Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Le 18/02/2013 20:35, Nathan a écrit : Cyrano - I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Board. It is self-perpetuating in every respect; the elections are advisory only, and the actual appointment of Board members is executed by the existing Board. The organization has no members, and no one who is not on the Board has any power or authority to exercise over the Board or the WMF. This merely describes the legal reality of the WMF and the Board. Nathan, you misunderstood me. We agree on the legal reality that you describe. I'm discussing two points: 1) community's majority is not guaranteed in the Board of Trustees, and 2) relying on paid third parties for the process of appointing one of the five expert seats is not neutral. Handling and filtering the candidates, and thus the list to choose from is a form of influence. Allowing such influence when you don't have the majority is a risk for the community. Le 19/02/2013 04:42, James Alexander a écrit : On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:14 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede jdevre...@wikimedia.org wrote: I simply don't agree. a) Chapters are part of the community :-/ To be honest I don't particularly like this meme that the chapter are part of the community either. The chapters may be part of the community (and so the statement not false) but we use the phrasing in such a way as to say that they are more then they are. There may be a part of the community but they are really a very small part of it overall. Yes, in the best of cases, they are a tiny subset of the user and editor community with a strong bias towards political organization, administrative responsibilities, decision taking, vote collecting, power assuming. Maybe they're needed, I'm not discussing that, but they can't impersonate the community as if they were the community. Their voice is their own. They won't give up their two seats to the community because they're one with the community. They won't, and it means that they're different from the community, no matter how you try to think about this fact. They have their own agenda, which may coincide or not with the interests of the community at large. There's no guaranty of an alliance. There may be conflicts. Saying that the community has 5 seats is thus misleading. It has 3 seats. Saying that the community has an absolute majority guaranteed is simply false. Trying to analyze the Board of Trustees and its process with the belief that the community's interests are guaranteed is a mistake. Objectively, the Board of Trustees cannot guarantee a majority to the community. Its design makes it vulnerable to other influences, and possible schemes, alliances, power struggles and political moves. Maybe it's not bad, I don't know. I just think that things should be clear to the community, since they're the one being tricked by the words. My claim is that in a context of no majority guaranteed for the community, injecting third parties (which are layers of opacity) and money in the process of appointing new board members is a risk for the community. There is no guaranty that a third party understands or shares the values of the community; there is no guaranty that giving it influence over the candidatures for five seats will serve the cause of the community. That's a risk. I'm not to say if it should be taken or not, but we should be aware of that risk. It sounds reasonable to engage the scrutiny of the community when such risks are about to be taken. I would also like to underline that paying someone doesn't necessarily make things better done. A professional mercenary has skills, but doesn't necessarily share internally the cause of the community, or understand it, or even care to know it. In fact, giving money - or any other form of power - to someone to execute a task creates money-driven goals, which can be in conflict with the ideal-driven goals of the community. That's why in think that the more you rely on third parties or paid professional, the more you need to reinforce your control over them. The community's control through the Board of Trustees is too weak to guarantee its interests, too weak to relinquish power as it's currently done and planned. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
On 22 February 2013 17:42, cyrano cyrano.faw...@gmail.com wrote: Le 18/02/2013 20:35, Nathan a écrit : Cyrano - I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Board. It is self-perpetuating in every respect; the elections are advisory only, and the actual appointment of Board members is executed by the existing Board. The organization has no members, and no one who is not on the Board has any power or authority to exercise over the Board or the WMF. This merely describes the legal reality of the WMF and the Board. Nathan, you misunderstood me. We agree on the legal reality that you describe. I'm discussing two points: 1) community's majority is not guaranteed in the Board of Trustees, and 2) relying on paid third parties for the process of appointing one of the five expert seats is not neutral. Handling and filtering the candidates, and thus the list to choose from is a form of influence. Allowing such influence when you don't have the majority is a risk for the community. I really don't follow that argument... you're talking about a professional recruitment firm. They're only interest is in getting more business from us, which they achieve primarily by doing a good job. They have no bias we need to be worried about. They won't give up their two seats to the community because they're one with the community. They won't give up the seats because it isn't their decision - the WMF board decided on their own structure. I don't recall the chapters even being consulted on it at the time. The board decided the foundation would be best served by having the chapters select two board members, and the chapters have complied with that request. I suppose they could just refuse to select anyone, but there is no guarantee the WMF would put those seats up for election rather than just filling them themselves. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Hi Cyrano I generally agreed with your underlying sentiment in the earlier email. I do believe the board or any internal power structure of an organization, has a self-perpetuating nature that preserves itself from outside influence, and at times re-affirms its own direction. But what I do disagree is the trajectory you are taking the argument in now. On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 2:42 PM, cyrano cyrano.faw...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, in the best of cases, they are a tiny subset of the user and editor community with a strong bias towards political organization, administrative responsibilities, decision taking, vote collecting, power assuming. Maybe they're needed, I'm not discussing that, but they can't impersonate the community as if they were the community. Their voice is their own. They won't give up their two seats to the community because they're one with the community. They won't, and it means that they're different from the community, no matter how you try to think about this fact. They have their own agenda, which may coincide or not with the interests of the community at large. There's no guaranty of an alliance. There may be conflicts. Saying that the community has 5 seats is thus misleading. It has 3 seats. Saying that the community has an absolute majority guaranteed is simply false. Trying to analyze the Board of Trustees and its process with the belief that the community's interests are guaranteed is a mistake. I think its a trivial argument. In practice, appointed trustees have sometimes defended community interest better than elected ones, there have been times when the elected community trustees have been at complete odds with their electorate. If you deduce the underlying argument here, it would be that the community elects 3 trustees to the board, and a certain subset within the community elects 2. While the division might not be equally representative of the size of the electorates or the interests, a stronger distinctions here is between elected and appointed members. The fact of the matter is the community itself being as large as it is, chose to re-elect the incumbents. Some elected trustees have been there for 5 years at this stage, rivaling the oldest ones. It is a viable argument to suggest that whatever internal structures or influences at play, they are the oldest form of the establishment. On the other side, the chapter elected appointees have gone through a relatively healthy tenure. It could be argued that a smaller voting pool ensured that the candidate are well known and researched by their electorate. I see benefits and risks to both sides. If I had to argue, I'd say a community elected seat is easier to insure, and has kept the same power structures in play longer. In large electorates, incumbents always have the advantage, when you add the impersonal nature of our elections, this issue is exacerbated further. Objectively, the Board of Trustees cannot guarantee a majority to the community. Its design makes it vulnerable to other influences, and possible schemes, alliances, power struggles and political moves. Maybe it's not bad, I don't know. I just think that things should be clear to the community, since they're the one being tricked by the words. My claim is that in a context of no majority guaranteed for the community, injecting third parties (which are layers of opacity) and money in the process of appointing new board members is a risk for the community. I'm confused as to who is injecting money in this scenario. I am under the assumption that a service is being sought from a professional firm to help recruit and vet the candidates. It seems like standard procedure for highly visible positions to ensure that the opening is advertised as widely as possible, a large pool of candidate is prepared and they are throughly vetted before joining. There is no guaranty that a third party understands or shares the values of the community; there is no guaranty that giving it influence over the candidatures for five seats will serve the cause of the community. That's a risk. I'm not to say if it should be taken or not, but we should be aware of that risk. It sounds reasonable to engage the scrutiny of the community when such risks are about to be taken. Again, the alternative would be WMF or the board itself appointing someone without due process. Would that be more agreeable to this alternative? I would also like to underline that paying someone doesn't necessarily make things better done. A professional mercenary has skills, but doesn't necessarily share internally the cause of the community, or understand it, or even care to know it. In fact, giving money - or any other form of power - to someone to execute a task creates money-driven goals, which can be in conflict with the ideal-driven goals of the community. That's why in think that the more you rely on third parties or paid professional, the more you need to reinforce
