Dear Dariusz,

I am surprised your post has not attracted more attention. It's probably
because you did not spell out what the adopted recommendation involves. It
says (my emphases):[1]


*The Board of Trustees wants to improve the set of skills and the diversity
contributed by newly selected trustees. For this reason, the Board has
approved a new process to select two community-and-affiliate trustees this
year. The objective is to have two trustees confirmed by October 1st.
Affiliates will vote to pre-select 6 candidates. A community vote will
decide who from these 6 candidates will be recommended for the two seats.*

This is a fundamental change to the WMF board election process. Many people
will feel that this further disenfranchises the volunteer community.

Moreover, this pre-selection of electable candidates is performed by
functionaries who are financially dependent on the Wikimedia Foundation.
Arguably, this builds further conflicts of interest into the process – at a
time when the Wikimedia Foundation already asks the public for more and
more money each year.[2]

The WMF simply no longer represents the volunteer community, and no longer
even considers that to be its role – if it did, it would hold free
elections.

Personally, I think that is a shame. I guess if volunteers would like to
have an organisation representing their interests, they will have to form
one themselves.

Best,
Andreas

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/April_2022_Board_Election_process_in_2022
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics





On Wed, Apr 13, 2022 at 6:59 PM Dariusz Jemielniak <dar...@kozminski.edu.pl>
wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees met between March 23-24 for our
> first in-person meeting in over two years. It was an opportunity to welcome
> our new CEO and several new trustees who have recently joined the Board.
> Further updates from the meeting will be shared soon, I am writing now to
> report on resolutions that the Board made regarding the upcoming 2022
> elections:
>
>
>    1.
>
>    We resolved to adopt recommendations related to the elections process
>    
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/April_2022_Board_Election_process_in_2022>.
>    These recommendations have been developed as a result of feedback from the 
> community
>    Call for Feedback
>    
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_for_feedback:_Board_of_Trustees_elections/Reports#Call_for_feedback:_Board_of_Trustees_elections_final_report>
>    that happened in January and further discussions by a Board Selection Task
>    Force. They will be implemented on a trial basis for the 2022 election.
>    2.
>
>    In service of maintaining continuity and stability in our leadership,
>    we resolved to make some modifications to our plans to expand the Board
>    
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/April_2022_-_Board_seats_in_2022_and_2023>
>    .
>
>
> You can read about the details of these resolutions on Meta. We are happy
> to discuss and answer any questions on the corresponding talk pages.
>
> Best,
>
> Dariusz on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
>
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