Since there is more board news today, sending a long-drafted followup: On Fri, Jul 24, 2026 at 7:45 PM Erik Moeller via Wikimedia-l < [email protected]> wrote:
> Wikimedia Foundation needs folks with relevant governance experience > for an organization of this scale, but it also needs voices that > challenge it and push it in new directions on the Board. The trick is > to find the right balance between those goals. Requiring that people > advance along an internal functionary ladder towards the possibility > of standing for trusteeship is not that balance; it is the kind of > requirement structure you find in institutions that drift towards > stagnancy and self-reinforcement, often out of institutionalized fear. > > A compromise proposal: > * Change the word "must" to "should" when it comes to the governance > experience criteria > * Require that candidates indicate comparable or equivalent experience > in their candidate profile if they do not meet these criteria. > To echo and add to what Erik said: Governance of an organization like WMF is a wickedly complex problem, requiring many different skillsets. It's not enough to have good *ideas* - you have to have the *skills* to make those ideas happen: how to understand an auditor's report; how to think through the human politics of governance; employee management skills; etc. etc. So I think tightening skills and experience requirements is pretty reasonable. I like Erik's suggestions, and would add: WMF should invest in board skills development, not just restrict those who don't yet have the skills. Among other things, this could be formal training through services like https://boardsource.org/; or experiential learning through board observer seats/fellowships like Haas does for their b-school students: https://haas.berkeley.edu/cssl/programs-events/board-fellows/ The former would be good skills development for the movement, and the latter would double as a transparency move. I mean *invest*, not "commit to invest"; the Foundation should do a few years of this investment and *then* put in stricter rules, since otherwise the temptation for new board members to say "this is not necessary" and pull the drawbridge up after them would be very strong. I would also add, beating my recent drum: much of the energy that goes into Foundation board questions should instead be going into making the Foundation less central to the movement. That goes for the board -- who should be following through on the "infrastructure for open" commitments of 2030, not re-centralizing, so that the exact composition of the board is less important -- and for many movement leaders: *you can be a movement leader without being on the WMF board*. There are so many ways to lead.
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