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Theo10011, 22/02/2013 23:39: There is no guaranty that a third party understands or shares the values of the community; there is no guaranty that giving it influence over the candidatures for five seats will serve the cause of the community. That's a risk. I'm not to say if it should be taken or not, but we should be aware of that risk. It sounds reasonable to engage the scrutiny of the community when such risks are about to be taken. Again, the alternative would be WMF or the board itself appointing someone without due process. Would that be more agreeable to this alternative? Not really, there are many alternatives. One of them is a NomCom which works... how? no idea. Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 7:49 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.comwrote: Not really, there are many alternatives. One of them is a NomCom which works... how? no idea. So, a one time committee from 2008 made up of largely the same individuals as the ones who will decide now, in a closed process? Sure, though I think they might work with some dark conjuring magic and arcane rituals. :P Even if to assume that this closed unknown process would work again, it still leaves off half the process of advertising the position, arranging the actual interviews, logistics and then doing things like background checks etc.. Also, its better an outside firm approaches a candidate and corresponds with the board/WMF on their behalf, rather than what might be future colleagues/board members/boss interviewing and judging them first. I still think its better to leave those things to a professional firm. Regards Theo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Hey I think that chapters represent a different part of the movement, and that their input in board composition results in different candidates than we would possibly elect :) At the same time the increased scope of affcom also gives us the option of increasing the scope of these two selected seats to include thematic organisations and user groups (giving them more community coverage than is the case now). That would be a good discussion to have over de coming months as the selected seats term expires in july next year… thoughts anyone? Jan-Bart On Feb 19, 2013, at 8:42 AM, James Alexander jameso...@gmail.com wrote: Snipping a bunch for simplicities sake On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:14 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede jdevre...@wikimedia.org wrote: I simply don't agree. a) Chapters are part of the community b) Whenever a vote comes up for an appointed seat that seat obviously does not vote, therefore the (s)elected seats have a majority vote on any appointed seat (5 our of 9 votes) Apart from that I would say that Jimmy's seat is a community seat, but recognise that not all share that viewpoint. Jan-Bart :-/ To be honest I don't particularly like this meme that the chapter are part of the community either. The chapters may be part of the community (and so the statement not false) but we use the phrasing in such a way as to say that they are more then they are. There may be a part of the community but they are really a very small part of it overall. Their power in board selection and movement voice (both formally and informally) is disproportionately huge and we set them up to represent the community when that is a serious misstatement. They represent their members who are a very small subset of the community and often have a very different goal and interest set then the, much larger, remainder of the community and depending on the chapter may include more donors or readers then editors. That is not to say they don't do good things at times (or that it is a problem to include donors or readers, personally I think they are part of our larger community) but we should not confuse what they actually are. Jimmy is a whole different question ;) I would certainly say he deserves a seat at the table, I prefer to just categorize him as Jimmy because he's just a class of his own in all ways :). James ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote: ... if you have questions that you think we should ask: feel free to suggest them here :) I have these ten questions: 1. What do you think a reasonable goal for the growth of the Wikimedia Education Program over the next five years is? 2. Do you believe that the Foundation should establish an endowment? If so, how large do you think such an endowment should be; in particular, should the Foundation establish an endowment large enough to subsist at present staffing levels and growth rates from current investment grade bond interest rates without accepting additional donations? If so, over how many years do you think it would be most appropriate to establish such an endowment? 3. How often do you think the Foundation should propose advocacy actions to the community? Do you believe the Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? 4. Should the Foundation meet or exceed Silicon Valley competitive pay to attract and retain the best talent while competing with firms able to offer equity participation? Do you believe the Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? Why or why not? 5. Should the Foundation establish a system of awarding employee bonuses in amounts determined by anonymous peer evaluations? Why or why not? 6. Some proportion of long term project editors are impoverished, probably within a few percentage points of the impoverished proportion of the population as a whole. How do you think the Foundation could best assist impoverished long term volunteers? Do you think it should? Why or why not? 7. To what extent do you believe the Foundation should reimburse travel and content development expenses for Wikinews contributors? In particular, if you were to propose a pilot grant program to grant travel and expense funds directly to individual Wikinews reporters, how many such awards would you begin with and how would you measure their effectiveness? 8. PeerWise is a popular closed-source assessment question and answer database (http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/) used in hundreds of higher education institutions. Unlike textbooks, traditional courses, MOOCs, and Moodle-style courses, PeerWise question databases can and often are populated entirely by learners, with answers reviewed in a style very similar to wiki content. Do you believe it would be appropriate for the Foundation to develop an open source version of PeerWise? Why or why not? 9. Do you believe the Foundation should employ professional fact checkers who would not edit reader-facing content on the projects, but who would be available to research questions pertaining to content disputes at the request of projects' dispute resolution volunteers (e.g. Wikipedia mediators) to prepare reports to help volunteers resolve content disputes? Why or why not? Do you believe the Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? 10. What is your experience with editing or otherwise supporting Foundation projects? Sincerely, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Hey Thanks! I am sure that Alice is grateful for the input. I must confess though that I think that most of these questions require a deep knowledge of the movement and the community and as such disqualify a lot of potential candidates… (I would hazard a guess that none of the past appointed candidates (including myself) were not able to answer 80% of these questions until about 6 months on the job. So are you proposing these questions to select new candidates or are you simply trying to get attention for these issues (as you have been doing over the past months… which is fair enough to some degree?) (and to be fair: at this point, with all the experience I have within the movement I would want to see most of these decisions researched before committing to a point of view) Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 9:19 AM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote: ... if you have questions that you think we should ask: feel free to suggest them here :) I have these ten questions: 1. What do you think a reasonable goal for the growth of the Wikimedia Education Program over the next five years is? 2. Do you believe that the Foundation should establish an endowment? If so, how large do you think such an endowment should be; in particular, should the Foundation establish an endowment large enough to subsist at present staffing levels and growth rates from current investment grade bond interest rates without accepting additional donations? If so, over how many years do you think it would be most appropriate to establish such an endowment? 3. How often do you think the Foundation should propose advocacy actions to the community? Do you believe the Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? 4. Should the Foundation meet or exceed Silicon Valley competitive pay to attract and retain the best talent while competing with firms able to offer equity participation? Do you believe the Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? Why or why not? 5. Should the Foundation establish a system of awarding employee bonuses in amounts determined by anonymous peer evaluations? Why or why not? 6. Some proportion of long term project editors are impoverished, probably within a few percentage points of the impoverished proportion of the population as a whole. How do you think the Foundation could best assist impoverished long term volunteers? Do you think it should? Why or why not? 7. To what extent do you believe the Foundation should reimburse travel and content development expenses for Wikinews contributors? In particular, if you were to propose a pilot grant program to grant travel and expense funds directly to individual Wikinews reporters, how many such awards would you begin with and how would you measure their effectiveness? 8. PeerWise is a popular closed-source assessment question and answer database (http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/) used in hundreds of higher education institutions. Unlike textbooks, traditional courses, MOOCs, and Moodle-style courses, PeerWise question databases can and often are populated entirely by learners, with answers reviewed in a style very similar to wiki content. Do you believe it would be appropriate for the Foundation to develop an open source version of PeerWise? Why or why not? 9. Do you believe the Foundation should employ professional fact checkers who would not edit reader-facing content on the projects, but who would be available to research questions pertaining to content disputes at the request of projects' dispute resolution volunteers (e.g. Wikipedia mediators) to prepare reports to help volunteers resolve content disputes? Why or why not? Do you believe the Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? 10. What is your experience with editing or otherwise supporting Foundation projects? Sincerely, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
On 18 February 2013 08:19, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: I have these ten questions: This is ridiculously inside-baseball stuff. It strikes me as possibly a bad idea to turn board selection into something like en:wp RFA. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Hi, sure I didn't mean every external consultancy is evil. Sorry if I sounded like that. Firstly, the world is not divided between good and evil, like if we had an axis of evil. :P Just as an example, the same company I just criticized had a better performance in another country. Things can vary a lot and I am sure people in charge of the particular process are aware of that. I just wanted to remind a particular case that I believe is worth studying. And I do think sometimes to have an external consultancy can help us to diminish our own bias. ;) Tom On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Jan-Bart de Vreede jdevre...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi Sounded like good intervention, thanks for reminding me :) Truth is of course that board Governance Committee is driving this process together with Gayle. That means that multiple community (s)elected board members are involved in the initial screening and that the whole board will be included in the final selection. This would also be a good opportunity to make a small point: not all external consultancy is evil :) As a community we tend to be naturally suspicious of people that get paid a lot of money for tasks that theoretically could also be done my the community… There is a good reason why we sometimes rely on paid external advisors, some of which were given by Gayle. m|Oppenheim in particular has been a great partner in WMF hiring with great results, and I hope that they can be as effective in this search (which we hope you can help out with by suggesting good candidates to them) Regards Jan-Bart -- Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom) A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
