Per Fae, a short response in bullet points:
* I'm sorry. I take your criticisms seriously. * How we got to this point, as I see it*: I think the Board felt we had gotten input from AffCom because we saw their responses to the proposal to change to a usergroup-first approval model, which was presented by a staff member. However, it seems AffCom didn't realize that the Board might take up this proposal. This unclarity is the fault of the board.
-- phoebe
* speaking for myself, not all trustees may agree.
On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 10:16 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for this honest critical feedback Lodewijk. It is refreshing to have a straight-forward statement. Most emails from established members of our community being critical about the WMF board or staff seem to feel they need to wrap anything negative in so much cotton wool and glib praise, that it looses any effect.
It would be great for a WMF to respond to the failures your email identifies without writing about issues or successes that were not mentioned, and without garnishing with lengthy caveats or tangents.
Fae
On 11 February 2014 17:58, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
Hi,
I'm very sorry about these decisions. Not only because I disagree with
them
on the content (although there are one or two aspects I can live with)
and
because I think this is very bad for the volunteers, but also because the board returned to a mode where they make decisions without involving the stakeholders properly. The Affiliations Committee will probably come
with a
more elaborate (and perhaps nuanced) reply as a committee later, but
after
this email from Jan-Bart, I feel the need to emphasize that the
Affiliation
Committee was not consulted by the board on this topic - despite the suggestions being made now. Affcom was consulted on a different (but related) proposal by a staff member, with very different arguments from those that the board used in their discussion. In my feeling the board is painting an unjust and unfair picture of the consultation that took
place.
I'm strongly disappointed in /all/ board members for not consulting with the stakeholders (Affcom, FDC, the existing affiliated, the candidate affiliates and of course the community at large) on these strategy
changing
decisions. From the votes it is clear that these decisions were of course not unanimous, but the sole fact that a decision was taken at all without proper consultation (in favor or not) strikes me as almost offensive towards the volunteers involved. I feel this as a slap in the face and
the
board becomes an unreliable body making unpredictable course changes without allowing stakeholders to influence those.
I hope that the board will return on this decision, and take it again
after
a proper consultation. But even more so, I hope that this situation will not repeat itself. I have brought this up before on the topic of bylaw changes, but similar arguments are of course valid here.
Lodewijk Gelauff (While a member of the Affiliations Committee - I write this email
entirely
in a personal capacity)
-- faewik@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.
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