[Wikimedia-l] Community consultation + Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director selection process

[Michael Peel]

On 31 Jan 2014, at 21:14, James Alexander <jamesofur at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 12:55 PM, James Salsman <jsalsman at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> We should be discussing the merits of individual candidates in the open.
>> 
> 
> 
> No... we should not. That would greatly hamper the board's ability to get
> good candidates. Most people who are already in a current job are not going
> to be willing to have open debates about the job opportunities they are
> seeking. Not only because their 'boss' will know but also because if they
> are in a public company that could cause large issues in the market etc
> (all for naught if they don't get selected).

There are ways of having community input into this sort of thing without outing the candidates. When the WMUK Chief Exec was hired, the penultimate step of the recruitment process was having the three shortlisted candidates attend a London wikimeet to talk with some of the community, who could then share their thoughts with the WMUK board so that they could be taken into account in the hiring process. It’s much more difficult to do that on a global scale, of course, but some sort of anonymous on-wiki or on-IRC Q&A session could be organised that might enable the community to gain insight into the candidates and provide their thoughts without naming or outing the candidates.

(I’m not saying that *should* be done here, just that it *could* be done, of course.)

Thanks,
Mike