I don't think it's about childish beliefs about evil. Money has a real influence, conflicts of interests are a real thing, and opacity at any stage allow abuses. It has been shown countless times in countless situations, empirically and scientifically, that people in power WILL use it to keep it, as much as they can. When an entity is using its influence to determine who will supervise it, it's a matter of keeping the power of self-determination. You may agree or not with this strategy, but there is no way to lift doubts about the fairness of such appointment and obtain a clean cut legitimacy from such premises. Cheers. Le 18/02/2013 09:52, Jan-Bart de Vreede a écrit : Hi Sounded like good intervention, thanks for reminding me :) Truth is of course that board Governance Committee is driving this process together with Gayle. That means that multiple community (s)elected board members are involved in the initial screening and that the whole board will be included in the final selection. This would also be a good opportunity to make a small point: not all external consultancy is evil :) As a community we tend to be naturally suspicious of people that get paid a lot of money for tasks that theoretically could also be done my the community… There is a good reason why we sometimes rely on paid external advisors, some of which were given by Gayle. m|Oppenheim in particular has been a great partner in WMF hiring with great results, and I hope that they can be as effective in this search (which we hope you can help out with by suggesting good candidates to them) Regards Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 1:23 PM, Everton Zanella Alvarenga t...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi all. I would like to recommend to see the Brazil case where the recruitment of the coordinator of the Catalyst Project was done in partnership with the community http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/11/brazil-recruiting-and-partnership-with-the-community-moves-forward/ After the community noticed the mistake being done in hiring and expensive and useless headhunter, this was critized http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.brazil/161 and, fortunately, promptly listened by Wikimedia Foundation people in charge of the process. The community even had the idea of a more open and transparent process, where the candidates would engage in a wiki task - four finalists for the whole process engaged in such task. Also in the interview with two wikimedians, the 10 candidates could have a taste of what they would expect. :) We all saw the dozens of mistakes of this headhunters, that luckly were solved on time by the community, improving a lot the final results. Not saying the model shouldn't be adapted and improved, it must. And after all, no one better than locals to tell about their own community. Best, Tom On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 9:11 AM, Jan-Bart de Vreede jdevre...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hey Thanks! I am sure that Alice is grateful for the input. I must confess though that I think that most of these questions require a deep knowledge of the movement and the community and as such disqualify a lot of potential candidates… (I would hazard a guess that none of the past appointed candidates (including myself) were not able to answer 80% of these questions until about 6 months on the job. So are you proposing these questions to select new candidates or are you simply trying to get attention for these issues (as you have been doing over the past months… which is fair enough to some degree?) (and to be fair: at this point, with all the experience I have within the movement I would want to see most of these decisions researched before committing to a point of view) Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 9:19 AM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote: ... if you have questions that you think we should ask: feel free to suggest them here :) I have these ten questions: 1. What do you think a reasonable goal for the growth of the Wikimedia Education Program over the next five years is? 2. Do you believe that the Foundation should establish an endowment? If so, how large do you think such an endowment should be; in particular, should the Foundation establish an endowment large enough to subsist at present staffing levels and growth rates from current investment grade bond interest rates without accepting additional donations? If so, over how many years do you think it would be most appropriate to establish such an endowment? 3. How often do you think the Foundation should propose advocacy actions to the community? Do you believe the Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? 4. Should the Foundation meet or exceed Silicon Valley competitive pay to attract and retain the best talent while competing with firms able to offer equity participation? Do you believe the Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? Why or why
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
I quite like questions 2, 6, 9 and 10 - the answers to those should help to show how well applicants understand our culture and what new insights they can bring to the table. The others are either too obscure for most applicants to be able to give an informed answer or aren't really things the board should be worrying about. On 18 February 2013 08:19, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote: ... if you have questions that you think we should ask: feel free to suggest them here :) I have these ten questions: 1. What do you think a reasonable goal for the growth of the Wikimedia Education Program over the next five years is? 2. Do you believe that the Foundation should establish an endowment? If so, how large do you think such an endowment should be; in particular, should the Foundation establish an endowment large enough to subsist at present staffing levels and growth rates from current investment grade bond interest rates without accepting additional donations? If so, over how many years do you think it would be most appropriate to establish such an endowment? 3. How often do you think the Foundation should propose advocacy actions to the community? Do you believe the Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? 4. Should the Foundation meet or exceed Silicon Valley competitive pay to attract and retain the best talent while competing with firms able to offer equity participation? Do you believe the Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? Why or why not? 5. Should the Foundation establish a system of awarding employee bonuses in amounts determined by anonymous peer evaluations? Why or why not? 6. Some proportion of long term project editors are impoverished, probably within a few percentage points of the impoverished proportion of the population as a whole. How do you think the Foundation could best assist impoverished long term volunteers? Do you think it should? Why or why not? 7. To what extent do you believe the Foundation should reimburse travel and content development expenses for Wikinews contributors? In particular, if you were to propose a pilot grant program to grant travel and expense funds directly to individual Wikinews reporters, how many such awards would you begin with and how would you measure their effectiveness? 8. PeerWise is a popular closed-source assessment question and answer database (http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/) used in hundreds of higher education institutions. Unlike textbooks, traditional courses, MOOCs, and Moodle-style courses, PeerWise question databases can and often are populated entirely by learners, with answers reviewed in a style very similar to wiki content. Do you believe it would be appropriate for the Foundation to develop an open source version of PeerWise? Why or why not? 9. Do you believe the Foundation should employ professional fact checkers who would not edit reader-facing content on the projects, but who would be available to research questions pertaining to content disputes at the request of projects' dispute resolution volunteers (e.g. Wikipedia mediators) to prepare reports to help volunteers resolve content disputes? Why or why not? Do you believe the Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? 10. What is your experience with editing or otherwise supporting Foundation projects? Sincerely, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
I would like to promote the idea that this person should be a supporter of counties/language that is less fortunate then most of us, ie where free expression of speech is in threat and where we now see an unfortunate trend to limit the free Internet access. I have spoken with colleagues from Russia and Ukraine and am utterly impressed by their perseverance and idealistic drive in a real tough environment. I also see the success of the Arabic wp as one of the major achievement the last coupe of years. I have no idea what it looks like in Uzbek Wikipedia or Aszerbadjan wikipedia and wonder what is just now happening in the Georgians one who have had success. With a Board member who knows of these realties from inside (being an experienced wikipedian?) I could hope that we as a Movement could act more provocative to promote Free Knowledge for All even where it now seems there are powers wanting to sabotage this our vision Anders Alice Wiegand skrev 2013-02-17 00:55: Hi everyone, as you know, we have one vacant appointed seat on the Board of Trustees. We have asked m/Oppenheim Associates to assist us in finding a new board member and and we are reaching out to the community for suggestions and nominations. The Board functions as a governance body that is ultimately responsible for the Wikimedia Foundation and its activities, supervises the disposition and solicitation of donations, and evaluates the organization’s Executive Director who leads all Foundation staff. As arguably the most influential and respected organization in the free knowledge movement, the Wikimedia Foundation and its Board have a great responsibility for setting policy deliberately and with due consideration for the diverse interests of a truly global community. To find out more about the responsibilities and workings of the board you can have a look at the Board manualhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_board_manual . As with any search process we will be communicating with a lot of potential candidates to see if we are a good match. The Board’s objective is to use this search to strengthen its competence with regards to board governance, grantmaking, strategy, and expertise with regions where Wikimedia is trying to make rapid strides in the growth of our projects. Board terms are for a two year period. Compared to other boards the time commitment is very significant. The Board of Trustees meets four times a year, twice in San Francisco and twice in changing locations around the globe. Meetings take two days and travel can add another two days to each meeting. In addition, the Board communicates frequently by email and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) as it navigates policy issues. This can absorb 4-10 hours weekly. Board members also regularly engage with the Community through wiki pages. We think that the WMF would benefit from a Board member who has experience with organizations that have grown and evolved rapidly, and who understands how boards can evolve to provide appropriate governance support in these changing circumstances. Experience with international, community-driven, consensus organizations is also important as the Foundation would not exist without the community. We would like to call upon you to help us out with finding the right individual. A complete position description can be found herehttp://moppenheim.com/searches/links/Wikimedia%20Foundation%20-%20Board%20Member%20position%20description%20-%20final.pdfand additional information can be found at www.moppenheim.com and www.wikimediafoundation.org. Your suggestions and nominations are very welcome. Please feel free to reach out to your networks and distribute this note as you deem appropriate. Interested individuals should contact Lisa Grossman li...@moppenheim.com ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Hey And I was not responding specifically to you, no worries! Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 2:01 PM, Everton Zanella Alvarenga t...