[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification voting results

[Chris Keating]

l governance shows that in the proposed form, GC would
>>>>> not work effectively and would be only a waste of resources.
>>>>>
>>>>> Coincidentally, it also tallies with my fiduciary duty as a member of
>>>>> the BoT of the Wikimedia Foundation - I believe that the monies will be
>>>>> better spent on the infrastructure, overhaul of MediaWiki, grants to the
>>>>> affiliates - almost anything else than a 100 people talking.
>>>>>
>>>>> You would say that the “online community voted in support”, but this
>>>>> is an overstatement. “The quorum” is only 2%  (!) of the eligible voters,
>>>>> and who know how many of them are the affiliates members and the people 
>>>>> who
>>>>> were lobbied by the affiliates.
>>>>>
>>>>> As for the rest, I took part in a WMF staff and wikimedins meeting in
>>>>> London only the last week. I talked to a wikimedian who was going to vote
>>>>> yes, but when I asked them if they know about the proposed numbers of the
>>>>> GC they said no.
>>>>>
>>>>> Of course, I see a discrepancy in the WMF board's actions: on one
>>>>> hand, the candidates and newly selected trustees are told that they should
>>>>> act only in the interest of the WMF, while on the other hand, the Board
>>>>> just voted against the creation of a body that would have had the same 
>>>>> duty
>>>>> of care for the movement as the WMF Board has for WMF.
>>>>>
>>>>> I did my best to commit the Board to the continuation of the Global
>>>>> Council creation process and salvaging parts of the Charter proposal. The
>>>>> result is buried deep in the legalise but there’s a potential to continue
>>>>> the conversation after the current pilots of the Tech Council and Grants
>>>>> Committee run their course.
>>>>>
>>>>> But of course, I can only influence the Board actions if I’m
>>>>> reelected. Right now, I feel that by voting against the charter in its
>>>>> current form—both as a trustee and a volunteer—I fulfilled the promise 
>>>>> that
>>>>> I gave to about 6,000 wikimedians who voted for me in 2021. Preventing 
>>>>> putting
>>>>> an albatross around
>>>>> <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/albatross_around_one%27s_neck> the
>>>>> Movement neck is the worthy reason for losing my seat on the board.
>>>>>
>>>>> By all means, replace me and the other BoT members running for the
>>>>> reelection by the candidates that supported  the charter - and see if that
>>>>> changes anything.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ultimately, the question of ratifying the Charter for me came down to
>>>>> "Is the Charter good enough”? My sincere personal opinion, considering how
>>>>> hard it is to change an existing structure or document even if it's 
>>>>> clearly
>>>>> not working, is that it is not.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Kind regards,
>>>>>
>>>>> Victoria
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>1.
>>>>>
>>>>>https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Summit_2024/Outputs
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Jul 18, 2024 at 5:45 PM Chris Keating <
>>>>> chriskeatingw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Well, that's pretty categoric.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> While it is worth noting that many of the votes likely came with
>>>>>> caveats, or suggestions for improvement - it is also a massive vote in
>>>>>> favour of the concept of a Charter and Global Council, and against the 
>>>>>> idea
>>>>>> that the WMF should be the sole body in the movement responsible for, 
>>>>>> well,
>>>>>> anything really.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> There is a clear way forward now for the WMF to bring itself in line
>>>>>> with the vast majority of the community that it claims to work with as an
>>>>>> equal partner, and start working with the MCDC, or whoever there is to 
>>>>>> talk
>>>>>> to if the MCDC is now disbanded, to look at the feedback on the presen

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification voting results

[Chris Keating]

Well, that's pretty categoric.

While it is worth noting that many of the votes likely came with caveats,
or suggestions for improvement - it is also a massive vote in favour of the
concept of a Charter and Global Council, and against the idea that the WMF
should be the sole body in the movement responsible for, well, anything
really.

There is a clear way forward now for the WMF to bring itself in line with
the vast majority of the community that it claims to work with as an equal
partner, and start working with the MCDC, or whoever there is to talk to if
the MCDC is now disbanded, to look at the feedback on the present draft and
create a final version. Perhaps we can hear less about how everything has
changed since the start of the strategy process 8 years ago (it hasn't), or
how there isn't money (there is), or how 'form should follow function'
(well, perhaps it should, but also let's not have unrealistic and
single-sided expectations where every proposal for change is made to
provide a clear and eloquent narrative while the status quo continues to
evade scrutiny).

Regards,

Chris
(User: The Land)



On Thu, Jul 18, 2024 at 3:40 PM Charter Electoral Commission <
c...@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> After carefully tallying both individual and affiliate votes, the Charter
> Electoral Commission is pleased to announce the final results of the
> Wikimedia Movement Charter voting.
>
> As communicated by the Charter Electoral Commission
> ,
> we reached the quorum for both Affiliate and individual votes by the time
> the vote closed on July 9, 23:59 UTC. We thank all 2,451 individuals and
> 129 Affiliate representatives who voted in the ratification process. Your
> votes and comments are invaluable for the future steps in Movement
> Strategy.
>
> The final results of the Wikimedia Movement Charter
>  ratification voting
> held between 25 June and 9 July 2024 are as follows:
>
> Individual vote:
>
> Out of 2,451 individuals who voted as of July 9 23:59 (UTC), 2,446 have
> been accepted as valid votes. Among these, 1,710 voted “yes”; 623 voted
> “no”; and 113 selected “–” (neutral). Because the neutral votes don’t
> count towards the total number of votes cast, 73.30% voted to approve the
> Charter (1710/2333), while 26.70% voted to reject the Charter (623/2333).
>
> Affiliates vote:
>
> Out of 129 Affiliates designated voters who voted as of July 9 23:59
> (UTC), 129 votes are confirmed as valid votes. Among these, 93 voted
> “yes”; 18 voted “no”; and 18 selected “–” (neutral). Because the neutral
> votes don’t count towards the total number of votes cast, 83.78% voted to
> approve the Charter (93/111), while 16.22% voted to reject the Charter
> (18/111).
>
> Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation:
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees voted not to ratify the
> proposed Charter during their special Board meeting on July 8, 2024. The
> Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, Natalia Tymkiv, shared
> the result of the vote, the resolution, meeting minutes and proposed next
> steps
> 
> .
>
> With this, the Wikimedia Movement Charter in its current revision is not
> ratified.
>
> We thank you for your participation in this important moment in our
> movement’s governance.
>
> The Charter Electoral Commission,
>
>  Abhinav619, Borschts, Iwuala Lucy, Tochiprecious, Der-Wir-Ing
> ___
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Board requirements

[Chris Keating]

Hi Galder,



>  You claim that "Essentially the Board members have to look at the facts
> and the context and make a decision about what they think is the best". No.
> That's not true. The board members can't make decisions of any kind,
> because there's "the organization's interest" that is above their will. How
> can we justify the Board making deliberations if they can't decide anything
> different from those called "interests"?
>

Just wanted to respond to this, because evidently my explanation was
lacking!

So the Board must act in the best interest of the WMF (which is the same as
the WMF's mission).

However, they are really the only people who define what this means. The
Board can agree even very radical proposals so long as they are sure it's
the best way to further the WMF's mission. There is no-one looking over
their shoulders.

In a sense it is a bit odd. Board members have a duty to do exactly one
thing, which is further the organization's mission. But there are very few
rules for how to interpret that one thing - they have to assess facts and
apply judgement about how to do it. They can agree very radical proposals
if they believe that is the best thing to do.

You are very right, however, that the WMF is not a democracy. When the WMF
was set up, those involved chose not to make it a membership organisation.
"Democracy" is a challenging concept to apply to the Wikimedia movement -
after all we do not want decisions made mainly by the very large number of
people who contribute to the English Wikipedia - but we can do a lot better
than what we presently have...

Chris
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Board requirements

[Chris Keating]

(not a lawyer but I have a decent grasp of how this works in common law
countries)

Board members are required to always vote in the best interests of the
organisation they are on the board of. More specifically, for nonprofits,
they are required to vote in the best interests of the mission of the
organization. This is because a nonprofit has no interests except the
pursuit of the goal that the nonprofit has.

There is no real definition of what 'best interests' represents. Board
members have very wide discretion and judgement about how to interpret
that. The income, assets, staffing etc of the organization all exist
towards the organization's goal - and while there is a presumption that
having money, assets, staff etc is a good thing, boards are perfectly free
to make choices that result in having less money/assets/staff (or indeed to
e.g. merge or wind up the whole organisation) if they see reasons that will
be better for the organization's mission.

It's quite legitimate to have a Board member who views the interests of the
WMF and 'the community' as inseparable. Just so long as the person
concerned has arrived at that conclusion themselves and not due to undue
influence from somewhere, or conflicting financial interests, or similar.
However, if a Board member perceives that 'the community' and the WMFs
mission are in conflict, they must prioritise fulfilling the WMF's mission.

To apply this to the Movement Charter situation, there are 2 ways the Board
could fail to comply with their duties. [Just to be clear, I think they are
complying with their duties fine, even if I disagree with the decision they
end up making, these are just illustrative examples]

1) Board members could look at the MCDC's draft charter and think they are
obliged to say yes because the MCDC drafted it. This would be failing in
the Board's duty to apply independent judgement in the best interests of
the WMF's mission.
2) Board members could look at the draft charter and think that, because it
costs money the WMF could spend elsewhere and potentially restricts the
WMF's own scope, they are barred from saying yes to it. This would be
failing to look at the whole context of the WMF's ability to fulfull its
mission.

