Thank you everyone for your feedback and ideas. They're already being
discussed internally by AffCom and may be reflected in our next call for
candidates. There will not be any changes to the process for this call.
Some additional information folks may find helpful...
This call will add at least four people to fill some openings on the
committee created by Cynthia's passing earlier this year, to replace a
couple members transitioning into non-voting advisor roles (out of personal
necessity), and expansion by one seat (to help with our growing workload
and respond to concerns of response time).
This does not replace our usual annual call for members, which will be
coming later this year. That call will fill vacancies left by members whose
terms are expiring (or possibly re-elect those members) and another
possible expansion of the committee, that call is also anticipated to fill
at least four seats on the committee.
Before each annual call for members, we do a review of the process, and
sometimes make slight tweaks. Prior to this email, we had committed to
reviewing the process with our new, recently appointed, WMF board liaisons.
This feedback is helpful and will be taken into consideration. For a
variety of reasons, we decided not to delay this call for candidates any
further (and risk having to delay or merge it with the next call) and
instead use the process previously established.
As to the specific suggestions, I have heard compelling arguments for our
existing approach, and for changes. I have not personally come to any final
conclusions on what changes, if any, should be made, and I suspect the same
is true for the rest of AffCom. In part, we wanted to fill the vacancies to
help provide additional input on any changes to this process we may make.
Keep in mind, we are also engaging in a much larger discussion internally
and with affiliates, the WMF Board, and WMF staff about AffCom's
activities, scope, processes, etc. This is done annually (and currently
ongoing), and has resulted in some already visible changes this year (such
as the liaisons, introduction of new resources for affiliates, etc.) with
more to come, and may result in changes to things like the AffCom charter,
which requires a WMF Board vote. I am not yet sure if that will happen, but
I want to give you some sense of the overall scope of our current
conversation and why this specific process was not changed this time around.
I generally try to avoid comparisons between the WMF committees as they are
each rather unique in purpose and composition needs. Speaking specifically
to AffCom, I can say that we look a great deal at the combined skills
voting members will bring to the committee, which sometimes means qualified
candidates are passed for a year to prevent too much overlap of any one
existing skill area (such as legal or nonprofit capacity building) or
consideration such as diversity or language. There have been concerns that
a public process would discourage people from subjecting themselves to the
process more than once, some candidates also fear retaliation given the
complex politics within the affiliates world, and the current process is
believed to have helped us with encouraging candidates to apply who can
help us fill our diversity or skill gaps. I offer that not as a defense,
but as some insight into how the process got to this point.
We recently finished the conversion of the Wikimedia user group application
process from email based to an on-wiki based process and a faster approval
process based on feedback we received (details are on-wiki and coming
on-listserv soon). So that is certainly an option we are considering. Our
last request for an additional committee mailing list took several weeks to
process, and we try not to burden operations with urgent requests. That
said, frankly, we have leaned towards convenience and the idea of moving it
to a WMF hosted address simply has not come up recently and we will seek
input from WMF operations on their preferences and ideas. I am personally
intrigued by the suggestion of OTRS usage, but for for broader applications
as well.
From just a few years ago as ChapCom to today as
AffCom, this committee has
consistently changed and evolved based on feedback and
movement needs. I
appreciate not always to some people's liking, but let's face it, it would
be impossible for us to accommodate every idea and request, if for no other
reason than we often receive conflicting ideas and requests with very
compelling arguments behind them. So it is absolutely a possibility that we
will find ways to address existing concerns and adopt a different approach.
Keep in mind the committee is made up of volunteers that change fairly
regularly (at least four new volunteers are about to join), so I think it
is unfair to make claims or accusations about our possible actions based on
personal biases toward all things related to WMF or resentments about one
specific action (out of dozens each year) or perceived inaction taken by
the committee that you do not like. I say this one note not wearing my
AffCom "hat", but as a personal response to some people's assumptions in
this thread.
I hope that helps offer some insight into our current thinking and helps
explain how we are responding to feedback and why there will not be any
changes to this call. If folks would like to offer additional feedback off
this list, you are welcome to email me, any members of AffCom you happen to
know, or our group email list: affcom(a)lists.wikimedia.org
-greg aka varnent
Vice Chair, Affiliations Committee
On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 10:32 PM, Everton Zanella Alvarenga <
everton.alvarenga(a)okfn.org> wrote:
2014-09-04 17:07 GMT-03:00 Michael Peel
<email(a)mikepeel.net>et>:
Another option would be an open process on-wiki,
along the same lines as
the FDC board-selected seat nominations. Is there a need to keep
applications confidential here?
That is a good idea. But that will not happen any time soon or ever.
Tom
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