Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community survey to support the WMF ED search starts right now

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 5:56 PM, Luis Villa  wrote:

>
> I would love to see a solid and rigorous hiring process that lends
> credibility to the eventual selection. Has the board done an analysis of
> the previous hiring process to help ensure that the new process will be
> solid and rigorous?
>

We have identified the things we believe need to be done differently, yes.

This time, we're relying on a small, dedicated, NGO-focused organization,
we have an ED search team including staff members (and me, hopefully
counting as the community), as well as a process which involves
staff feedback (through the on-going survey - which, btw, is run
only on major projects, which is a shame, but in the same time the search
team felt the need for urgency... on of the things to watch for in the post
mortem, surely).

dj
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on WMF Governance reviews

[Gnangarra]

  Traditionally
> WLE offers a trip to Wikimania that fine this year as its offering
Montreal
> but what happens for WLE 2017 the organisors(WM Ukraine) need to decide
and
> submit a budget to FDC this year to cover the cost of that prize but there
> is no plan.

I think you're mixing two different issues there. Wikimania plans are quite
distinct from the capacity of the WMF board/senior leadership - the WMF is
big enough that those are done by different people, unlike in smaller
organisations where a governance review can have a much bigger impact on
the amount of programmatic work that the organisation is capable of doing.


Im not mixing two issues  I chose one well known(also current activity)
being impacted by the lack of forward thinking cautioning that the current
level of stagnation at the WMF has caused enough issues care should be
taken in conducting a review that it doesnt further deepen the problems.
The additional point that you articulate is that different people are doing
different things but they are acting in isolation making decisions which
impact others outside of their areas of responsibility. We see this in so
many of the past decisions that when its implemented more energy and
resources are spent placating the community and fixing problems than was
spent in making the original decision.

On 4 June 2016 at 03:35, Michael Peel  wrote:

> Hi Gnangarra, (and a reply to one of Anders' points below)
>
> > On 3 Jun 2016, at 01:34, Gnangarra  wrote:
> >
> > I have a couple of concerns, a review has the potential to stagnate the
> WMF
> > as indicated from WMConf in Berlin thats already a problem and its
> > impacting regular activities that take longer to organise.  Traditionally
> > WLE offers a trip to Wikimania that fine this year as its offering
> Montreal
> > but what happens for WLE 2017 the organisors(WM Ukraine) need to decide
> and
> > submit a budget to FDC this year to cover the cost of that prize but
> there
> > is no plan.
>
> I think you're mixing two different issues there. Wikimania plans are
> quite distinct from the capacity of the WMF board/senior leadership - the
> WMF is big enough that those are done by different people, unlike in
> smaller organisations where a governance review can have a much bigger
> impact on the amount of programmatic work that the organisation is capable
> of doing.
>
> > Another problem is the FDC process timeline will cripple the WMF as that
> > doesnt look beyond the immediate 12 months, I have no issue with funding
> > and activity transparency but the WMF has to be looking further advanced
> > then the current processes dictate.
>
> Longer term strategic plans are very important for FDC applications, but
> they are distinct from annual plans. As I understand it, going through the
> FDC process meant that WMF had to start their annual planning earlier,
> which is good. Thinking longer term would definitely be better, but that's
> a step further along than where things currently are. I don't think that
> any Wikimedia organisation could set detailed plans on 3-year timescales
> yet, which is more the norm in universities.
>
> > Also note that this money already donated to the WMF any process should
> > take care to ensure its not just process for process sake nor should it
> be
> > run just to give a vocal group of low-non contributory complainants
> power
> > over the WMF.
>
> Definitely - but an investment in the process now to ensure better
> governance is much better than extra costs due to poor governance further
> down the line.
>
> > On 3 June 2016 at 03:19, Anders Wennersten 
> wrote:
> >>
> >> 3.The composition of the Board, mandates given to members of the Board
> and
> >> by whom, formal relation between the Board and the stakeholders of our
> >> movement, is a complete mess. And an audit would only be able to state
> >> this, not how it ought to be resolved.
>
> I would hope that a review would be a review, not an audit, i.e. it would
> look at options for improving matters, not just saying what the current
> situation is. This was the case for WMUK, and was done by looking at
> external best practices, and by interviewing other stakeholders in the
> organisation.
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>
>
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>