Essentially the Board members have to look at the facts and the context and
make a decision about what they think is the best path to achieving the
WMF's mission. So long as they do that, they are behaving correctly and
legally as Board members.

Regards,

Chris






On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 2:33 PM Robert Levenstein 
wrote:

> James Heilman  wrote:
>
> > All boards members of the WMF are required legally to represent the
> > interests of the WMF no matter how they arrived on the board. However,
> when
> > I was on the board I viewed the best interests of the foundation and
> > community as inseparable as neither can succeed without the other.
>
> Could we please have a lawyer explain how that works? If a Board member
> believes that the interests of their community electorate and the Wikimedia
> Foundation as it currently exists are at odds, are they allowed to vote in
> favor of the community? If not, why not?
>
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation Board liaisons reflections on final Movement charter draft

[Chris Keating]

To offer a slightly fuller response:

Let us not forget that the current draft of the Movement Charter is a
response to the WMF Board's resolution of 27 March 2020 (1) which endorsed
the Movement Strategy Recommendations, including the Ensure Equity in
Decision-Making recommendation (2) which envisaged the creation of a Global
Council and Movement Charter.

The text of the Movement Charter as proposed doesn't do anything outside of
the scope of the Movement Strategy recommendations that the Board has
already approved.

It's therefore surprising to hear the Board liaisons say they don't know
what the Movement Charter is for, or agree with what it is doing. To my
mind, the Charter fulfills a commitment made by the WMF when it passed the
resolution endorsing the Movement Strategy recommendations. This
announcement, which effectively states  that the Board will not endorse the
Charter whatever happens, and renders the rest of the ratification process
void, is a breach of this commitment which calls into question, frankly,
why any volunteers should ever bother engaging with the WMF on this kind of
issue again in future.

To reiterate why this whole thing exists, fundamentally there are three
related points that come up time and again:
1) the WMF has poor relationships with the communities it works with
2) the WMF is essentially unable to deliver its own ambitious strategy
about 'knowledge equity' because is has no satisfactory way of responding
to the needs of immensely diverse communities who can help deliver it
3) there is no way for the Wikimedia community (or communities) to come
together to even begin to work out a shared approach to solving any problems

These are *structural* problems. There is no method to solve them by simply
making the WMF bigger, better resourced, or changing its culture.

Hence in the strategy recommendations there are 3 new structures; Hubs, the
Movement Charter, and the Global Council. Creating and empowering Hubs is
an attempt to solve problem 2, the Global Council is an attempt to solve
problem 3, and if those are addressed that will help address problem 1.

No other solution to these problems has been proposed by anyone, not least
by the WMF Board, who have continually outsourced trying to confront these
challenges.

I am bemused by much of the language in the email (no, the situation hasn't
changed much since 2020; no, this standard isn't consistent with the
scrutiny the WMF Board applies to itself). But I am particularly bemused by
the idea that people should use a free-text field in the ratification vote
to give further input into what people would like to see.

First, there is no point at all now having a ratification vote as whatever
happens the WMF Board will not endorse the Charter, as 2 of the 12 votes
are essentially cast, and several trustees probably would not read a
document the length of the movement charter and will just follow a
recommendation from someone else. So there is no point everyone else being
asked to vote; people who might have been motivated to vote will not
bother, and probably then someone from the WMF will claim that the low
turnout in an election that has already been rendered void is a sign of a
lack of enthusaism for the whole thing. Secondly, what do we expect to see
in free-text feedback that hasn't been surfaced in the previous 7 years of
discussion and feedback gathering?

Overall, to my mind there is very little point any volunteer participating
in any of the slightly vague steps proposed. So the WMF is now reinventing
the FDC, great. Probably some rather tired and jaded people from the large
affiliates who have strong incentives to make sure the WMF doesn't do
anything completely random with their budgets will take part. Why would
anyone else?


(1)
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Movement_Strategy_Endorsement
(2)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Recommendations/Ensure_Equity_in_Decision-making

On Fri, Jun 21, 2024 at 2:33 PM Wikipedysta Nadzik <
pl.wikipedia.nad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Good {{timezone appropriate greeting}},
>
> I have worked as a facilitator in a few organisations. In the Wikimedia
> Movement (2021-2022), I engaged people for the BoT elections and the UCoC
> process. Global vote and engagement on this scale take a toll on a
> community, and this should not be overlooked.
>
> In the last few months, we have already had a couple of global activities,
> including overhauls of the Movement Charter. The U4C
> 
> (Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee) elections ended just a
> few weeks ago
> ,
> their charter vote happened not long before that
> .
> This complicated process led to a situation 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation Board liaisons reflections on final Movement charter draft

[Chris Keating]

Well, I have never seen an organisation undermine its own strategy so
spectacularly, or waste so many millions of dollars, or years-worth of
volunteer time.



On Fri, Jun 21, 2024 at 12:18 AM Nataliia Tymkiv 
wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> We are grateful to the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) members,
> who have dedicated their time and energy to putting forward this final
> draft of the Movement Charter. They have demonstrated tremendous resilience
> and perseverance in grappling with ways to increase our collective sense of
> belonging as a movement, and outlining roles and responsibilities intended
> to help us all make better decisions in steering the Wikimedia movement
> into the future.
>
> For some, this final draft Charter represents an extension of the Movement
> Strategy process that began in earnest in 2020. There are many reflections
> on this history, some nostalgic and others less so. The 2030 strategic
> direction has guided and continues to guide the Wikimedia Foundation’s
> strategy. As the Foundation’s annual plan this year
> 
> observed, there is much to celebrate in the collective advancement of the
> original ten movement strategy recommendations
> ,
> including shared progress in creating more equitable and decentralised
> decision-making structures.
>
> At the same time, we should all recognise that the world around us has
> shifted significantly since the movement strategy process began, that our
> limited resources require much more pragmatic trade-offs and choices, and
> that the Board has a duty to consider the risk, value, cost and benefit of
> any significant commitments being made to advance the mission.
>
> As requested by the MCDC, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has,
> over the last few months, shared with the committee its direct feedback on
> the previous Movement Charter drafts, including its perspectives on the
> Global Council
> 
> and its feedback on a previous draft
> 
> that we posted publicly. Liaisons have also engaged in regular and ongoing
> meetings with the MCDC members, including inviting the MCDC members to all
> Board meetings and Strategic retreats since June 2022.
>
> Our general observation, which is elaborated in the body of this letter,
> is that the final draft of the Movement Charter *still does not address
> the significant concerns* previously raised by the Board. Thus, as
> liaisons, *our recommendations* to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
> Trustees are:
>
>- *not to ratify* the final draft of the Movement Charter *as
>proposed; and*
>- *support* the Foundation in developing *concrete, time-bound next
>steps* on a more practical scale, allowing us all to *evaluate
>progress*, and see what to change or build on.
>
> We believe that approving this version of the Charter, despite the
> tremendous amount of work and resources already put into it, would not be
> the right call. Instead, we think it is better to continue pursuing the
> same goals the draft Charter also sought to pursue in a different way, by
> identifying key areas where the final draft Charter provides us with
> guidance on concrete steps that can be taken towards increasing volunteer
> and movement oversight of certain core areas of responsibility. We believe
> this will allow the Foundation, and all of us, to live into the
> recommendation of Movement Strategy to evaluate, iterate, and adapt
> 
> as we go, rather than too quickly to agree to new structures that may not
> yet be fit for purpose.
>
> As liaisons, we first shared this recommendation and our reflections with
> the MCDC on June 18 and then with the rest of the Wikimedia Foundation
> Board on June 20 (including a short draft brief
> ).
> The Board is reviewing the final draft of the Movement Charter now and *plans
> to vote during a special meeting between June 25 and July 9*, during the
> voting period for all affiliates and individuals
> .
>
> == Context for sharing these reflections: why now? ==
>
> As liaisons, we believe that the final draft does not address the concerns
> previously stated by the Board of Trustees in its feedback
> 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: 23 March: Invitation to Open Community Call on ChatGPT, generative AI, and Wikimedia

[Chris Keating]

>
>
>
> Are you infringing Stability AI's copyright by clicking this link? If
> not, are you infringing Stability AI's copyright by then writing a
> Python script that uses this file to generate images, if you only run
> it locally on your GPU?
>
> Even if a court answers either question with "yes", it still does not
> follow that you are bound by any other licensing terms Stability AI is
> attaching to those files, a license which you never agreed to when
> clicking the link.
>

I don't entirely follow, I'm afraid.

Say I take a document from the Internet and then use it to do something
(anything).

Copyright inherently exists in the document.

I am very likely to have done something which is 'copying' in legal terms,
either in the act of downloading it, or the act of using it, or both.

What is my legal basis for doing this? Given that there is copyright in the
work and I have copied it, I must have a legal basis for doing this, I
can't just wave my hands and say it's fine.
In common law legal systems the answer is likely to be one (or more) of;
- there is a statutory basis for my doing so (perhaps the one I mentioned
earlier in the thread or a 'fair dealing' exemption)
- there is an explicit licence attached to the document defined somewhere
by the creator (either a general one or something created by a contract
between myself and the creator)
- there is an implicit licence attached to the document defined by the
creator's actions in the light of their reasonable expectations of others'
actions, e.g. if you publish a document on the internet you very probably
imply a licence to perform such copying as is actually needed to read the
document

If I have clicked a button to indicate acceptance of some terms and
conditions, then very likely those terms contains an explicit licence I can
rely on.