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi, sure I didn't mean every external consultancy is evil. Sorry if I sounded like that. Firstly, the world is not divided between good and evil, like if we had an axis of evil. :P Just as an example, the same company I just criticized had a better performance in another country. Things can vary a lot and I am sure people in charge of the particular process are aware of that. I just wanted to remind a particular case that I believe is worth studying. And I do think sometimes to have an external consultancy can help us to diminish our own bias. ;) Tom On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Jan-Bart de Vreede jdevre...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi Sounded like good intervention, thanks for reminding me :) Truth is of course that board Governance Committee is driving this process together with Gayle. That means that multiple community (s)elected board members are involved in the initial screening and that the whole board will be included in the final selection. This would also be a good opportunity to make a small point: not all external consultancy is evil :) As a community we tend to be naturally suspicious of people that get paid a lot of money for tasks that theoretically could also be done my the community… There is a good reason why we sometimes rely on paid external advisors, some of which were given by Gayle. m|Oppenheim in particular has been a great partner in WMF hiring with great results, and I hope that they can be as effective in this search (which we hope you can help out with by suggesting good candidates to them) Regards Jan-Bart -- Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom) A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Hey I seriously can't follow this, could you explain? Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 2:11 PM, cyrano cyrano.faw...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think it's about childish beliefs about evil. Money has a real influence, conflicts of interests are a real thing, and opacity at any stage allow abuses. It has been shown countless times in countless situations, empirically and scientifically, that people in power WILL use it to keep it, as much as they can. When an entity is using its influence to determine who will supervise it, it's a matter of keeping the power of self-determination. You may agree or not with this strategy, but there is no way to lift doubts about the fairness of such appointment and obtain a clean cut legitimacy from such premises. Cheers. Le 18/02/2013 09:52, Jan-Bart de Vreede a écrit : Hi Sounded like good intervention, thanks for reminding me :) Truth is of course that board Governance Committee is driving this process together with Gayle. That means that multiple community (s)elected board members are involved in the initial screening and that the whole board will be included in the final selection. This would also be a good opportunity to make a small point: not all external consultancy is evil :) As a community we tend to be naturally suspicious of people that get paid a lot of money for tasks that theoretically could also be done my the community… There is a good reason why we sometimes rely on paid external advisors, some of which were given by Gayle. m|Oppenheim in particular has been a great partner in WMF hiring with great results, and I hope that they can be as effective in this search (which we hope you can help out with by suggesting good candidates to them) Regards Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 1:23 PM, Everton Zanella Alvarenga t...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi all. I would like to recommend to see the Brazil case where the recruitment of the coordinator of the Catalyst Project was done in partnership with the community http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/11/brazil-recruiting-and-partnership-with-the-community-moves-forward/ After the community noticed the mistake being done in hiring and expensive and useless headhunter, this was critized http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.brazil/161 and, fortunately, promptly listened by Wikimedia Foundation people in charge of the process. The community even had the idea of a more open and transparent process, where the candidates would engage in a wiki task - four finalists for the whole process engaged in such task. Also in the interview with two wikimedians, the 10 candidates could have a taste of what they would expect. :) We all saw the dozens of mistakes of this headhunters, that luckly were solved on time by the community, improving a lot the final results. Not saying the model shouldn't be adapted and improved, it must. And after all, no one better than locals to tell about their own community. Best, Tom On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 9:11 AM, Jan-Bart de Vreede jdevre...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hey Thanks! I am sure that Alice is grateful for the input. I must confess though that I think that most of these questions require a deep knowledge of the movement and the community and as such disqualify a lot of potential candidates… (I would hazard a guess that none of the past appointed candidates (including myself) were not able to answer 80% of these questions until about 6 months on the job. So are you proposing these questions to select new candidates or are you simply trying to get attention for these issues (as you have been doing over the past months… which is fair enough to some degree?) (and to be fair: at this point, with all the experience I have within the movement I would want to see most of these decisions researched before committing to a point of view) Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 9:19 AM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote: ... if you have questions that you think we should ask: feel free to suggest them here :) I have these ten questions: 1. What do you think a reasonable goal for the growth of the Wikimedia Education Program over the next five years is? 2. Do you believe that the Foundation should establish an endowment? If so, how large do you think such an endowment should be; in particular, should the Foundation establish an endowment large enough to subsist at present staffing levels and growth rates from current investment grade bond interest rates without accepting additional donations? If so, over how many years do you think it would be most appropriate to establish such an endowment? 3. How often do you think the Foundation should propose advocacy actions to the community? Do you believe the Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? 4. Should the Foundation meet or exceed
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Jan-Bart, can you be more specific? Cheers Le 18/02/2013 10:55, Jan-Bart de Vreede a écrit : Hey I seriously can't follow this, could you explain? Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 2:11 PM, cyrano cyrano.faw...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think it's about childish beliefs about evil. Money has a real influence, conflicts of interests are a real thing, and opacity at any stage allow abuses. It has been shown countless times in countless situations, empirically and scientifically, that people in power WILL use it to keep it, as much as they can. When an entity is using its influence to determine who will supervise it, it's a matter of keeping the power of self-determination. You may agree or not with this strategy, but there is no way to lift doubts about the fairness of such appointment and obtain a clean cut legitimacy from such premises. Cheers. Le 18/02/2013 09:52, Jan-Bart de Vreede a écrit : Hi Sounded like good intervention, thanks for reminding me :) Truth is of course that board Governance Committee is driving this process together with Gayle. That means that multiple community (s)elected board members are involved in the initial screening and that the whole board will be included in the final selection. This would also be a good opportunity to make a small point: not all external consultancy is evil :) As a community we tend to be naturally suspicious of people that get paid a lot of money for tasks that theoretically could also be done my the community… There is a good reason why we sometimes rely on paid external advisors, some of which were given by Gayle. m|Oppenheim in particular has been a great partner in WMF hiring with great results, and I hope that they can be as effective in this search (which we hope you can help out with by suggesting good candidates to them) Regards Jan-Bart ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
yes: this bit: I don't think it's about childish beliefs about evil. Money has a real influence, conflicts of interests are a real thing, and opacity at any stage allow abuses. It has been shown countless times in countless situations, empirically and scientifically, that people in power WILL use it to keep it, as much as they can. When an entity is using its influence to determine who will supervise it, it's a matter of keeping the power of self-determination. You may agree or not with this strategy, but there is no way to lift doubts about the fairness of such appointment and obtain a clean cut legitimacy from such premises. I don't understand what you are trying to say or imply? Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 3:30 PM, cyrano cyrano.faw...@gmail.com wrote: Jan-Bart, can you be more specific? Cheers Le 18/02/2013 10:55, Jan-Bart de Vreede a écrit : Hey I seriously can't follow this, could you explain? Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 2:11 PM, cyrano cyrano.faw...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think it's about childish beliefs about evil. Money has a real influence, conflicts of interests are a real thing, and opacity at any stage allow abuses. It has been shown countless times in countless situations, empirically and scientifically, that people in power WILL use it to keep it, as much as they can. When an entity is using its influence to determine who will supervise it, it's a matter of keeping the power of self-determination. You may agree or not with this strategy, but there is no way to lift doubts about the fairness of such appointment and obtain a clean cut legitimacy from such premises. Cheers. Le 18/02/2013 09:52, Jan-Bart de Vreede a écrit : Hi Sounded like good intervention, thanks for reminding me :) Truth is of course that board Governance Committee is driving this process together with Gayle. That means that multiple community (s)elected board members are involved in the initial screening and that the whole board will be included in the final selection. This would also be a good opportunity to make a small point: not all external consultancy is evil :) As a community we tend to be naturally suspicious of people that get paid a lot of money for tasks that theoretically could also be done my the community… There is a good reason why we sometimes rely on paid external advisors, some of which were given by Gayle. m|Oppenheim in particular has been a great partner in WMF hiring with great results, and I hope that they can be as effective in this search (which we hope you can help out with by suggesting good candidates to them) Regards Jan-Bart ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
