Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation elections committee: Call for volunteers

[Henry Wood]

Joe,

I think this call might fairly be described as too little too late.
Firstly, you describe the votes being held on a regular cycle.  So there's
no reason for delaying this call until 10 January with a closing date of 19
January (one working week).  Secondly, the first meeting is to be held in
January, so you've given yourself less than another two weeks to have staff
vet the candidates, get the approval of the Board Governance Committee, and
then hold the first meeting.  Why give yourself and your propsective
candidates so little time for a process which you have known will be coming
since this time last year?  Thirdly, there is some important information
missing (and very little time to disseminate it effectively).  For example,
what are these meetings?  Is personal attendance necessary?  If so, and any
committee members need to get a US visa, it's already far too late, they
will have needed to apply back in November or early December.  Again, and
especially if travel is required, will the Foundation reimburse the
out-of-pocket expenses of committee members?  Failure to think through
these points may explain why certain groups continue to be
under-represented.

Henry

On Fri, 10 Jan 2020 at 23:28, Joe Sutherland 
wrote:

> Hello everyone!
>
> *Please disseminate this email to anyone who may be interested.*
>
> As you are probably aware, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees[1]
> contains three community-selected seats which are voted in by the wider
> Wikimedia community on a regular cycle. In 2020, we will be hosting another
> one of these selection processes, which are coordinated by the Wikimedia
> Foundation in collaboration with the Elections Committee[2].
>
> We are seeking 2–3 new members for the committee to join us in time for the
> first meetings in January 2020. Applicants will be vetted by Foundation
> staff and ultimately approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board Governance
> Committee[3]. The term is three years, though the bulk of the work involved
> occurs in the buildup to an election.
>
> This role comes with the following responsibilities:
>
> * Attending 3–4 meetings between January and April 2020 with the Foundation
> and the rest of the committee
> * Setting up the wiki pages for the board election (example from last
> cycle)
> * Helping to mark pages for translation and potentially import translations
> as required
> * Working with the committee to fulfill its other responsibilities[4]
>
> Ideally, you would have the following qualities:
>
> * Fluency in English
> * Experience with advanced wikitext markup
> * Responsiveness to email outreach
>
> We are particularly interested in those who come from a traditionally
> under-represented background. If you are interested in volunteering for
> this role, please let me know by *emailing me directly before January 19,
> 2020*.
>
> Thank you in advance for your interest! Please let me know if you have
> questions; I'm more likely to see these questions if you send them to me
> directly.
>
> best,
> Joe
>
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees
> [2]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee
> [3]
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Governance_Committee
> [4]
>
> https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Elections_Committee#Responsibilities
>
>
> --
> *Joe Sutherland* (he/him or they/them)
> Trust and Safety Specialist
> Wikimedia Foundation
> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation elections committee: Call for volunteers

[Pine W]

Risker makes some good points.

An issue for which no one seems to have a solution is the gap between need
and availability for reliable and skilled non-WMF people in numerous areas
of the Wikiverse. These people can continue to shuffle between various
roles and projects, but I think that having regular outbreaks of stress and
problems which are partially attributable to human resources constraints is
not good.

Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation elections committee: Call for volunteers

[Risker]

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election is logically run by the
Wikimedia Foundation, just as elections for other movement entities are
logically run by those specific entities.

The Board of Trustees is responsible for monitoring the election and for
the tasking of and appointment of the Election Committee.  (Similarly,
other movement entities do exactly the same thing.) There are some
constricts built into the bylaws of the organization that identify certain
qualifications for candidates for elected seats.  The WMF staff member(s)
involved in the election are there primarily as facilitators to ensure that
the decisions made by the committee are enacted in a timely way.  They're
there to make sure stuff gets done, in other words.  They're not there to
make the decisions; that responsibility is squarely in the purview of the
Committee.

I confess I am disappointed that the existing Election Committee did not
complete its assigned tasks of reviewing different types of voting, leading
community discussions, and identifying a specific preference.  Given that
the final result of the election will need to be released later than
mid-May 2020, and there is a minimum 10-week period before the polls close
to identify, qualify, and allow questioning of candidates, there is not
sufficient time to carry out much more than preliminary research on
alternate voting methods.  The recent experience with the movement-entity
board member selection process - in which some organizations clearly did
not understand the rules of engagement and had to ask for a "new" ballot -
illustrate the problem with not having sufficient time to really understand
and implement a different voting system.  Bluntly put, the Election
Commission should have completed its work in this regard by now if there
was any chance of changing  voting systems. It's been on the table as
something that needed to be done for at least 4 years, and is in fact the
reason that the Board created a "permanent" Election Commission instead of
one that gets appointed just to run a particular election.

The reality is that people who are good at actually running elections are
usually not the same people who are good at analysing and recommending
election processes.  Thus, it's really hard to find the right mix of
membership for a permanent Election Committee.  Comparatively speaking,
there are a lot more people who are proficient at the mechanics of
organizing and running elections; the only significant difference between
running a board election and running an Enwiki Arbitration Committee
election is scale (and perhaps better familiarity with Meta).