However, not clicking a button to indicate acceptance of terms and
conditions does not mean I can do whatever I want. It means that I either
have to find other evidence of an explicit licence (maybe text on the
document?), or consider whether there is an implicit licence or exemption.
An implicit licence might well exist but is quite likely to be minimal in
scope.

If I then re-copy the material and then republish it, that would be a
further act of copying, and I would have to answer the same questions. The
fact of republication does not fundamentally change anything, though it may
be handled differently in the different exemptions or licences I am
probably relying on.  An implicit licence is less likely to exist the
further I manipulate something, as that is probably further removed from
the copyright holder's original expectations.

Chris
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: 23 March: Invitation to Open Community Call on ChatGPT, generative AI, and Wikimedia

[Chris Keating]

On Fri, Mar 31, 2023 at 3:05 PM Erik Moeller  wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 30, 2023 at 12:25 PM Lauren Worden 
> wrote:
> > > If you don't obtain this agreement, you cannot meaningfully enforce
> > > the "license" because the downloader never agreed to it in the first
> > > place. Moreover, you'll have to make sure that _everyone else making
> > > copies of the file_ also obtains agreement from people getting those
> > > copies, or your whole house of cards falls down.
>
> > Isn't that exactly how we impose attribution and share-alike
> > requirements of CC-BY-SA content?
>
> Not exactly. CC-BY-SA gives Wikimedia readers permissions they would
> not otherwise have (e.g., to distribute copies), and it ties those
> permissions to certain obligations (e.g., attribution). Readers who do
> not wish to exercise those additional permissions are not required to
> adhere to the obligations. They'd just be limited to what copyright
> law lets you do with content you download from a public website.
> Nobody can stop you from making your own offline version of Wikipedia,
> calling it "Bobbypedia", and removing all other attribution -- as long
> as you keep it to yourself.
>
> To be sure, you can put restrictions in an AI model license that kick
> in for folks distributing the model, which is something they wouldn't
> legally be able to do without consulting and agreeing to the licensing
> terms. But, crucially, you don't have to distribute an AI model to run
> it. Most of the unethical uses folks tend to worry about (e.g., bulk
> generation of misinformation) do not involve distributing copies of
> the model, only of its output.
>

This is perhaps a bit academic, but this is not really the case, at least
in UK copyright law.

The 'copying' inherent in viewing a web page is permissible under two
grounds:
1) there is a statutory exemption in copyright law for this specific
activity (in section 28a of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, if
anyone cares to look it up ;) ). This would likely not apply to details of
AI models as the exemption excludes 'a computer program or a database'.
Whether it would apply to Bobbypedia depends on whether it counts as a
database (strikes me as arguable).
2) there is probably an implicit licence granted by whoever publishes the
work for whoever views it to use it. The scope of this implicit licence is
highly debatable and probably extremely limited. Do you have an implied
licence to download the HTML of a webpage into your browser cache and use
your web browser to render the page and display the resulting content? Very
likely. Do you have an implied licence to save a PDF copy onto your hard
drive? Maybe. Do you have an implied licence to use the page to create a
personal AI model and distribute the output? That is very unclear, probably
not. Perhaps less likely if there was also an explicit license attached to
the page.

Chris
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: The Wikimedia Enterprise API project

[Chris Keating]

Thanks Liam! That looks admirably clear and very thorough - would be great
to see this level of detail and transparency in other aspects of the WMF's
work

Chris/ The Land

On Tue, 7 Feb 2023, 14:35 Liam Wyatt,  wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> Following the initial announcement and project launch in 2021, and press
> release about first customers in 2022, the Wikimedia Enterprise team has
> today published the *first financial report* and a summary of a
> forthcoming *product update*.
>
> This has been published today on the Diff blog, here:
>
> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/02/07/wikimedia-enterprise-financial-report-product-update/
> [also available in German
> 
> ]
>
> One of the principles
>  of the 
> Wikimedia
> Enterprise project has been “the publication of overall revenue and
> expenses, differentiated from those of the Wikimedia Foundation in general,
> at least annually”. We are therefore proud to present the inaugural edition
> of the Wikimedia Enterprise financial report – covering the calendar-year
> 2022, its first year of operations.
>
> The update also includes a description of some of the API features that
> have been under development. While the primary use-case is companies which
> consistently require very high-speed updates of very large amounts of
> Wikimedia content, it is important to note that there are several
> free-access methods.
>
> If you have written questions or comments about the update, please share
> them on the project’s talkpage
>  on Meta. As
> described in the blogpost, we consider this report covering the 2022
> calendar year to be a “beta” version. We are actively seeking feedback
> about how its structure, content, and explanations can be improved for the
> next edition in late 2023, which will cover the 2022-23 fiscal year.
>
>
> If you prefer real-time conversation: A public meeting will be hosted by
> the Enterprise team this Friday, February 10 @1900 UTC to discuss this
> announcement - details on the project homepage
> .
>
> If you have any other questions please consult the FAQ
> .
>
> Sincerely,
>
> * Liam Wyatt [Wittylama]*
>
> Senior Program Manager
> for *Enterprise,* *Campaigns, & WikiCite*
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: ChatGPT and Wikipedia

[Chris Keating]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2022 at 1:04 PM Paulo Santos Perneta <
paulospern...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been playing with it on over the last week, and my experience is that
> that AI is incredibly prone to invent informations that look credible,
> while being entirely made up by it. It would generate inexistent persons,
> dates, events and places, and build an entire story out of them that,
> nevertheless, looks credible.
>

Indeed; here is another example, after prompting to write an article about
the song "Tomorrow Belongs to Me", which was written in 1966 for the
Broadway musical "Cabaret". ChatGPT attributes it, entirely fictionally, to
a real 1920s German lyricist.

"Tomorrow Belongs to Me" is a song that has been used in a variety of
media, including film, television, and theater. The song is known for its
nationalist and anti-Semitic lyrics, which have made it controversial and a
subject of debate.

The song was originally written by the German composer and lyricist Hans
Leip in the 1920s. It was later adopted by the National Socialist German
Workers' Party (Nazi Party) as a propaganda song, and was performed at
party rallies and events.

In the United States, "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" was popularized by its use
in the film "Cabaret," which was released in 1972. In the film, the song is
sung by a young man at a Nazi rally, and is later performed by the
character of Sally Bowles, played by Liza Minnelli. The song has since been
used in a number of other films, television shows, and stage productions,
often as a means of referencing the Nazi party or the Holocaust.
Despite its widespread use, "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" has been criticized
for its nationalist and anti-Semitic themes, and some have called for it to
be banned or censored. The song has also been the subject of legal
disputes, with some arguing that its use in certain contexts may infringe
on copyright laws or be considered hate speech.
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[Wikimedia-l] Status of the Knowledge Equity Fund

[Chris Keating]

Hi all,

I'm writing to inquire about the status of the Knowledge Equity Fund.

Meta (1) suggests 6 grants were made in September 2021 and that a second
more community-focused round of grants would be made in 2022. No details of
a second round have been published that I'm aware of; is this still active?
Are there any public details of impact or progress reporting from the
September 2021 grants ?

There is also a somewhat-viral Twitter thread which focuses, alongside some
general criticisms of Wikimedia fundraising, on two grants specifically
from this fund and the WMF making itself a participant in US 'culture
wars'. (2) I wonder if there is any response from the WMF to that?

(For what it's worth, my perception is that the Knowledge Equity Fund was
initially a deliberate attempt led by US-based staff to have the WMF 'do
something' to align itself with a broader progressive movement in the USA.
I believe the main advocates for this have now departed, that it was never
a particularly good fit with the WMF's overall approach to grantmaking,
that the evolution of the WMF's approach to this fund was positive, but
still if the whole thing is now forgotten about that's probably no bad
thing).

Thanks,

Chris



(1) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund
(2) https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579776106034757633
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 2022 election - updates

[Chris Keating]

On Sun, Apr 24, 2022 at 1:13 AM Todd Allen  wrote:

> Yes, and let me say it in stronger terms: This is unacceptable.
> Community-selected seats have nothing to do with affiliates; affiliates are
> absolutely not the community. Community-selected seats must be an at-large
> election from Wikimedia editors from any candidate who cares to run, not
> taken from a "short list" of affiliate-approved candidates.
>

So - just for clarity - would you prefer these 2 seats to be selected only
by affiliates, as they have been in previous years, without any involvement
from community members who aren't in affiliates?
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 2022 election - updates

[Chris Keating]

On Sat, Apr 23, 2022 at 11:32 PM Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> Chris,
>
> There is no longer any distinction between community and affiliate
> trustees. For reference, see the "Type of seat" column in the current board
> member table on Meta, as well as the footnote under the table.[1]
>
> What Dariusz has announced here is a new process for determining
> "community-and-affiliate trustees". This new process is being "*implemented
> on a trial basis for the 2022 election*".
>
>
I don't think it follows that the Board intends to use this model for the
following (2024?) election of the four seats elected last year. Indeed, I
am virtually certain they won't, given the significance of the movement
governance changes that are going on, and the level of change we have seen
in WMF board elections in the last few years.
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 2022 election - updates

[Chris Keating]

On Sat, Apr 23, 2022 at 1:32 PM Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> 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.
>

The effect of this is that the two seats which were in the past solely
elected by the Wikimedia Affiliates will now be elected through this
combined model where the affiliates shortlist 6 candidates and the
community elects two of them.