To ensure a representation of the interests of the community, the determination of a new Board Trustee cannot be influenced by the people within the Board Trustee (and even less by the WMF itself). Otherwise, it would boil down to a disguised form of cooptation. Cooptation is a way to absorb new elements into a structure without threatening it, which is good for stability, but bad if changes or trust are needed. In particular, if the community differs from what the WMF or the Board of Trustees are doing, cooptation cannot repair the divergence. In fact, it tends to aggravate it. Now, if the Board of Trustees sets requirements, or pays the people who will recommend the candidates, it immediately breaks the guaranty that there is something else than people in power keeping their power structure intact. It doesn't mean it is happening, but it can't guaranty it's not, which defeats the point of having Trustees. That's why, even if you agree with the strategy behind the current proposal and its advantages, you should be aware that it decreases the legitimacy of the governance structure to the eyes of the community. Personally, I think the main function of the Board of Trustees should be to increase the trust of the community, thanks to a rigorous and transparent scrutiny of its internal processes. Le 18/02/2013 14:14, Jan-Bart de Vreede a écrit : yes: this bit: I don't think it's about childish beliefs about evil. Money has a real influence, conflicts of interests are a real thing, and opacity at any stage allow abuses. It has been shown countless times in countless situations, empirically and scientifically, that people in power WILL use it to keep it, as much as they can. When an entity is using its influence to determine who will supervise it, it's a matter of keeping the power of self-determination. You may agree or not with this strategy, but there is no way to lift doubts about the fairness of such appointment and obtain a clean cut legitimacy from such premises. I don't understand what you are trying to say or imply? Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 3:30 PM, cyrano cyrano.faw...@gmail.com wrote: Jan-Bart, can you be more specific? Cheers Le 18/02/2013 10:55, Jan-Bart de Vreede a écrit : Hey I seriously can't follow this, could you explain? Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 2:11 PM, cyrano cyrano.faw...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think it's about childish beliefs about evil. Money has a real influence, conflicts of interests are a real thing, and opacity at any stage allow abuses. It has been shown countless times in countless situations, empirically and scientifically, that people in power WILL use it to keep it, as much as they can. When an entity is using its influence to determine who will supervise it, it's a matter of keeping the power of self-determination. You may agree or not with this strategy, but there is no way to lift doubts about the fairness of such appointment and obtain a clean cut legitimacy from such premises. Cheers. Le 18/02/2013 09:52, Jan-Bart de Vreede a écrit : Hi Sounded like good intervention, thanks for reminding me :) Truth is of course that board Governance Committee is driving this process together with Gayle. That means that multiple community (s)elected board members are involved in the initial screening and that the whole board will be included in the final selection. This would also be a good opportunity to make a small point: not all external consultancy is evil :) As a community we tend to be naturally suspicious of people that get paid a lot of money for tasks that theoretically could also be done my the community… There is a good reason why we sometimes rely on paid external advisors, some of which were given by Gayle. m|Oppenheim in particular has been a great partner in WMF hiring with great results, and I hope that they can be as effective in this search (which we hope you can help out with by suggesting good candidates to them) Regards Jan-Bart ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Hi On Feb 18, 2013, at 8:52 PM, cyrano cyrano.faw...@gmail.com wrote: To ensure a representation of the interests of the community, the determination of a new Board Trustee cannot be influenced by the people within the Board Trustee (and even less by the WMF itself). Otherwise, it would boil down to a disguised form of cooptation. Cooptation is a way to absorb new elements into a structure without threatening it, which is good for stability, but bad if changes or trust are needed. In particular, if the community differs from what the WMF or the Board of Trustees are doing, cooptation cannot repair the divergence. In fact, it tends to aggravate it. But it wasn't intended to repair any possible divergence, this is what the five community (s)elected seats are for… if there is a divergence you can (s)elect different people for those five seats. The appointed seats are intended to help add specific skills/expertise to the board to make sure that it can perform its governance tasks effectively…. Now, if the Board of Trustees sets requirements, or pays the people who will recommend the candidates, it immediately breaks the guaranty that there is something else than people in power keeping their power structure intact. It doesn't mean it is happening, but it can't guaranty it's not, which defeats the point of having Trustees. Simply don't agree with that reasoning. The point of trustees it to provide governance and direction to the WMF. The five community (s)elected seats and the founders seat select four others to help them perform this task. They will look for skills and expertise that they find lacking within their composition. If you cannot trust them to select the right people, how can you trust them to do anything? Which leads to … why vote for them at all? That's why, even if you agree with the strategy behind the current proposal and its advantages, you should be aware that it decreases the legitimacy of the governance structure to the eyes of the community. I don't think it does, or should. If it does then I think its worth explaining (like I have hopefully done above) Personally, I think the main function of the Board of Trustees should be to increase the trust of the community, thanks to a rigorous and transparent scrutiny of its internal processes. I, and most of the non-profit world (not to mention the law ;) respectfully disagree and would argue that the main function of any board of trustees is more governance related. For a good summary of what our Board of Trustees' function is I would refer you to: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_board_manual#Roles_and_responsibilities Jan-Bart Le 18/02/2013 14:14, Jan-Bart de Vreede a écrit : yes: this bit: I don't think it's about childish beliefs about evil. Money has a real influence, conflicts of interests are a real thing, and opacity at any stage allow abuses. It has been shown countless times in countless situations, empirically and scientifically, that people in power WILL use it to keep it, as much as they can. When an entity is using its influence to determine who will supervise it, it's a matter of keeping the power of self-determination. You may agree or not with this strategy, but there is no way to lift doubts about the fairness of such appointment and obtain a clean cut legitimacy from such premises. I don't understand what you are trying to say or imply? Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 3:30 PM, cyrano cyrano.faw...@gmail.com wrote: Jan-Bart, can you be more specific? Cheers Le 18/02/2013 10:55, Jan-Bart de Vreede a écrit : Hey I seriously can't follow this, could you explain? Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 2:11 PM, cyrano cyrano.faw...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think it's about childish beliefs about evil. Money has a real influence, conflicts of interests are a real thing, and opacity at any stage allow abuses. It has been shown countless times in countless situations, empirically and scientifically, that people in power WILL use it to keep it, as much as they can. When an entity is using its influence to determine who will supervise it, it's a matter of keeping the power of self-determination. You may agree or not with this strategy, but there is no way to lift doubts about the fairness of such appointment and obtain a clean cut legitimacy from such premises. Cheers. Le 18/02/2013 09:52, Jan-Bart de Vreede a écrit : Hi Sounded like good intervention, thanks for reminding me :) Truth is of course that board Governance Committee is driving this process together with Gayle. That means that multiple community (s)elected board members are involved in the initial screening and that the whole board will be included in the final selection. This would also be a good opportunity to make a small point: not all external consultancy is evil :) As a community we tend to be
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
cyrano, 18/02/2013 20:52: To ensure a representation of the interests of the community, the determination of a new Board Trustee cannot be influenced by the people within the Board Trustee (and even less by the WMF itself). Otherwise, it would boil down to a disguised form of cooptation. The board *is* self-appointed, the WMF has no members. Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Jan-Bart de Vreede, 18/02/2013 21:09: I, and most of the non-profit world (not to mention the law ;) respectfully disagree and would argue that the main function of any board of trustees is more governance related. For a good summary of what our Board of Trustees' function is I would refer you to: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_board_manual#Roles_and_responsibilities I'm getting sick of this linking [[Wikipedia board manual]], can you please fix your highly misleading links? I'm considering restoring the original page under that title and adding a disambiguation note, please express disagreement on talk page if you don't want me to. Thanks, Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
If I were making the decision, I would want to know how well someone would be able to research and articulate a response on these issues even without a substantial amount of background knowledge. So I'm not suggesting the questions are appropriate for anything other than written answers, but they're entirely sincere and in my opinion are the most important issues facing the Board. Take the question about endowment, for example. Being able to answer how many years it would take to establish a self-sustaining endowment is a fairly sophisticated finance question involving interest and present value calculations. But I sincerely believe that Board members should be skilled enough to research and to formulate a reasonable answer. I had them handy because they are the same questions I intend to ask the election candidates. On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 5:11 AM, Jan-Bart de Vreede jdevre...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hey Thanks! I am sure that Alice is grateful for the input. I must confess though that I think that most of these questions require a deep knowledge of the movement and the community and as such disqualify a lot of potential candidates… (I would hazard a guess that none of the past appointed candidates (including myself) were not able to answer 80% of these questions until about 6 months on the job. So are you proposing these questions to select new candidates or are you simply trying to get attention for these issues (as you have been doing over the past months… which is fair enough to some degree?) (and to be fair: at this point, with all the experience I have within the movement I would want to see most of these decisions researched before committing to a point of view) Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 9:19 AM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote: ... if you have questions that you think we should ask: feel free to suggest them here :) I have these ten questions: 1. What do you think a reasonable goal for the growth of the Wikimedia Education Program over the next five years is? 2. Do you believe that the Foundation should establish an endowment? If so, how large do you think such an endowment should be; in particular, should the Foundation establish an endowment large enough to subsist at present staffing levels and growth rates from current investment grade bond interest rates without accepting additional donations? If so, over how many years do you think it would be most appropriate to establish such an endowment? 3. How often do you think the Foundation should propose advocacy actions to the community? Do you believe the Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? 