It's also essential that everyone on the committee pulls their weight.  In
the past, Election Committees have suffered from having people on board who
simply disappear after their appointment and don't do anything (or show up
so sporadically that they're more a hindrance than a help), leaving it to
an even smaller subgroup of the committee to make decisions and do the
work.  This is really a problem, and it's almost impossible to fix once the
work of the election has started.  The work for the 2020 election should be
startingwell, it probably already should have started.

Risker/Anne







On Sun, 12 Jan 2020 at 19:44, Pine W  wrote:

> Hello,
>
> As far as I know, there has been no functioning Elections Committee in
> awhile. I think that there should be one, and I am glad to see the interest
> in reviving it. So, thanks for the message, Joe.
>
> In the long term, similar to my opinion about separating the Ombudsman
> Commission from WMF, I would like to have the Elections Committee be
> independent from WMF. However, as far as I know, there is no other
> organization that is able and willing to host community authorities which
> would not be under WMF's control or substantial influence. (WMF can
> exercise significant influence over Wikimedia affiliates by restricting
> their use of Wikimedia trademarks and/or their grant funding.) I hope that
> the possibility of having one or more such legally and financially
> independent organizations is being considered as a part of the 2030
> strategy process.
>
> Pine
> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation elections committee: Call for volunteers

[Pine W]

Hello,

As far as I know, there has been no functioning Elections Committee in
awhile. I think that there should be one, and I am glad to see the interest
in reviving it. So, thanks for the message, Joe.

In the long term, similar to my opinion about separating the Ombudsman
Commission from WMF, I would like to have the Elections Committee be
independent from WMF. However, as far as I know, there is no other
organization that is able and willing to host community authorities which
would not be under WMF's control or substantial influence. (WMF can
exercise significant influence over Wikimedia affiliates by restricting
their use of Wikimedia trademarks and/or their grant funding.) I hope that
the possibility of having one or more such legally and financially
independent organizations is being considered as a part of the 2030
strategy process.

Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation elections committee: Call for volunteers

[Chris Keating]

Hi Joe,

I have some questions! I don't know whether they are best addressed to you,
or someone else, but

- I can't find any evidence of the Elections Committee having met since the
conclusion of the 2017 elections - am I missing something? (The 'Minutes'
page seems to only refer to 2015 meetings, which is almost 5 years ago, so
hopefully this is a case of the meeting minutes being somewhere else on
Meta)
- Also, part of the mandate of the Elections Committee was meant to have
been to do a review of the method of election to the Board of Trustees. I
haven't heard anything about this happening. Has either the Board or the
Elections Committee done anything about this?
- Your email says we're looking for 2-3 new members. Does that imply that
all the existing members are all continuing? (Who in fact are the existing
members? Is the April 2017 list still valid?)
- Has the Board, or the Board Governance Committee, done any assessment of
whether the Elections Committee is the right tool for the job? (Does the
Board actually review the performance of the committees it creates?)

Thanks!

Chris

On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 11:28 PM Joe Sutherland 
wrote:

> Hello everyone!
>
> *Please disseminate this email to anyone who may be interested.*
>
> As you are probably aware, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees[1]
> contains three community-selected seats which are voted in by the wider
> Wikimedia community on a regular cycle. In 2020, we will be hosting another
> one of these selection processes, which are coordinated by the Wikimedia
> Foundation in collaboration with the Elections Committee[2].
>
> We are seeking 2–3 new members for the committee to join us in time for the
> first meetings in January 2020. Applicants will be vetted by Foundation
> staff and ultimately approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board Governance
> Committee[3]. The term is three years, though the bulk of the work involved
> occurs in the buildup to an election.
>
> This role comes with the following responsibilities:
>
> * Attending 3–4 meetings between January and April 2020 with the Foundation
> and the rest of the committee
> * Setting up the wiki pages for the board election (example from last
> cycle)
> * Helping to mark pages for translation and potentially import translations
> as required
> * Working with the committee to fulfill its other responsibilities[4]
>
> Ideally, you would have the following qualities:
>
> * Fluency in English
> * Experience with advanced wikitext markup
> * Responsiveness to email outreach
>
> We are particularly interested in those who come from a traditionally
> under-represented background. If you are interested in volunteering for
> this role, please let me know by *emailing me directly before January 19,
> 2020*.
>
> Thank you in advance for your interest! Please let me know if you have
> questions; I'm more likely to see these questions if you send them to me
> directly.
>
> best,
> Joe
>
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees
> [2]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee
> [3]
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Governance_Committee
> [4]
>
> https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Elections_Committee#Responsibilities
>
>
> --
> *Joe Sutherland* (he/him or they/them)
> Trust and Safety Specialist
> Wikimedia Foundation
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
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