That is, to my mind, enfranchising the volunteer community to a greater
extent.
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia payroll and related (WAS: Re: Media coverage in Germany: Enterprise / Advocacy)

[Chris Keating]

On Mon, 31 Jan 2022, 00:45 Nathan,  wrote:

> I suspect there weren't that many FT employees of the WMF in 2008, if any?
>

According to Andreas's table there were 72 total employees. How many were
full time? Pass!

But his numbers make little sense, so it's hard to draw conclusions from
them.

>
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia payroll and related (WAS: Re: Media coverage in Germany: Enterprise / Advocacy)

[Chris Keating]

On Sun, Jan 30, 2022 at 1:25 PM Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

>
> Cost per employee   28796   39801   51133738968478186493
>  102053   106065   116726   131734   140419   149155
>

I find it hard to believe that the WMF's average cost per employee has
increased from $28,796 in 2008 to $149,155 in 2019. That does not seem
credible to me. The figure is remarkably low in 2008 and remarkably high in
2019. Perhaps there is something else happening in the data?
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Luis Bitencourt-Emilio Joins Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

[Chris Keating]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 3:41 PM Guettarda  wrote:

> Crypto + NFTs + {tech startup + disrupt + housing market} sounds like
> *just* the kind of person WMF needs on its board!
>
> Luis Bitencourt-Emilio might be a great person, and just who we need on
> the Board right now, but the optics seem terrible. Maybe I've been spending
> too much time in the wrong parts of the internet, but this collection of
> attributes seems like a cherry-picked collection of what's wrong with the
> world.
>

I think it's important to distinguish between "things Wikimedians tend not
to like" and "things that are in opposition to the movement's values".

I can definitely see the former here, but not really the latter.

Chris
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Feedback requested on draft updated Wikimedia Foundation Conflict of Interest Policy

[Chris Keating]

On Tue, Nov 2, 2021 at 4:02 PM Philip Kopetzky 
wrote:
> I would also find that helpful (if this isn't a policy that's been
completely rewritten). The legal text isn't especially easy to read and
understand either, so my only question would be if this new policy would
prevent past events that happened because this kind of policy did not exist
back then.

I think the biggest specific change is that the Board can no longer
authorise appointments for people who have been on the Board in the last 6
months. Which is sensible, and addresses the main concern that prompted the
review.

C
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Feedback requested on draft updated Wikimedia Foundation Conflict of Interest Policy

[Chris Keating]

Hi Amanda,

Thanks for this.

I've noted a suggestion on the talk page to state explicitly that the Board
should include reputational concerns (including the reaction of community
members and affiliates) when weighing up whether to approve a transaction
where there is a conflict. I feel this is worth making explicit, otherwise
the policy can be read to only cover the Foundation's financial or
operational interests not the broader picture.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Conflict_of_interest_policy/2021_updates#Proposed_change_to_Board_Approval_section

Thanks,

Chris

On Mon, Nov 1, 2021 at 1:01 PM Amanda Keton  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation legal team has posted a draft of an updated
> conflict of interest policy on Meta-Wiki:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest_policy/2021_updates
>
> We are collecting feedback on the policy for the next three weeks: today
> until 22 November.
>
> The updated policy will replace the current Conflict of Interest Policy
> for Board Members, Officers, Executives, and Key Employees.[1] Note: This
> is not related to any policies or issues regarding paid/conflict of
> interest editing of the projects. It is about conflicts of interest that
> may arise in connection with an individual’s executive or Board role at the
> Foundation.
>
> In preparing the updated policy, we consulted model conflict of interest
> policies, guidance regarding best practices for conflict of interest
> policies, outside legal experts on non-profit governance, and the points
> raised in the community discussion on conflicts of interest earlier this
> year.[2]
>
> We invite you to review the draft policy and leave any feedback you have
> on the talk page. In particular, we are interested in identifying any
> aspects of the policy where the language or procedure is not clear. We also
> want to know if there are any gaps in the policy: are there any conflict of
> interest situations that cause you concern and that the policy does not
> seem to cover?
>
> The Governance Committee of the Board of Trustees has reviewed the draft
> policy, and will review it again following the feedback period. It will
> then go before the full Board to be approved and adopted.
>
> Thank you to anyone who takes the time to read the draft policy. Please
> leave your feedback on the talk page[3] so that we can best review and
> respond to it in an organized manner.
>
> In solidarity and with gratitude,
>
> Amanda
>
> Amanda Keton
>
> She/They
>
> General Counsel and Transition Team Member
>
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
>
> [1] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest_policy
>
> [2]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/PFOBFWCBFACRGY3OMXAQG54ALPXGT3K3/#4WUO2JZ2ZXOGQR2A6TRPW457NRCQNVZ5
> [3]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Conflict_of_interest_policy/2021_updates
>
> --
>
> Amanda Keton (she/they)
>
> General Counsel
>
> Wikimedia Foundation 
> *NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you
> have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the
> mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal and ethical
> reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community
> members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more
> on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer
> .*
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Movement Charter Drafting Committee elections are now open!

[Chris Keating]

> Agreed.  Is this something that the Election Committee
> ,
> as a standing committee not tied to a single election, can help with?   SJ
>
>
I would like the answer to this to be 'yes', but the Elections Committee
doesn't seem to do anything except supervise the community elections to the
Board (which are, in effect, now run by WMF staff). They did not, for
instance, appear to be particularly involved in the work that led to the
changes to the Board election structure. They do not publish any
information about what they are doing, and they don't appear to be
particularly responsive to inquiries even when there is a Board election
on. Making the elections committee a 'standing' committee does not appear
to have resulted in anything changing, and suggests this committee is not
the right group to take any further changes forward.
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Report about Regional Hubs Ready

[Chris Keating]

Hi Anass,

Thank you very much for this report! It really highlights both the strength
of the demand/need for hubs, and the many challenges that we will face in
setting them up.

The list of areas where there is and isn't a consensus among the people you
spoke to is very useful and clearly highlights some questions which need
answers from a movement level.

I was also interested to read that Arabic-speakers firmly wanted an Arabic
hub (or possibly two, depending on what scale the hubs end up as) - and not
a "Middle East and North Africa" hub, let alone a "Middle East and Whole of
Africa" hub. Given what you say in the report regarding the communities
feeling they have little in common and different needs, this is
understandable. But it does also raise the question of which hubs would
cover/support the Turkish and Farsi communities. We are probably going to
encounter many more questions of scope like this one as more areas take
steps to define what they want from hubs.

Thanks,

Chris

On Mon, Oct 11, 2021 at 5:27 PM Anass Sedrati  wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I would like to inform you that I have published a report related to
> Wikimedia Regional Hubs
> 
> from the perspective of the Arabic speaking community. The report is ready,
> and complies background of the region, as well as different opinions and
> analysis of the community views on hubs, before providing recommendations
> on the way forward. It was funded by a rapid grant from the Wikimedia
> strategy & governance team.
>
> I believe that this report can be useful for all of you interested in the
> implementation of Wikimedia hubs, and in the Wikimedia strategy in general.
> I am also encouraging those who can to create similar reports for their
> regions, so that experiences and insights are shared.
>
> If anyone has a question, please feel free to contact me (through email or
> on Meta ), and I will
> be happy to discuss this further.
>
> Have a good evening/day everyone!
>
> Best regards,
> --
> -
> *Anass SEDRATI*
> Wikimedia MA User Group
>
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Results for the most contended Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election

[Chris Keating]

On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 8:40 PM Chris Keating 
wrote:

> I too am disappointed (but not surprised) that STV had almost no effect at
>> all on the outcome of this election
>>
>
> This may be true, but if it's true, it was only true very narrowly. The
> margin between the 4th and 5th placed candidates was 12.27 votes in a
> situation where 1,188 were needed to win.
>

Now that the full ballot data is available, it appears very likely that
using STV did indeed change the result of the election. Though not at
people had hoped.

Ad Huikeshoven has tabulated the numbers of preferences received by each
candidate here:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Rank_counts

Trying to work out what would have happened under a different voting system
is obviously a bit tricky. But there are several ways to look at who would
have received most Support votes. We could interpret any vote in positions
1-4 as a 'support' as in 'this person is in my top 4 picks to fill the 4
spots on the board', though probably many people would Support more than 4
candidates. Or we could interpret any positive vote as a 'support', though
in some cases low preference votes are an indication of opposition.

The order of candidates in each of these cases is as follows:
Looking at top 4: Rosie, Victoria, Eliane, Dariusz (Lorenzo 5th)
Looking at total preferences: Rosie, Victoria, Eliane, Lorenzo (Dariusz 5th)
(vs the actual result: Rosie, Victoria, Dariusz, Lorenzo with Eliane 5th)

We'd also obviously need to look at Oppose votes (which of course under the
old system counted 4x as much as support votes). But usually in
elections under the support/oppose system we observed candidates getting
the most Support also having the least Oppose (except for 2015 when the
re-standing board members got many extra Oppose votes and therefore didn't
get re-elected). We could also look at patterns of very low preferences,
but it is really difficult to find any pattern that changes the order of
the top 3 candidates there.