4. Should the Foundation meet or exceed Silicon Valley competitive pay to attract and retain the best talent while competing with firms able to offer equity participation? Do you believe the Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? Why or why not? 5. Should the Foundation establish a system of awarding employee bonuses in amounts determined by anonymous peer evaluations? Why or why not? 6. Some proportion of long term project editors are impoverished, probably within a few percentage points of the impoverished proportion of the population as a whole. How do you think the Foundation could best assist impoverished long term volunteers? Do you think it should? Why or why not? 7. To what extent do you believe the Foundation should reimburse travel and content development expenses for Wikinews contributors? In particular, if you were to propose a pilot grant program to grant travel and expense funds directly to individual Wikinews reporters, how many such awards would you begin with and how would you measure their effectiveness? 8. PeerWise is a popular closed-source assessment question and answer database (http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/) used in hundreds of higher education institutions. Unlike textbooks, traditional courses, MOOCs, and Moodle-style courses, PeerWise question databases can and often are populated entirely by learners, with answers reviewed in a style very similar to wiki content. Do you believe it would be appropriate for the Foundation to develop an open source version of PeerWise? Why or why not? 9. Do you believe the Foundation should employ professional fact checkers who would not edit reader-facing content on the projects, but who would be available to research questions pertaining to content disputes at the request of projects' dispute resolution volunteers (e.g. Wikipedia mediators) to prepare reports to help volunteers resolve content disputes? Why or why not? Do you believe the Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? 10. What is your experience with editing or otherwise supporting Foundation projects? Sincerely, James Salsman
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Le 18/02/2013 17:09, Jan-Bart de Vreede a écrit : Hi On Feb 18, 2013, at 8:52 PM, cyrano cyrano.faw...@gmail.com wrote: To ensure a representation of the interests of the community, the determination of a new Board Trustee cannot be influenced by the people within the Board Trustee (and even less by the WMF itself). Otherwise, it would boil down to a disguised form of cooptation. Cooptation is a way to absorb new elements into a structure without threatening it, which is good for stability, but bad if changes or trust are needed. In particular, if the community differs from what the WMF or the Board of Trustees are doing, cooptation cannot repair the divergence. In fact, it tends to aggravate it. But it wasn't intended to repair any possible divergence, this is what the five community (s)elected seats are for… Do you mean three seats? Two seats are for Chapters. Chapters are not the community. Their interests may diverge from the community, in particular in the cases of power struggles or funds allocation. Three seats out of ten cannot guaranty that the governance of the WMF will respect the values and intention of the community. if there is a divergence you can (s)elect different people for those five seats. The appointed seats are intended to help add specific skills/expertise to the board to make sure that it can perform its governance tasks effectively…. Now, if the Board of Trustees sets requirements, or pays the people who will recommend the candidates, it immediately breaks the guaranty that there is something else than people in power keeping their power structure intact. It doesn't mean it is happening, but it can't guaranty it's not, which defeats the point of having Trustees. Simply don't agree with that reasoning. The point of trustees it to provide governance and direction to the WMF. Of course they must provide governance and direction, but with the greater priority of representing the values of the community, in order to deserve the alleged trust. If you cannot trust them to select the right people, how can you trust them to do anything? Exactly my point. That's why, even if you agree with the strategy behind the current proposal and its advantages, you should be aware that it decreases the legitimacy of the governance structure to the eyes of the community. I don't think it does, or should. If it does then I think its worth explaining (like I have hopefully done above) Yes, it's worth explaining. Personally, I think the main function of the Board of Trustees should be to increase the trust of the community, thanks to a rigorous and transparent scrutiny of its internal processes. I, and most of the non-profit world (not to mention the law ;) respectfully disagree and would argue that the main function of any board of trustees is more governance related. You should not leave the community out the equation. I agree that the internal function of the Board of Trustees is governance related. But from the community's perspective, WMF should not exist by itself and for itself, and that's why there are trustees: to *guaranty *that the main reason of its existence is something else that getting money, prestige or any other personal leverage. That's where the trust comes from. WMF exists to empower the community and its cause, and all the governance's decisions are subsumed by this principle. For a good summary of what our Board of Trustees' function is I would refer you to: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_board_manual#Roles_and_responsibilities Thank you for the link. I understand now why you think that five seats belong to the community, the article is twice misleading: by saying that Chapters ARE the community, and by saying that five out of ten is a majority. Cheers ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Hey Nemo, I seriously have no idea what you are talking about. I looked at the talk page and could not find a hint. In what way is the board manual a highly misleading link? Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 9:41 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: Jan-Bart de Vreede, 18/02/2013 21:09: I, and most of the non-profit world (not to mention the law ;) respectfully disagree and would argue that the main function of any board of trustees is more governance related. For a good summary of what our Board of Trustees' function is I would refer you to: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_board_manual#Roles_and_responsibilities I'm getting sick of this linking [[Wikipedia board manual]], can you please fix your highly misleading links? I'm considering restoring the original page under that title and adding a disambiguation note, please express disagreement on talk page if you don't want me to. Thanks, Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
The link you provided said Wikipedia board manual, Jan-Bart. The correct link is: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_board_manual#Roles_and_responsibilities Risker/Anne On 19 February 2013 01:52, Jan-Bart de Vreede jdevre...@wikimedia.orgwrote: Hey Nemo, I seriously have no idea what you are talking about. I looked at the talk page and could not find a hint. In what way is the board manual a highly misleading link? Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 9:41 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: Jan-Bart de Vreede, 18/02/2013 21:09: I, and most of the non-profit world (not to mention the law ;) respectfully disagree and would argue that the main function of any board of trustees is more governance related. For a good summary of what our Board of Trustees' function is I would refer you to: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_board_manual#Roles_and_responsibilities I'm getting sick of this linking [[Wikipedia board manual]], can you please fix your highly misleading links? I'm considering restoring the original page under that title and adding a disambiguation note, please express disagreement on talk page if you don't want me to. Thanks, Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Hey (have cut some items to focus on main points) On Feb 18, 2013, at 11:22 PM, cyrano cyrano.faw...@gmail.com wrote: if there is a divergence you can (s)elect different people for those five seats. The appointed seats are intended to help add specific skills/expertise to the board to make sure that it can perform its governance tasks effectively…. Now, if the Board of Trustees sets requirements, or pays the people who will recommend the candidates, it immediately breaks the guaranty that there is something else than people in power keeping their power structure intact. It doesn't mean it is happening, but it can't guaranty it's not, which defeats the point of having Trustees. Simply don't agree with that reasoning. The point of trustees it to provide governance and direction to the WMF. Of course they must provide governance and direction, but with the greater priority of representing the values of the community, in order to deserve the alleged trust. I think that governance is the greatest priority, and community comes into it as an integral part. If you cannot trust them to select the right people, how can you trust them to do anything? Exactly my point. But if no one is likely to trust the (s)elected board members, why not simply have a completely appointed board? You don't trust them anyway? In my view the (s)elected seats are the core of the board (see below) and they are the link to the community. Personally, I think the main function of the Board of Trustees should be to increase the trust of the community, thanks to a rigorous and transparent scrutiny of its internal processes. I, and most of the non-profit world (not to mention the law ;) respectfully disagree and would argue that the main function of any board of trustees is more governance related. You should not leave the community out the equation. I agree that the internal function of the Board of Trustees is governance related. But from the community's perspective, WMF should not exist by itself and for itself, and that's why there are trustees: to *guaranty *that the main reason of its existence is something else that getting money, prestige or any other personal leverage. That's where the trust comes from. WMF exists to empower the community and its cause, and all the governance's decisions are subsumed by this principle. I am not leaving them out, I simply view governance as the main priority of the board. For a good summary of what our Board of Trustees' function is I would refer you to: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_board_manual#Roles_and_responsibilities Thank you for the link. I understand now why you think that five seats belong to the community, the article is twice misleading: by saying that Chapters ARE the community, and by saying that five out of ten is a majority. I simply don't agree. a) Chapters are part of the community b) Whenever a vote comes up for an appointed seat that seat obviously does not vote, therefore the (s)elected seats have a majority vote on any appointed seat (5 our of 9 votes) Apart from that I would say that Jimmy's seat is a community seat, but recognise that not all share that viewpoint. Jan-Bart ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