-- 
GN.
President Wikimedia Australia
WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community survey to support the WMF ED search starts right now

[Luis Villa]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 4:46 PM Dariusz Jemielniak  wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 5:36 PM, James Salsman  wrote:
>
> >
> > Can we at least get confirmation that her performance working at the
> > Foundation will be appropriately weighted in her favor if we do have
> > another lengthy, expensive, third-party search?
> >
>
> I believe it is always only reasonable to account for someone's intimate
> understanding of organizational culture, as well as to recognize one's good
> performance hands on.
>
> However, I think that the process should be wide and open - whoever becomes
> the permanent ED, should really be the best choice, not just because of the
> incumbent advantage. The solid and rigorous recruitment process will add
> credibility and legitimacy to whoever this person eventually is.
>

I would love to see a solid and rigorous hiring process that lends
credibility to the eventual selection. Has the board done an analysis of
the previous hiring process to help ensure that the new process will be
solid and rigorous?

Luis

[Disclaimer for those who missed it last time I sent email here: I did not
sign a termination or contracting agreement with the organization, so I am
not a contractor with the organization. I do still speak to many friends
within the org, but have not discussed this email with them.]
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on WMF Governance reviews

[Michael Peel]

Hi Gnangarra, (and a reply to one of Anders' points below)

> On 3 Jun 2016, at 01:34, Gnangarra  wrote:
> 
> I have a couple of concerns, a review has the potential to stagnate the WMF
> as indicated from WMConf in Berlin thats already a problem and its
> impacting regular activities that take longer to organise.  Traditionally
> WLE offers a trip to Wikimania that fine this year as its offering Montreal
> but what happens for WLE 2017 the organisors(WM Ukraine) need to decide and
> submit a budget to FDC this year to cover the cost of that prize but there
> is no plan.

I think you're mixing two different issues there. Wikimania plans are quite 
distinct from the capacity of the WMF board/senior leadership - the WMF is big 
enough that those are done by different people, unlike in smaller organisations 
where a governance review can have a much bigger impact on the amount of 
programmatic work that the organisation is capable of doing.

> Another problem is the FDC process timeline will cripple the WMF as that
> doesnt look beyond the immediate 12 months, I have no issue with funding
> and activity transparency but the WMF has to be looking further advanced
> then the current processes dictate.

Longer term strategic plans are very important for FDC applications, but they 
are distinct from annual plans. As I understand it, going through the FDC 
process meant that WMF had to start their annual planning earlier, which is 
good. Thinking longer term would definitely be better, but that's a step 
further along than where things currently are. I don't think that any Wikimedia 
organisation could set detailed plans on 3-year timescales yet, which is more 
the norm in universities.

> Also note that this money already donated to the WMF any process should
> take care to ensure its not just process for process sake nor should it be
> run just to give a vocal group of low-non contributory complainants  power
> over the WMF.

Definitely - but an investment in the process now to ensure better governance 
is much better than extra costs due to poor governance further down the line.

> On 3 June 2016 at 03:19, Anders Wennersten  wrote:
>> 
>> 3.The composition of the Board, mandates given to members of the Board and
>> by whom, formal relation between the Board and the stakeholders of our
>> movement, is a complete mess. And an audit would only be able to state
>> this, not how it ought to be resolved.

I would hope that a review would be a review, not an audit, i.e. it would look 
at options for improving matters, not just saying what the current situation 
is. This was the case for WMUK, and was done by looking at external best 
practices, and by interviewing other stakeholders in the organisation.