So I think it is a reasonable hypothesis that had the election been
conducted under the old system, Eliane would have been elected and one of
Dariusz and Lorenzo not elected.

It does pain me to say this, as I have often been heard arguing that STV
would help make the board diverse, but it's the only conclusion I can draw
based on the votes cast.

In terms of what should happen next - in my view the Board should say "ok,
we're fine for people from North America, Western Europe and Eastern Europe
as they're all fairly well represented" and say that 2 (or more) seats in
the next election should be reserved for people who don't match that
description. (Though still the next election should be under STV).

Thanks,

Chris
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Results for the most contended Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election

[Chris Keating]

>
> I too am disappointed (but not surprised) that STV had almost no effect at
> all on the outcome of this election
>

This may be true, but if it's true, it was only true very narrowly. The
margin between the 4th and 5th placed candidates was 12.27 votes in a
situation where 1,188 were needed to win.

Had that gone very marginally differently, we'd all be talking about how
amazing it was that a black African woman had been elected to the Board for
the first time in history.

We can observe a few other things about how it worked out:
- by and large votes did not seem to transfer between Global South
candidates - when one Global south candidate was knocked out their votes
did not usually go to other Global South candidates
- most votes ending up counting; of 6,800 or so initially there were 6,000
counted in the final round, that is a fairly low dropout rate
- also, if all 8 Board seats had been elected at the same time rather than
in 2 batches in 2 years, we'd have 2 Global South candidates in the final 8
and probably be pretty pleased with the results. (Is it still an option for
the Board to do this and appoint Eliane, Mike, Pascale and Ivan and then
skip next year's planned election?)

Thanks,

Chris
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikipedia issues in UNDARK.org #Opinion article to check...

[Chris Keating]

>
>
>
>> The costs of doing this now will hardly have been prohibitive.
>> Commissioning a report like this would have been well within the WMF's
>> means in 2013 as well. (The WMF reported a budget surplus of $13 million in
>> 2013.) So I stand by my assertion: the WMF could have done then what it has
>> done now, but lacked the will, or courage.
>>
>
> And when you were working for the Wikimedia Foundation those years, or
> serving on the WMF board, how did your own exercise of moral courage
> persuade people to adopt your point of view?  I'm certain, given your
> convictions, that you didn't just stand idly by on the sidelines, hurling
> the occasional moral critique on mailing lists!
>


I may have missed something somewhere, but I don't think Andreas Kolbe has
ever served on the WMF Board of Trustees?

Regards,

Chris
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Conflict of Interest - Transition from Trustee to Staff

[Chris Keating]

I'm sure a statement will be forthcoming, but in short (and these are my
notes and may not accurately reflect others' words in detail)

- the WMF are deciding today whether to revoke or postpone Maria's
appointment, with a strong hint they will do one or another
- the WMF will also review its own conflict of interest policy in line with
global good practices, with some form of community consultation on this
- the WMF will commit to holding itself to the same governance standards as
it expects of grantees, e.g. affiliates

Chris

On Tue, 29 Jun 2021, 21:36 Andy Mabbett,  wrote:

> On Tue, 29 Jun 2021 at 20:58, Chris Keating 
> wrote:
>
> > Mistakes will always be made where human judgement is involved, but it
> seems
> > that this one is being remedied and learned from both quickly and openly.
>
> For those of us not on the call; how so?
>
> --
> Andy Mabbett
> @pigsonthewing
> http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Conflict of Interest - Transition from Trustee to Staff

[Chris Keating]

+1 to this - thank you to the senior staff who led the call, as well as the
team that organised it at short notice, and to the Board members who
attended.

I would like to echo Jan-Bart's sentiments. Mistakes will always be made
where human judgement is involved, but it seems that this one is being
remedied and learned from both quickly and openly.

Thanks,

Chris

On Tue, Jun 29, 2021 at 8:50 PM Jan-Bart de Vreede 
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I want to take this opportunity to thank all Foundation staff involved in
> the office hour that was organised today on this topic.
>
> Thank you for being transparent and open in what was a difficult
> conversation for everyone involved. Like everyone I wish that there was an
> easy solution, but there doesn’t seem to be one.
>
> But thank you for trusting us by showing vulnerability and explaining the
> reasoning that led to this and some of the thinking going forward...
>
> Regards
>
> Jan-Bart de Vreede
>
> PS: Also thank you to all those that attended or wrote on this topic and
> expressed their (lack of) concerns. It is only through these discussions
> that we an grow as a movement and rebuild trust.
>
>
>
> On 27 Jun 2021, at 22:20, Christophe Henner 
> wrote:
>
> I am just forking this thread so the title reflects the needed discussion
> and we avoid derailling again to non directly / personal topics.
>
> Le dim. 27 juin 2021 à 9:55 PM, Katherine Maher 
> a écrit :
>
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> Leaving aside everything else for a minute, I want to reply to Maggie’s
>> statement regarding the T&S case here. As someone with direct and specific
>> knowledge of the issue, I feel responsibility to affirm Maggie’s version of
>> events.
>>
>> Although we provided notice to the board that we were considering a
>> difficult T&S case regarding a well known admin on English Wikipedia, we
>> did not consult with the board on the case. When we made the determination,
>> following two warnings, to take action regarding the user, it was at the
>> recommendation of staff following an investigation that followed all
>> standard operating practices. The Board was not notified in advance of our
>> decision to move to action; something that was in line with existing
>> policies and IMHO, in line with an important distinction between governance
>> and operations, but also arguably may have contributed to some of the mess
>> that we’re all familiar with.
>>
>> I have taken responsibility in various fora for this decision, and
>> accepted the subsequent criticisms, many of them legitimate, by community
>> members. I continue to bear that responsibility, and it is precisely
>> because it was my responsibility that I want to reiterate that there was no
>> COI of María in any capacity.
>> While I would handle that case somewhat differently were we to revisit
>> it, that is besides the point.
>>
>> Whatever conversation the community wishes to have with Foundation
>> leadership about governance and this recent decision is up to the
>> community. However, I would encourage to avoid conflating these issues, as
>> there is no basis for the insinuation or accusation, and unnecessarily
>> muddies the waters for valid concerns.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Katherine
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 27, 2021 at 13:42 Maggie Dennis 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi, everybody.
>>>
>>> It’s Sunday, and there’s a lot of meetings today, and I wrestled with
>>> whether to say this without necessarily having the full time to think about
>>> all the ways I could say it wrong and potentially make misunderstandings
>>> worse. We’re having a meeting on Tuesday specifically to discuss issues of
>>> concern to people around this consultancy. But I’d like to openly address
>>> the suggestion that María may have influenced a Trust & Safety case here.
>>>
>>> First: it is against policy (and it is a policy I helped write and
>>> support whole-heartedly) to talk about the specifics of Trust & Safety
>>> behavioral investigations in public in order as much as possible to protect
>>> the privacy and dignity of all involved. Public in this case includes even
>>> among staff, most of whom have no need to know when a case is even under
>>> review. We do discuss these cases with some volunteer groups who have
>>> signed non-disclosure agreements, but even that is limited. Only recently
>>> have we created a body who can review Trust & Safety case files on
>>> appropriate appeal.
>>>
>>> Given this policy, I’m going to have to be uncomfortably vague, but I
>>> want to address and firmly deny rumors that any Board member has ever
>>> attempted to influence Trust & Safety (T&S) to take office action
>>> (including warnings) in relation to any behavioral investigation. (See the 
>>> Meta
>>> page, which includes a list of the individuals
>>> .) I know that
>>> my saying so isn’t necessarily going to reassure folks. Some may think I’m
>>> deluded, and some may think I’m lying, but for me silence on this point is
>>> unacce

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Welcoming María Sefidari as a Foundation consultant. :)

[Chris Keating]

>
> I will note that, as Chris pointed out, even WMUK's current policies
> would permit a transaction like the one we're discussing if approved
> by the Board ("no trustee may _without the consent of the board_"
> [8]), and Wikimedia Austria's Good Governance Kodex would permit it if
> approved by the Gremium ("bedarf diese Anstellung der ausdrücklichen
> Genehmigung durch das Good-Governance-Gremium" [9]).
>
> If such transactions are sometimes viewed as permissible, as part of
> harmonizing governance standards, it would be good to enumerate
> examples: would this transaction qualify? If the emerging consensus is
> to enforce waiting periods at all times, clauses which permit Boards
> to overrule them should perhaps be revised as part of harmonization
> efforts.
>

Hi Erik,

Indeed, most of these policies are written with a certain level of
flexibility. And I do know of cases where board members of affiliates have
gone on to have staff roles within the movement, and asked for and received
permission to do so. So why might this be a problem and other instances not
a problem?

It's probably worth setting out the objective of this kind of policy, which
is to give confidence that organisations are making decisions based on what
will best fulfill their mission, and to avoid the perception that decisions
are made for the personal gain of trustees.

Whatever a conflict of interest policy says, if it doesn't end up achieving
that goal, then either the policy or the associated decision-making is at
fault.

