the three community seats
are locked in by their appointment.

--
John Vandenberg