Picking up on Christophe's idea of improving "organically". It is a good thing to be open to gradual organic improvement, this means that the Wikimedia ecology of organizations adopt proven improvements based on the results of varied and experimental changes.
This is one big drawback, referred to earlier in the email thread. Organic growth may result in major changes but it eliminates the possibility of major step changes, unless these happen in a single disruptive upheaval where old rules and processes are broken. The community RFC which resulted in an appointed WMF trustee resigning was an example of how revolutionary changes can be forced on the system,[1] but how much better it would be if unplanned changes like this were avoided more often, by the deeper issues being surfaced early, possibly through a more pro-active WMF strategy planning process. I'm delighted that Christophe is an internal advocate for change, and has the existing WMF strategy process in mind, so I hope there is scope for investing in improving the strategy process itself. Agreeing with Domedonfors' original point, for governance related committees, a proportion of fresh viewpoints outside of the core vocal community can be added by appointed professional seats, plus committee roles can be deliberately spread between "long established Wikimedians" and newbies that have other useful skills and experience to bring. So, Domedonfors is correct that the recent appointments do introduce a risk that entrenched viewpoints may be reinforced, rather than evolving these committees to embrace potentially better approaches to test out and foster improvements. Note that by "reinforced", I'm not saying any committee has a single viewpoint, but that the nature of the dialogue within committees, including hashing out old disagreements, looks like it will follow the same path with these appointments of long established Wikimedians and ex-WMF managers, rather than carving a new agenda that may be able to challenge both the WMF and Associates to step up their game and become something different and better suited to the global open knowledge internet-focused world of 2016, rather than be constrained and even weighed down, by projects and strategies we established together over a decade and a half ago. Links 1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Vote_of_no_confidence_on_Arnnon_Geshuri Fae On 6 September 2016 at 09:00, Christophe Henner <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Rogol, > > The weird thing in this discussion is I kind of agree with everyone. > > Yes more diversity would be awesome. But in my opinion diversity should be > something we achieve organicaly. > > So, from my biased perspective, the key issue is for us to build room for > people to emerge but also to feel entitled to run for those position. > > To also build ways to train people, to "groom" them and their potential. > And we know that in our movement we have the smart people we will need in > the coming years. It's up to us to help them emerge and take our seats. > > I gebuinely haven't a solution ready to work out of the box and there are > people in our movement way more expert in those topics than me. > > And that might be something that could be adress during the strategy > process. And the only way we will be able to tackle it properly is if first > we can include everyone in our movement in the process, not just the "usual > suspects". > > Le 6 sept. 2016 8:46 AM, "Anders Wennersten" <[email protected]> a > écrit : > >> I am very happy how this nowadays works out. >> >> We have now a lot of chapters, each with a Board. And here the members are >> not oldtimers and here is the appropriate first place to get into the >> Wikmedia world. >> >> And there are many bodies who you can then turn to to get further into the >> Wikimedia world, like Affcom or being a member of Simple Annual Plan >> Grants Committee or other grant committees. Also here more or less >> newcomers are welcome. >> >> But for the core bodies like the Board, FDC or the BGC supporting >> committee, I am very pleased to see that we get a lot of people with long >> Wikimedia experience. And as they are frequently replaced, I see no problem >> and only advantages >> >> Anders -- [email protected] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