My concern over this specific instance is prompted by several things:
- A paid role has been created for a specific person, based on their
contributions as a trustee
- the trustee concerned was involved in shaping the role: certainly at a
'meta' level in terms of championing the work area the role is about, and
evidently also in conversations about how the role would work out while
still being Chair of the organisation
- there was no open recruitment process, so it's unclear if there really
was no other conceivable candidate. I understand this is not unheard of for
the WMF, but it's poor practice, particularly when there are
other warning flags. (I am told that when jobs are openly advertised, the
recruitment process can be long and arduous.)
- there was no gap at all between the trustee departing as Chair, and
starting the role. Indeed the role was evidently offered, in some form,
while the Trustee in question was still Chair of the Board.
- it's unclear in what manner or at what level of detail the Board's
approval of this was given
- all of this refers to a Chair of the Board of Trustees. Chairs are
typically responsible for the management of the Chief Executive on behalf
of the Board, which puts them in a particularly high-profile position.
While I don't fully understand how this has worked out during the WMF
executive transition, it seems reasonable to ask whether the trustee in
question was simultaneously holding performance reviews or pay negotiations
with members of the WMF interim executive team while also having
conversations with them about what her own future paid role at the WMF
might be.

Thanks,

Chris
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Welcoming María Sefidari as a Foundation consultant. :)

[Chris Keating]

Hi Amanda and Maggie,

On the whole I am a great fan of this kind of office hour and believe it
does a lot to improve communication between the WMF and community members.

However this is not a problem of communication. The people speaking up
in this thread are largely not the people who are inherently sceptical of
the WMF (indeed, two of them are former chairs of the WMF Board of
Trustees!). Nor are they people who don't understand the situation or the
context. They are mainly people who are quite aware of the context, often
know some of the people involved personally, and are already placing a
charitable interpretation on the statements that have already been made.
And *still* reach the conclusion that the situation is unsustainable and
the only way out of it is to reverse the decision that's been made.

Thanks,

Chris

On Sat, Jun 26, 2021 at 12:33 AM Maggie Dennis 
wrote:

> Hello, all.
>
> Following up on Amanda because she mentioned that we were going to hold an
> open meeting to discuss this. I just announced the details in a separate
> email thread titled "Tuesday Foundation office hour." They are also
> available on Meta, here
> 
> .
>
> This office hour will be on *June 29 at 15:00 UTC* — see
> https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1624978855 for your local time. If you
> can't come, there are ways to submit questions in advance (or
> simultaneously, if you don't want to join Zoom).
>
> It's taken quite a bit of time to pull together the technical details
> today, and the team will be sharing information in other fora over the next
> few days, but we wanted to follow up on this thread ASAP.
>
> I hope to see you there.
>
> Best regards,
> Maggie
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 24, 2021 at 12:51 AM  wrote:
>
>> Hello, All,
>> I’m Amanda Keton, the General Counsel of the Foundation, and I’d like to
>> clarify some of the questions and comments that have been raised over the
>> engagement of María as a Foundation consultant. I want to assure you that
>> we carefully followed our policies, compensated this in line with similar
>> consultants, and legitimately assessed her as the best person for the role.
>> The need. Maria’s engagement comes at a time of transition for both the
>> Board and the Foundation executive staff. This is also a time where the
>> Community Resilience & Sustainability (CR&S) unit is setting up mechanisms
>> to ensure that the Foundation provides seamless service to our growing
>> community in its areas of responsibility. As many of you know, that team
>> has taken on Movement Strategy due to the transition along with maintaining
>> their support of Board elections, the Universal Code of Conduct, and
>> leading our cross-departmental approach to supporting a Thriving Movement.
>> As a unit, CR&S undertook a needs assessment of the workload ahead. This
>> needs assessment revealed gaps in implementation of the Foundation’s
>> Movement Strategy and in supporting staff with the ongoing Board selection
>> process, upcoming onboarding, and supporting a smooth transition. The team
>> currently supporting the Board expansion is quite stretched, monitoring
>> multiple channels in many languages. Having another person who can step in
>> immediately is tremendously helpful to these efforts. Based on this, CR&S
>> considered the necessary skills and expertise for assistance in executing
>> this work. While seeking this expertise, numerous factors were considered.
>> Some of these factors included experience with the Board, volunteers and
>> management. We also considered the qualifications with respect to the
>> criteria and role at hand. The unique blend of circumstances at play and
>> the importance of moving forward strongly at this time led us to carefully
>> assess our needs and explore creative solutions.
>> The role. In developing the scope of work for this role, we determined
>> that María was a very strong candidate to support this critical work. With
>> the transition at the executive level, and at the Board level, Maria brings
>> long-term familiarity with the strategy process and strategy conversations
>> that is crucial for the Foundation and the movement. Furthermore, she has
>> been a big believer and a promoter of the Movement Strategy. We believe she
>> can help ensure continuity in that work and can also support Maggie and
>> others in the Foundation working to help expand the Board in service of
>> bringing additional expertise, representation and capacity.
>> Managing a potential conflict of interest. Maria first considered
>> stepping down months ago, but she wanted to help navigate the transition at
>> the helm of the Board. I followed our Conflict of Interest policy and
>> brought this staff idea to the Transition Committee, the Human Resources
>> Committee, and ultimately discussed this idea in principle in the last
>> executive session of the Board of Trustees -- without Maria. The Board does
>> not gener

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Welcoming María Sefidari as a Foundation consultant. :)

[Chris Keating]

>
>
>
>> It is a good practice to create a 12 month waiting period before board
>> members of non-profits can become a staff member/paid contractor/consultant.
>>
>
> A few people mentioned that their own orgs or committees have norms or
> policies around this (Chris, Philip, Tito); could you describe specifics
> that are in place now around the movement?
>
>
It's interesting that you mention norms and policies... Wikimedia UK's
policy on this (1) for instance states

"During the period of trusteeship, and for six months after leaving the
board, no trustee may without the consent of the board accept any employed
or remunerated consultancy position with, nor may offer remunerated
consultancy services to:

   - WMUK. Family members of trustees are ineligible for the same period;
   - the Wikimedia Foundation;
   - any organisation with which WMUK has a recent financial connection
   (either as funder or as a recipient of funds or gifts in kind), where the
   connection is significant enough to both parties to give rise to a
   reasonable perception of a current conflict of interest."


This is rather more in-depth than the WMF's policy, at least so far as I
can see. Though not so in-depth as the previous version of the policy,
which also required seeking the approval of the UK's charity regulator.

Even so, the policy could permit this kind of situation if the Board
decided to approve the arrangement. However, no sensible Board would do so,
because of exactly the kind of reaction that you see in this thread.

Chris


(1)
https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Trustee_Conflict_of_Interest_Policy#Employment_and_consultancy
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Welcoming María Sefidari as a Foundation consultant. :)

[Chris Keating]

Hi Amanda,

Thanks for the detailed comments. However, still, this doesn't really help
that much.

>From your email it seems that over several months the WMF has created a new
role which just happens to be ideal for its outgoing Chair to fill, and
indeed could scarcely be filled by anyone else because it so closely
relates to the Board's priorities.

If this is allowed to happen then it raises serious questions about whether
Board members make decisions about the WMF's priorities in order to create
consultancy posts for themselves. As it happens I don't believe that is
what has happened here, but one could be forgiven for drawing that
conclusion. There is a clear appearance of a conflict of interest. And
there is a real risk of undermining the credibility of pretty much any
decision the Board might take in future, if people - the community, donors
or the media - start to believe that those decisions are being taken
because Board members will be eased into paid positions to implement them.

No amount of reassurances that conversations happened in a particular order
can avoid this. The letter and indeed the spirit of the WMF's conflict of
interest policy may have been followed. But the object of the WMF's
conflict of interest policy has not been achieved, quite the opposite. One
can follow a policy and end up making the wrong decision, and that's what's
happened here.

Thanks,

Chris



On Thu, Jun 24, 2021 at 5:51 AM  wrote:

> Hello, All,
> I’m Amanda Keton, the General Counsel of the Foundation, and I’d like to
> clarify some of the questions and comments that have been raised over the
> engagement of María as a Foundation consultant. I want to assure you that
> we carefully followed our policies, compensated this in line with similar
> consultants, and legitimately assessed her as the best person for the role.
> The need. Maria’s engagement comes at a time of transition for both the
> Board and the Foundation executive staff. This is also a time where the
> Community Resilience & Sustainability (CR&S) unit is setting up mechanisms
> to ensure that the Foundation provides seamless service to our growing
> community in its areas of responsibility. As many of you know, that team
> has taken on Movement Strategy due to the transition along with maintaining
> their support of Board elections, the Universal Code of Conduct, and
> leading our cross-departmental approach to supporting a Thriving Movement.
> As a unit, CR&S undertook a needs assessment of the workload ahead. This
> needs assessment revealed gaps in implementation of the Foundation’s
> Movement Strategy and in supporting staff with the ongoing Board selection
> process, upcoming onboarding, and supporting a smooth transition. The team
> currently supporting the Board expansion is quite stretched, monitoring
> multiple channels in many languages. Having another person who can step in
> immediately is tremendously helpful to these efforts. Based on this, CR&S
> considered the necessary skills and expertise for assistance in executing
> this work. While seeking this expertise, numerous factors were considered.
> Some of these factors included experience with the Board, volunteers and
> management. We also considered the qualifications with respect to the
> criteria and role at hand. The unique blend of circumstances at play and
> the importance of moving forward strongly at this time led us to carefully
> assess our needs and explore creative solutions.
> The role. In developing the scope of work for this role, we determined
> that María was a very strong candidate to support this critical work. With
> the transition at the executive level, and at the Board level, Maria brings
> long-term familiarity with the strategy process and strategy conversations
> that is crucial for the Foundation and the movement. Furthermore, she has
> been a big believer and a promoter of the Movement Strategy. We believe she
> can help ensure continuity in that work and can also support Maggie and
> others in the Foundation working to help expand the Board in service of
> bringing additional expertise, representation and capacity.
> Managing a potential conflict of interest. Maria first considered stepping
> down months ago, but she wanted to help navigate the transition at the helm
> of the Board. I followed our Conflict of Interest policy and brought this
> staff idea to the Transition Committee, the Human Resources Committee, and
> ultimately discussed this idea in principle in the last executive session
> of the Board of Trustees -- without Maria. The Board does not generally
> discuss individual contracts, but I wanted to make sure that the Board knew
> about it to respect the spirit of the conflict of interest policy even if
> that would be shortly mitigated by her stepping down from her trusteeship
> for unrelated reasons. I appreciate the concerns that were raised about
> Affiliates receiving different advice. I'm not aware of this, and because I
> want to respond