AHHH! Oh wow, thats pretty bad. Funny thing is: I really don't have the board manual url bookmarked (terrible of me) and i googled BOARD MANUAL WIKIMEDIA… and you will never guess what the first result was…. the Wikimedia one doesnt really show up until the 6th result :( sorry about that.. my intentions were good… (so yes, please feel free to make sure we no longer have a Wikipedia Board Manual, as we don't have a wikipedia board :) Jan-Bart On Feb 19, 2013, at 7:55 AM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: The link you provided said Wikipedia board manual, Jan-Bart. The correct link is: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_board_manual#Roles_and_responsibilities Risker/Anne On 19 February 2013 01:52, Jan-Bart de Vreede jdevre...@wikimedia.orgwrote: Hey Nemo, I seriously have no idea what you are talking about. I looked at the talk page and could not find a hint. In what way is the board manual a highly misleading link? Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 9:41 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: Jan-Bart de Vreede, 18/02/2013 21:09: I, and most of the non-profit world (not to mention the law ;) respectfully disagree and would argue that the main function of any board of trustees is more governance related. For a good summary of what our Board of Trustees' function is I would refer you to: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_board_manual#Roles_and_responsibilities I'm getting sick of this linking [[Wikipedia board manual]], can you please fix your highly misleading links? I'm considering restoring the original page under that title and adding a disambiguation note, please express disagreement on talk page if you don't want me to. Thanks, Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Snipping a bunch for simplicities sake On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:14 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede jdevre...@wikimedia.org wrote: I simply don't agree. a) Chapters are part of the community b) Whenever a vote comes up for an appointed seat that seat obviously does not vote, therefore the (s)elected seats have a majority vote on any appointed seat (5 our of 9 votes) Apart from that I would say that Jimmy's seat is a community seat, but recognise that not all share that viewpoint. Jan-Bart :-/ To be honest I don't particularly like this meme that the chapter are part of the community either. The chapters may be part of the community (and so the statement not false) but we use the phrasing in such a way as to say that they are more then they are. There may be a part of the community but they are really a very small part of it overall. Their power in board selection and movement voice (both formally and informally) is disproportionately huge and we set them up to represent the community when that is a serious misstatement. They represent their members who are a very small subset of the community and often have a very different goal and interest set then the, much larger, remainder of the community and depending on the chapter may include more donors or readers then editors. That is not to say they don't do good things at times (or that it is a problem to include donors or readers, personally I think they are part of our larger community) but we should not confuse what they actually are. Jimmy is a whole different question ;) I would certainly say he deserves a seat at the table, I prefer to just categorize him as Jimmy because he's just a class of his own in all ways :). James ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the WMF has used Oppenheim before for senior level hiring (appointed board members and maybe C-suite level staff? I'm not sure about that last one, but I'm almost certain I recall the WMF has used Oppenheim for executive searches before.) My understanding is that the value in the prospect is simply because Oppenheim simply has a wider reach and base of contacts than the WMF does. If memory serves, they were the ones who found Geoff Brigham, and I believe they also found the replacement for Veronique as CFOO. I'm not really sure why this is suddenly a concern now, and not before, especially given the quality of success they've had in the past. -Dan Dan Rosenthal On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 4:21 PM, rupert THURNER rupert.thur...@gmail.comwrote: my first thought when i read this was should i use my free time to edit wikipedia so that somebody donates money to wmf, and they use it to pay oppenheim? On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 9:28 PM, Itzik Edri it...@infra.co.il wrote: I don't understand. The board hired and pays to a company to find a board member? Have we tried before via our networks, chapters, and via our advisory board to find such a person (as been done until now?). On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 1:55 AM, Alice Wiegand awieg...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi everyone, as you know, we have one vacant appointed seat on the Board of Trustees. We have asked m/Oppenheim Associates to assist us in finding a new board member and and we are reaching out to the community for suggestions and nominations. The Board functions as a governance body that is ultimately responsible for the Wikimedia Foundation and its activities, supervises the disposition and solicitation of donations, and evaluates the organization’s Executive Director who leads all Foundation staff. As arguably the most influential and respected organization in the free knowledge movement, the Wikimedia Foundation and its Board have a great responsibility for setting policy deliberately and with due consideration for the diverse interests of a truly global community. To find out more about the responsibilities and workings of the board you can have a look at the Board manualhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_board_manual . As with any search process we will be communicating with a lot of potential candidates to see if we are a good match. The Board’s objective is to use this search to strengthen its competence with regards to board governance, grantmaking, strategy, and expertise with regions where Wikimedia is trying to make rapid strides in the growth of our projects. Board terms are for a two year period. Compared to other boards the time commitment is very significant. The Board of Trustees meets four times a year, twice in San Francisco and twice in changing locations around the globe. Meetings take two days and travel can add another two days to each meeting. In addition, the Board communicates frequently by email and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) as it navigates policy issues. This can absorb 4-10 hours weekly. Board members also regularly engage with the Community through wiki pages. We think that the WMF would benefit from a Board member who has experience with organizations that have grown and evolved rapidly, and who understands how boards can evolve to provide appropriate governance support in these changing circumstances. Experience with international, community-driven, consensus organizations is also important as the Foundation would not exist without the community. We would like to call upon you to help us out with finding the right individual. A complete position description can be found here http://moppenheim.com/searches/links/Wikimedia%20Foundation%20-%20Board%20Member%20position%20description%20-%20final.pdf and additional information can be found at www.moppenheim.com and www.wikimediafoundation.org. Your suggestions and nominations are very welcome. Please feel free to reach out to your networks and distribute this note as you deem appropriate. Interested individuals should contact Lisa Grossman li...@moppenheim.com -- Alice Wiegand Board of Trustees Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
On 17 February 2013 21:37, Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com wrote: Correct me if I'm wrong, but the WMF has used Oppenheim before for senior level hiring (appointed board members and maybe C-suite level staff? I'm not sure about that last one, but I'm almost certain I recall the WMF has used Oppenheim for executive searches before.) My understanding is that the value in the prospect is simply because Oppenheim simply has a wider reach and base of contacts than the WMF does. If memory serves, they were the ones who found Geoff Brigham, and I believe they also found the replacement for Veronique as CFOO. I'm not really sure why this is suddenly a concern now, and not before, especially given the quality of success they've had in the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law_of_triviality - any expense you think you understand is worth objecting to. http://bikeshed.org - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 6:37 PM, Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com wrote: Correct me if I'm wrong, but the WMF has used Oppenheim before for senior level hiring (appointed board members and maybe C-suite level staff? I'm not sure about that last one, but I'm almost certain I recall the WMF has used Oppenheim for executive searches before.) My understanding is that the value in the prospect is simply because Oppenheim simply has a wider reach and base of contacts than the WMF does. If memory serves, they were the ones who found Geoff Brigham, and I believe they also found the replacement for Veronique as CFOO. I'm not really sure why this is suddenly a concern now, and not before, especially given the quality of success they've had in the past. I'd have to agree with Dan here. This is a very visible and important position, this should require professional consulting and proper vetting before someone is appointed. A recruiting service will have a wider reach and better experience with suggesting suitable candidates. I also don't see how simply appointing a chapter or community person would make this any more balanced, since they both have separate elections every year. Since both of you are involved with Chapters and the WCA effort, you shouldn't be strangers to outside consultation. I think a few of the larger chapters have approached recruiting agencies for filling vacancies, then there was the SG position that was also going to be filled through a recruiting agency. I hope also don't need to point out that you have already consulted outside agencies for an organization that doesn't exist yet. BTW Itzik, you answer some of your own concerns pretty well here[1]. Regards Theo [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Resolutions/2012_SG_recruitment#Person_before_location.3F ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
To respond in brief on the m|Oppenheim hire to support us administratively on this search, board searches are incredibly time and resource intensive, and need to be handled with a great deal of sensitivity. We already have a great many interested parties, so the task needs to include screening hundreds of people in a very short amount of time - within the next month - (screening first bios and then phone screens to gauge initial fit and interest), writing summaries of each candidate for the board for their consideration, setting up the board interviews which requires international coordination at multiple stages, and a host of other things. m|Oppenheim ran the searches for the senior leadership team at WMF except for Erik and Frank, so they have the advantage of knowing us pretty well and how quirky we are, and they are scouring their international network to find the right talent to augment the existing board skill set and competencies. Please do feel free to reach out to me if you have additional questions! Sent from my mobile device ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Indeed there's nothing to be surprised of, m/Oppenheim has always been used. Alice Wiegand, 17/02/2013 00:55: Interested individuals should contact Lisa Grossman li...@moppenheim.com I didn't understand this line: did you mean individuals interested in applying for the position or in commenting the process? Using a firm like m/Oppenheim is good, but not particularly useful given that we (as Wikimedia movement) obviously (probably?) have no idea of what we really need from a WMF trustee, which is way harder to define than the desiderata for a manager with rather specific tasks. Alice created this useful page to which more people should add their feedback, IMHO: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Board_Governance_Committee/Agenda_2012-2013/Appointed_seats/What_makes_a_good_Trustee%3F Is it superseded? I think it shouldn't. For instance, let me say that I don't like the position description at all. :) It describes the board as a highly defensive body, in need of trench warfare experts: * «has the ability to make unpopular decisions when necessary and explain them transparently in the face of criticism»; * «comfortable *receiving* input and criticism from many sources»; * «ability to tolerate a high degree of ambiguity, and to *negotiate* with people having sharply defined opinions»; * « *Patience* with consensus processes» (emphasis mine). There's only a passage about «willingness to learn from and engage with the community» which despite the word engage is made into a passive light by «deeply understand their interests and concerns». This is not what we need from a trustee, in my opinion. What we need is trustees able to: 1) *solicit* an ealthy discussion, 2) *involve* more people in the WMF work and priorities and in the discussions about them, 3) make the board stronger and more credible so that its not just a vox clamantis in deserto whose resolutions have no effect on reality (see Openness, probably also BLP... with all due respect and without repeating discussions we've had also in person) or are only monstruous wastes of time/resources for Wikimedia (see image filter [1]); 4) to *revolutionize* (if needed) a body so *sclerotic* that even when we have elections discussions are deadly empty and boring,[2] we have 99.5 % abstention,[3] nobody asks or reads questions.