On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 10:51 PM, Tanvir Rahman wikitanvir@gmail.com wrote:
As far as I heard, the WMF employees and Board use the advisory board according to their need. Sometimes they are share their thoughts as a team, sometimes individually, according to their expertise.
Perhaps they do, and I would certainly not be in the loop for all the occasions on which one might choose to do so.
For my part, FWIW, the extent of my experience with the Advisory Board involves just one longtime member, and is frustratingly unilateral:
I have on two occasions attempted, years ago, to benefit from the experience of a member of the Advisory Board on a matter very pertinent to their background, but could not get a single response. Politely repeated (and politely worded) inquiries were never answered; two(!) reminders face-to-face at two consecutive Wikimanias (which the member attended at WMF's expense) also failed to get that person to respond to my e-mail (if only to say "I can't help you"). Nonetheless, that particular member (please understand I do not mean to malign *any* other member; indeed, I appreciate and admire some of the members past and present[?] of the Advisory Board) continued to take WMF up on its offer to fly to Wikimania.
I found it very frustrating, and on two occasions (both back in Sue's day as ED) brought it up, suggesting that we should probably review the membership of that board and perhaps refresh expectations a bit. It was acknowledged as an issue, but as far as I can tell, was never acted on.
It seems to be one of those issues that are never urgent enough or damaging enough to get to the ED's or the board's always-full agenda. :-/ Perhaps the AB did auto-expire. If it did, let's not offer Wikimania tickets to the last existing AB out of careless inertia!
(It would be interesting to hear some better experiences: ways in which our AB has been useful over the years.)
A.