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Welcoming María Sefidari as a Foundation consultant. :)

[Chris Keating]

Hi Maggie,

Thanks for the clarification, but that doesn't really affect anything.
Staff roles vs contractors/consultants are not that different. And the fact
that you didn't discuss the post with Maria while she was on the Board
doesn't mean it isn't a governance problem. First because decisions can be
made and rules can be bent for people in positions of influence even
without an explicit discussion. Second because, while I don't doubt your
word, the appearance matters as well as the substance. Third because I
really can't believe the WMF would tolerate this from an affiliate who
received grants.

I'll be quite straightforward, this is a disaster for the credibility of
the WMF's governance and it must be immediately reversed.

If the WMF Board has no rules to prevent this situation happening, then I
am amazed - and would really be asking for a refund for whatever was paid
in the 2019 board governance review.

Thanks,

Chris

On Wed, Jun 23, 2021 at 11:01 PM Maggie Dennis 
wrote:

> Hello, all.
>
> I’m sorry for my lack of clarity! María is *not* Foundation staff. She is
> an independent consultant. She did not discuss this role with me while she
> was on the Board. She quite rightly would not. We talked about it after her
> departure.
>
> Best regards,
> Maggie
>
> On Wed, Jun 23, 2021 at 5:53 PM টিটো দত্ত Tito Dutta 
> wrote:
>
>> Greetings,
>> This is an unfortunate situation. In general circumstances I would have
>> been happy to see the addition.
>> "to draw clear lines between staff and board members " — I think this has
>> been a practice in different organisation. In a different organisation I
>> have seen a director was disallowed to join as a consultant immediately
>> after his disassociation.
>> But do we have any documented Wikimedia policy that allows or prohibits
>> such an appointment? It would be good to know about such guidelines.
>>
>> ইতি,
>> টিটো দত্ত/User:Titodutta
>>
>>
>> বৃহস্পতি, ২৪ জুন, ২০২১ তারিখে ৩:০৩ AM টায় এ Philip Kopetzky <
>> philip.kopet...@gmail.com> লিখেছেন:
>>
>>> Hi Maggie,
>>>
>>> to be honest this is really difficult to understand. While the WMF,
>>> through it's various committees, pushed affiliates to clearly draw the
>>> lines between board and staff by introducing stringent governance measures
>>> (and rightly so), which also include paragraphs about introducing a
>>> cooldown period before switching between board and being employed by the
>>> same organisation, the WMF is ignoring all of that governance advice it has
>>> given over the last few years.
>>>
>>> I feel quite silly now having been on the simpleAPG committee for three
>>> years and having advised affiliates who wanted to hire staff for the first
>>> time to draw clear lines between staff and board members, to now have to
>>> see this exact scenario I warned against play out at the WMF. Maria's
>>> departure from the BoT, even before her tenure was over and subsequent
>>> hiring really calls into question what the WMF thinks good governance
>>> should look like, notwithstanding the fact that the BoT now has one
>>> community elected seat less at a critical time in the strategy
>>> implementation process.
>>>
>>> All in all I can only call for a governance overhaul at the WMF so that
>>> murky situations like this don't happen again.
>>>
>>> Quite frustrated regards,
>>> Philip
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 23 Jun 2021 at 21:46, Maggie Dennis 
>>> wrote:
>>>
 Hello, all. :)

 I hope and trust that everyone is keeping well during these times!

 I’m Maggie Dennis, Vice President of the Community Resilience &
 Sustainability group of Wikimedia Foundation, within the Legal department.
 I wanted to announce with pleasure that Maria Sefidari has agreed to
 consult with the Foundation on Movement Strategy and the ongoing Board
 evolution for the upcoming year. Many of us know María from her role as the
 chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, from which she
 provided invaluable leadership in governance, oversight, and fundraising.
 Others may know her from her volunteer work as User:Raystorm
 , in which she has a
 broad range of experience.

 María, based in Spain, commenced her assignment with the Foundation
 this week. We intend to tap into her expertise and knowledge of the
 Foundation to support a successful implementation of the Movement’s
 Strategy and to tap into new opportunities. (With her Board work, she will
 be supporting Quim Gil’s team with the Board election and helping Margo Lee
 in improving onboarding, documentation practices, and training.) María will
 report to me as part of our Community Resilience & Sustainability group.
 I’m excited that she accepted our offer for a more hands-on assignment,
 particularly given how important all of the work she’ll be supporting is.
 :) With more than 15 years of Wikimedia experience, her contributions in

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Welcoming María Sefidari as a Foundation consultant. :)

[Chris Keating]

Hi Maggie,

I am flabbergasted.

It is verging on inappropriate for the WMF to immediately hire a trustee
the moment they step down from the Board.

I could just about understand if the focus was solely on the executive
transition. But this seems much wider.

As a former affiliate Chair I would never have dreamed of taking a job
right away at the affiliate I worked for. That would have created the
impression that volunteer trustees spent their time on the Board creating
remunerated roles for thenselves.

And it would have broken rules that we introduced, under direct threat by
the WMF of being de-recognised as an affiliate.

I am genuinely baffled why anyone thought this was a good idea, and while I
have the greatest respect for all involved, I urge Maria, the board, and
you to reconsider.

Regards,

Chris


On Wed, 23 Jun 2021, 21:45 Maggie Dennis,  wrote:

> Hello, all. :)
>
> I hope and trust that everyone is keeping well during these times!
>
> I’m Maggie Dennis, Vice President of the Community Resilience &
> Sustainability group of Wikimedia Foundation, within the Legal department.
> I wanted to announce with pleasure that Maria Sefidari has agreed to
> consult with the Foundation on Movement Strategy and the ongoing Board
> evolution for the upcoming year. Many of us know María from her role as the
> chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, from which she
> provided invaluable leadership in governance, oversight, and fundraising.
> Others may know her from her volunteer work as User:Raystorm
> , in which she has a broad
> range of experience.
>
> María, based in Spain, commenced her assignment with the Foundation this
> week. We intend to tap into her expertise and knowledge of the Foundation
> to support a successful implementation of the Movement’s Strategy and to
> tap into new opportunities. (With her Board work, she will be supporting
> Quim Gil’s team with the Board election and helping Margo Lee in improving
> onboarding, documentation practices, and training.) María will report to me
> as part of our Community Resilience & Sustainability group. I’m excited
> that she accepted our offer for a more hands-on assignment, particularly
> given how important all of the work she’ll be supporting is. :) With more
> than 15 years of Wikimedia experience, her contributions in the next phase
> will be a tremendous benefit to me and my team as we continue settling into
> our own work on Movement Strategy.
>
> Those of you who are involved with Movement Strategy are used to seeing
> her at related meetings and still will. :) I anticipate María will be
> joining one or more of the Movement Strategy global conversations
> 
> this weekend. Advertisement alert: maybe you can, too? Here’s more detail
> !
> I myself will be attending at least one of those sessions and look forward
> to seeing some of you there.
>
> Warm regards,
>
> Maggie
>
>
> --
> Maggie Dennis
> She/her/hers
> Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Regional Committees for Grants

[Chris Keating]

So while this thread has highlighted many sensible comments and questions,
I also want to recognise the value in the approach the WMF is taking to
this.

A consistent piece of feedback within the Movement is that support in the
form of grants and capacity-building feels remote from most affiliates (and
individuals). The regional grants committees should be better networked
with the groups they work with, as well as more likely to understand the
cultural/social/political contexts and speak the same languages, and so do
a better job.

Regional committees will also be able to identify needs for non-financial
support e.g. training.

This is also the first concrete step from towards making several of the
Movement Strategy recommendations a reality. Simply by involving more
people from more backgrounds the committees progress "equity in decision
making".  The existence of the regional grants committees will also be an
important piece of infrastructure which will support the development of
regional hubs.

At least that is if it works- all the more reason in my view not to ban
affiliate board members from taking part.