[4] HTH, Nemo [1] Referendum also had 96 % abstention, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_filter_referendum/Results/en https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_filter_referendum/Email/False_positives [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2011#Candidates_look_like_Bre.C5.BEnev [3] 80+ % abstention according to some estimates, no data available (also telling about transparency); eligible voters multiplied by 2-3 times, voters stayed the same. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2011/Results/en#footer https://meta.wikimedia.org/?diff=2643859 https://meta.wikimedia.org/?diff=2672174 [4] 55 people involved counting also vandals. http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl?lang=meta.wikimediapage=Board+elections%2F2011%2FCandidates%2FQuestions%2F1 http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl?lang=meta.wikimediapage=Board+elections%2F2011%2FCandidates%2FQuestions%2F2 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
On Feb 17, 2013 8:29 PM, Itzik Edri it...@infra.co.il wrote: I don't understand. The board hired and pays to a company to find a board member? Have we tried before via our networks, chapters, and via our advisory board to find such a person (as been done until now?). The chapters are used to find new foundation board members. That's what the chapter selected board seats are for. The expert board seats are for providing expertise that we are missing after the community and chapters have selected people. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 6:09 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: Indeed there's nothing to be surprised of, m/Oppenheim has always been used. Actually, the last time we were looking for a new appointed Trustee we had a NomCom in place and worked with the recruiter Eunice Azzani - though at the time we were already working with m|Oppenheim for staff searches. [ http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/August_24-25,_2009 ] The trustee we selected in the end, Bishakha, was found through our (advisory board) network; the recruiters primarily help to handle initial contact, interviews, and scheduling, and narrowing down the field of candidates to those who are likely to be good fits. The person we find this time will also be through our community and advisor networks. Please spread the word to those you would like to see on the Board. Sam. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
For context (because I needed to look it up).. I believe this vacancy is to replace the seat held by Matt Halprin, which was not renewed at the end of December 2012. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:CurrentBoardChart https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_of_trustees needs an update too if Matt has left the board. The WMF board portal and noticeboard havent been updated https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Board_portal On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 10:33 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On Feb 17, 2013 8:29 PM, Itzik Edri it...@infra.co.il wrote: I don't understand. The board hired and pays to a company to find a board member? Have we tried before via our networks, chapters, and via our advisory board to find such a person (as been done until now?). The chapters are used to find new foundation board members. That's what the chapter selected board seats are for. The expert board seats are for providing expertise that we are missing after the community and chapters have selected people. Forgive me if the current board has already communicated their plan, and I have missed it. Please advise me if there is a published strategy/plan for filling this seat. I can only find this note saying Kat is leading this initiative, and they hope to interview candidates in person at the chapters conference in the Milan between 18-21 April: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Board_Governance_Committee/Agenda_2012-2013#Successor_for_Matt Following on from Thomas Dalton's explanation, which I believe is both accurate and appropriate... As we are approaching the board election to refill the three community elected seats, I think it may make sense to avoid appointing someone to the vacant expert seat until after the community elected seats are appointed. Shortening the list of candidates is a good idea for 18-21 April, but the expert seat should used to maximise the skills and experiences of the board, filling as many gaps in the board as possible. Those gaps can't be fully identified until the community elected seats are filled. The community elected seats will provide the board with three people that the community believes are important additions. In some cases these seats may be filled by people whose skillsets and experiences were identified by the community as needed on the board, but the nature of the process is that skillset balance is hard to control via these community seats. The process ensures that many potential candidates do not even enter the board election, the wiki user interface hamstrings the candidates who are not well versed in wiki editing and the wiki discussion format, so these seats typically go to people who have 10,000+ edits and are well respected in our community, which limits the field quite a bit. The community may also vote for someone who has very similar skills and experience to someone already on the board, and it would be a very bold board that invalidates the election result on that basis. The expert seat is an opportunity to select a person based on the skillset that is found to be missing on the board, and that should happen _after_ the skills and experience of the three community seats are locked in by their appointment. -- John Vandenberg ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Samuel Klein wrote: ... The person we find this time will also be through our community and advisor networks Will there be an opportunity for the community to pose questions to finalists, the answers to which the Board might be able to evaluate in making a final decision? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Hi I would not think so. In my experience we end up with candidates who appreciate a confidential process (especially if they get turned down). We have different processes for each of the three different board member types, this is probably the most private one. But if you have questions that you think we should ask: feel free to suggest them here :) Regards Jan-Bart de Vreede Board of Trustees Wikimedia Foundation On Feb 18, 2013, at 5:16 AM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Samuel Klein wrote: ... The person we find this time will also be through our community and advisor networks Will there be an opportunity for the community to pose questions to finalists, the answers to which the Board might be able to evaluate in making a final decision? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Samuel Klein, 18/02/2013 01:31: On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 6:09 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote: Indeed there's nothing to be surprised of, m/Oppenheim has always been used. Actually, the last time we were looking for a new appointed Trustee we had a NomCom in place and worked with the recruiter Eunice Azzani - though at the time we were already working with m|Oppenheim for staff searches. [ http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/August_24-25,_2009 ] Yes, sorry, I didn't mean specifically for the board appointment. It's been clear for some time that the board didn't want to rely on a open/committee process like NomCom for the final screening of candidates, so I gave that for granted. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/53592/ The work Gayle described is huge and very important, so someone must do it; but it is supposed not to influence the decision-makers (i.e. the board directly this time), assuming that criteria for initial screening are clear. Nemo The trustee we selected in the end, Bishakha, was found through our (advisory board) network; the recruiters primarily help to handle initial contact, interviews, and scheduling, and narrowing down the field of candidates to those who are likely to be good fits. The person we find this time will also be through our community and advisor networks. Please spread the word to those you would like to see on the Board. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member
Hi everyone, as you know, we have one vacant appointed seat on the Board of Trustees. We have asked m/Oppenheim Associates to assist us in finding a new board member and and we are reaching out to the community for suggestions and nominations. The Board functions as a governance body that is ultimately responsible for the Wikimedia Foundation and its activities, supervises the disposition and solicitation of donations, and evaluates the organization’s Executive Director who leads all Foundation staff. As arguably the most influential and respected organization in the free knowledge movement, the Wikimedia Foundation and its Board have a great responsibility for setting policy deliberately and with due consideration for the diverse interests of a truly global community. To find out more about the responsibilities and workings of the board you can have a look at the Board manualhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_board_manual . As with any search process we will be communicating with a lot of potential candidates to see if we are a good match. The Board’s objective is to use this search to strengthen its competence with regards to board governance, grantmaking, strategy, and expertise with regions where Wikimedia is trying to make rapid strides in the growth of our projects. Board terms are for a two year period. Compared to other boards the time commitment is very significant. The Board of Trustees meets four times a year, twice in San Francisco and twice in changing locations around the globe. Meetings take two days and travel can add another two days to each meeting. In addition, the Board communicates frequently by email and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) as it navigates policy issues. This can absorb 4-10 hours weekly. Board members also regularly engage with the Community through wiki pages. We think that the WMF would benefit from a Board member who has experience with organizations that have grown and evolved rapidly, and who understands how boards can evolve to provide appropriate governance support in these changing circumstances. Experience with international, community-driven, consensus organizations is also important as the Foundation would not exist without the community. We would like to call upon you to help us out with finding the right individual. A complete position description can be found herehttp://moppenheim.com/searches/links/Wikimedia%20Foundation%20-%20Board%20Member%20position%20description%20-%20final.pdfand additional information can be found at www.moppenheim.com and www.wikimediafoundation.org. Your suggestions and nominations are very welcome. Please feel free to reach out to your networks and distribute this note as you deem appropriate. Interested individuals should contact Lisa Grossman li...@moppenheim.com -- Alice Wiegand Board of Trustees Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