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transparency: special WMF employee rights for Wikimedia projects

[James Alexander]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 5:40 AM, Fæ  wrote:

> For anyone unaware, in 2014 I created a bot task to maintain a page on
> Meta[1] showing the special Wikimedia Projects rights being allocated
> to WMF employees and contractors, without following normal community
> processes. The bot mirrors data from a Google Spreadsheet maintained
> by the WMF. Back in 2014, this was praised as a positive move forward
> by the WMF in applying our joint commitment to transparency.
>
> Unfortunately the spreadsheet appeared to drop off the radar last year
> and fell into disuse, only being updated after public complaint. The
> spreadsheet has not been updated since November 2015 (over six months
> ago), includes staff who have now left and presumably excludes several
> recent changes to employee rights.
>

While the recording is still being done it's clear the mirroring broke.
I'll go make sure it's up to date and mirrored correctly so that can be
updated over the course of today.


> Could the WMF please make a positive policy decision to ensure the
> open publication of special project rights for its employees becomes a
> required part of the procedure, and business as normal?


This quarter we've been putting together a more organized policy on our
staff rights so that they can be expanded to allow for rights to be granted
by someone other then just me which is an obvious bus factor and encourages
transparency and openness to slip through the cracks in favor of efficiency
and speed. That said we have certainly not been making any direct attempt
to hide changes or be less transparent about it.

Recently, for example, we created a meta specific 'local' right for the
Support and Safety team
 (creating
that page before it was launched) which was a direct response to Steward
requests (and others) to ensure we had global actions such as account
locks, global blocks, user rights changes etc centralized on meta rather
then spread out over 900+ wikis where there was no oversight from
volunteers for those actions. It also allowed us to remove all of those
rights from the global 'staff' right because others there didn't need them.
(which leads to below)

Failing this,
> if rights are to continue to be allocated behind closed doors, with
> some rights being allocated for just a few days at a time so never
> appearing on this spreadsheet, can the rationale for managing project
> rights this way please be explained to the wider community so that we
> might be allowed the opportunity to ask basic questions.
>

In general our goal is to ensure staff have the rights they need to do
their job (whether that's testing a bug, carrying out office actions and
legal process, protecting  setting up grant processes and fundraising
banners or something more unique). We also strive to reduce the attack
vector as much as possible, as much as possible staff shouldn't have rights
they 'don't' need to do their job and they shouldn't have rights much
longer then they actually need them. Because of this I think short term
rights (and occasionally unique rights) are useful tools to ensure that
staff can do their job while remaining with as little access as possible.
In the past everyone having one giant 'all rights staff group' made some
sense but at the size the WMF is now I'm not sure it does.

James Alexander
Manager
Trust & Safety
Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transparency: special WMF employee rights for Wikimedia projects

[Adrian Raddatz]

All WMF staff accounts are now required to have "WMF" in their username, so
it's pretty obvious which accounts have rights for work purposes. Given
this, is that list of advanced permissions still necessary?

Disclosure: I personally think it would be easier for all WMF staff to be
put into one or two usergroups, rather than the variety of groups existing
now and some access to non-staff rights on top of that.

Adrian Raddatz

On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 6:40 AM, Fæ  wrote:

> For anyone unaware, in 2014 I created a bot task to maintain a page on
> Meta[1] showing the special Wikimedia Projects rights being allocated
> to WMF employees and contractors, without following normal community
> processes. The bot mirrors data from a Google Spreadsheet maintained
> by the WMF. Back in 2014, this was praised as a positive move forward
> by the WMF in applying our joint commitment to transparency.
>
> Unfortunately the spreadsheet appeared to drop off the radar last year
> and fell into disuse, only being updated after public complaint. The
> spreadsheet has not been updated since November 2015 (over six months
> ago), includes staff who have now left and presumably excludes several
> recent changes to employee rights.
>
> Could the WMF please make a positive policy decision to ensure the
> open publication of special project rights for its employees becomes a
> required part of the procedure, and business as normal? Failing this,
> if rights are to continue to be allocated behind closed doors, with
> some rights being allocated for just a few days at a time so never
> appearing on this spreadsheet, can the rationale for managing project
> rights this way please be explained to the wider community so that we
> might be allowed the opportunity to ask basic questions?
>
> Links
> 1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Advanced_Permissions
>
> Thanks,
> Fae
> --
> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Fæ 
> Date: 25 September 2015 at 08:52
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Advanced Permissions
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
>
>
> On 25 September 2015 at 05:46, James Alexander 
> wrote:
> > Hey Fae,
> >
> > As you know that I'm responsible for the spreadsheet that your bot is
> copying to make that spreadsheet (since you're one of the ones who asked me
> to make the process more transparent) I would have really appreciated a
> more private email before this public one. That said, yes there have both
> been some changes on the private versions of the sheet that caused the
> public version to break as well as very few actual rights changes which
> means I haven't been looking at it often. Because of a back log of issues
> within my Trust and Safety work I haven't been able to fully find the time
> to fix and update everything but I actually have time set aside on my
> calendar on Monday to do that :).
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> >
> > James Alexander
> > Legal and Community Advocacy
> > Wikimedia Foundation
> > +1 415-839-6885 x6716
>
> Thanks for your commitment to get this up to date.
>
> Had my question been about the performance of a named employee, I
> would have sent a private email out of courtesy. This was a simple
> non-critical question about WMF transparency, following on from an
> original open discussion a long time ago on this list. This makes this
> list the best open place to raise the question.
>
> I feel that it is ethical to all encourage volunteers to feel free to
> ask questions about WMF transparency in the open. It would be a
> positive and ethical approach to take. Making it appear that a
> volunteer has done something wrong when they try to do so is not a
> healthy direction to go in.
>
> Thanks,
> Fae
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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[Wikimedia-l] Transparency: special WMF employee rights for Wikimedia projects

[Fæ]

For anyone unaware, in 2014 I created a bot task to maintain a page on
Meta[1] showing the special Wikimedia Projects rights being allocated
to WMF employees and contractors, without following normal community
processes. The bot mirrors data from a Google Spreadsheet maintained
by the WMF. Back in 2014, this was praised as a positive move forward
by the WMF in applying our joint commitment to transparency.

Unfortunately the spreadsheet appeared to drop off the radar last year
and fell into disuse, only being updated after public complaint. The
spreadsheet has not been updated since November 2015 (over six months
ago), includes staff who have now left and presumably excludes several
recent changes to employee rights.

Could the WMF please make a positive policy decision to ensure the
open publication of special project rights for its employees becomes a
required part of the procedure, and business as normal? Failing this,
if rights are to continue to be allocated behind closed doors, with
some rights being allocated for just a few days at a time so never
appearing on this spreadsheet, can the rationale for managing project
rights this way please be explained to the wider community so that we
might be allowed the opportunity to ask basic questions?

Links
1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Advanced_Permissions

Thanks,
Fae
-- 
fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

-- Forwarded message --
From: Fæ 
Date: 25 September 2015 at 08:52
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Advanced Permissions
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 


On 25 September 2015 at 05:46, James Alexander  wrote:
> Hey Fae,
>
> As you know that I'm responsible for the spreadsheet that your bot is copying 
> to make that spreadsheet (since you're one of the ones who asked me to make 
> the process more transparent) I would have really appreciated a more private 
> email before this public one. That said, yes there have both been some 
> changes on the private versions of the sheet that caused the public version 
> to break as well as very few actual rights changes which means I haven't been 
> looking at it often. Because of a back log of issues within my Trust and 
> Safety work I haven't been able to fully find the time to fix and update 
> everything but I actually have time set aside on my calendar on Monday to do 
> that :).
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
> James Alexander
> Legal and Community Advocacy
> Wikimedia Foundation
> +1 415-839-6885 x6716

Thanks for your commitment to get this up to date.

Had my question been about the performance of a named employee, I
would have sent a private email out of courtesy. This was a simple
non-critical question about WMF transparency, following on from an
original open discussion a long time ago on this list. This makes this
list the best open place to raise the question.

I feel that it is ethical to all encourage volunteers to feel free to
ask questions about WMF transparency in the open. It would be a
positive and ethical approach to take. Making it appear that a
volunteer has done something wrong when they try to do so is not a
healthy direction to go in.

Thanks,
Fae

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