Thanks,

Chris



On Fri, 21 May 2021, 07:07 Julia Brungs,  wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> We hope this email finds you well and safe. The COVID 19 situation
> continues to affect many of us across the globe and our thoughts are with
> everyone affected. We are also aware that there are several processes
> currently in progress that demand volunteer time and we do not want to add
> more work to anyone's plate.
>
> We do want to draw your attention to our new Regional Committees for
> Grants though as they are an opportunity for you to have an active say in
> the future of our Movement!
>
> 📣 So today, we invite you to join our new Regional Committees for Grants!
> 📣
>
> We encourage Wikimedians and Free Knowledge advocates to be part of the
> new Regional Committees that the WMF Community Resources team is setting up
> as part of the grants strategy relaunch [1]. You will be a key strategic
> thought partner to help understand the complexities of any region, provide
> knowledge and expertise to applicants, to support successful movement
> activities, and make funding decisions for grant applications in the region.
>
> 👉Find out more on meta [2].
>
> Regional Committees will be established for the following regions:
>
>- Middle East and Africa
>- SAARC [3] region (Includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India,
>the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka)
>- East, Southeast Asia, and Pacific (ESEAP) region
>- Latin America (LATAM) and The Caribbean
>- United States and Canada
>- Northern and Western Europe
>- Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)
>
> 👉All details about the Committees and how to apply can be found on meta
> [4]. Applications have to be submitted by *June 4, 2021*!
>
> If you have any questions or comments, please use the meta discussion page
> [5].
>
> Please do share this announcement widely with your Network.
> Best wishes,
> Julia on behalf of the Community Resources Team
>
> [1]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch_2020-2021
> [2]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch_2020-2021/Regional_Committees
> [3] https://www.saarc-sec.org/index.php/about-saarc/about-saarc
> [4]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch_2020-2021/Regional_Committees#How_to_apply
> [5]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch_2020-2021
>
> --
> *Julia Brungs*
> Senior Community Relations Specialist
> Wikimedia Foundation 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] COVID-19 second wave and protection of our most valuable movement asset

[Chris Keating]

>
>
> Personally I feel, insuring individuals against COVID-19 or helping people
> to get vaccines or sending other supports can be better handled locally by
> local affiliates (or local committees as proposed by Tito, whichevers seems
> fit) instead of a central organization like WMF. Local affiliates have
> better information about the vulnerable section of the community,
> government orders concerning the available vaccines, local market value of
> insurance premiums, vaccines, disinfectants etc. Sometimes they even have
> the money and/or the intention to extend this kind of support too, all they
> need is just a permission from the donor i.e. WMF Grants team.
>

The more I think about this, the more I come to think that we should at
least attempt it.

It might be unusual for a nonprofit to provide this kind of support to its
volunteers, but this is a truly exceptional situation. And while the entire
world is struggling with Covid, the nature of the struggle is deeply
different in most wealthy countries compared to what India is going through
now. And India will probably not be the last nation to see its healthcare
system not just threatened but entirely overwhelmed.

Of course the WMF is not going to be able to start airlifting
Wikimedia-branded vaccines or oxygen supplies, but there must be some form
practical help that can be given to support Wikimedia volunteers.

Regards,

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy support in the next 10 weeks

[Chris Keating]

Hello all,

A group of us who have previously been involved with the strategy process
have made a proposal on how to move the Movement Charter process forward.

It's on Meta as well:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transition/Proposal:_Drafting_a_Movement_Charter

If you agree, please add your name at the bottom to endorse the proposal.
(If you disagree - it would be interesting to hear why, on the talk page)

Thanks!

Chris

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 9:59 AM Quim Gil  wrote:

> Hello everyone, the Movement Strategy team has some news for you:
>
> Movement Strategy support in the next 10 weeks
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transition/Update_14-04-2021
>
> It's implementation time!
>
> --
> Quim Gil (he/him)
> Senior Manager of Community Relations @ Wikimedia Foundation
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Qgil-WMF
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The Wikimedia Enterprise API project

[Chris Keating]

Thanks Liam!

Great to see such clear and thorough documentation of what this project is
about, why we're doing it, and why it's being done in this particular way.

Regards,

Chris / The Land

On Tue, Mar 16, 2021 at 4:03 PM Liam Wyatt  wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> Over the last few months, a small team at the Wikimedia Foundation has
> been working on a project that has been discussed by many people in our
> movement for many years: building ‘enterprise grade’ services for the
> high-volume commercial reusers of Wikimedia content. I am pleased to say
> that in a remarkably short amount of time (considering the complexity of
> the issues: technical, strategic, legal, and financial) we now have
> something worthy of showing to the community, and we are asking for your
> feedback. Allow me to introduce you to the Wikimedia Enterprise API project
> – formerly codenamed “okapi”.
>
> While the general idea for Wikimedia Enterprise predates the current
> movement strategy process, its recommendations identify an enterprise API
> as one possible solution to both “Increase the sustainability of our
> movement” and “Improve User Experience.”[0] That is, to simultaneously
> create a new revenue stream to protect Wikimedia’s sustainability, and
> improve the quality and quantity of Wikimedia content available to our many
> readers who do not visit our websites directly (including more consistent
> attribution). Moreover, it does so in a way that is true to our movement’s
> culture: with open source software, financial transparency, non-exclusive
> contracts or content, no restrictions on existing services, and free access
> for Wikimedia volunteers who need it.
>
> The team believes we are on target to achieve those goals and so we have
> written a lot of documentation to get your feedback about our progress and
> where it could be further improved before the actual product is ‘launched’
> in the next few months. We have been helped in this process over the last
> several months by approximately 100 individual volunteers (from many
> corners of the wikiverse) and representatives of affiliate organisations
> who have reviewed our plans and provided invaluable direction, pointing out
> weaknesses and opportunities, or areas lacking clarity and documentation in
> our drafts. Thank you to everyone who has shared your time and expertise to
> help prepare this new initiative.
>
> A essay describing the “why?” and the “how?” of this project is now on
> Meta:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Essay
>
> Also now published on Meta are an extensive FAQ, operating principles, and
> technical documentation on MediaWiki.org. You can read these at [1] [2] and
> [3] respectively. Much of this documentation is already available in
> French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
>
> The Wikimedia Enterprise team is particularly interested in your feedback
> on how we have designed the checks and balances to this project - to ensure
> it is as successful as possible at achieving those two goals described
> above while staying true to the movement’s values and culture. For example:
> Is everything covered appropriately in the “Principles” list? Is the
> technical documentation on MediaWiki.org clear? Are the explanations in the
> “FAQ” about free-access for community, or project’s legal structure, or the
> financial transparency (etc.) sufficiently detailed?
>
> Meet the team and Ask Us Anything:
>
> The central place to provide written feedback about the project in general
> is on the talkpage of the documentation on Meta at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Enterprise
>
> On this Friday (March 19)  we will be hosting two “Office hours”
> conversations where anyone can come and give feedback or ask questions:
>
>-
>
>13:00 UTC via Zoom at https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/95580273732
>-
>
>22:00 UTC via Zoom at https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/92565175760 (note:
>this is Saturday in Asia/Oceania)
>
> Other “office hours” meetings can be arranged on-request on a technical
> platform of your choosing; and we will organise more calls in the future.
>
> We will also be attending the next SWAN meetings (on March 21)
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Wikimedia_Affiliates_Network,
> and also the next of the Wikimedia Clinics
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Clinics
>
> Moreover, we would be very happy to accept any invitation to attend an
> existing group call that would like to discuss this topic (e.g.  an
> affiliate’s members’ meeting).
>
>
> On behalf of the Wikimedia Enterprise team,
>
> Peace, Love & Metadata
> -- Liam Wyatt [Wittylama], Wikimedia Enterprise project community liaison.
>
> [0]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations
>
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/FAQ
>
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Principles
>
> [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise
>
> *Liam W

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Surveys using third party tools on Wikimedia projects

[Chris Keating]

On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 6:59 AM Philippe Beaudette 
wrote:

>  Did anyone ask?
>
>
No, no-one did ask. Which is one reason that  it's regrettable this
conversation has kicked off with a confrontational on-wiki vote.

I would be interested to hear what the WMF's current position on this is.
Obviously there are questions to be asked about how the security and
privacy of Google Forms would compare with other possible solutions. And
there are tradeoffs to be made in terms of how much time, money and energy
should be spent on the wider FLOSS ecosystem. Currently none of us outside
the WMF really has anything to go on in terms of what the answers to those
questions are.

Since the subject of "why are you using closed-source solution X instead of
open-source Y?" is a recurring question in the movement, it would be great
if the WMF could provide some context to their decision-making here.

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Call for Feedback: Community Board seats and February 2 office hours

[Chris Keating]

I have to say the more I look at the 'options' we are asked to feed back
on, the more confused I get.

So far as I can see there are options relating to:
1) whether there should be elections a) to the Board itself, b) to a
"selection committee" that will nominate Board members, or c) not at all
2) if there is a 'selection committee', should it review candidates a)
before an election or b) after an election;  c) should the selection itself
be c) appointed or d) elected
3) if there is an election, what voting system should it use and should
seats be reserved for particular groups (using quotas).

For what it's worth, my personal view is that anything other than having
community-selected Board members elected by the community is going to be a
disaster. But I'm not entirely sure which one of the many talk pages that
feedback should go on.

Thanks,

Chris

On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 8:01 PM Jackie Koerner 
wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I am reaching out because the Call for Feedback for the
> community-and-affiliate board seats officially began today and runs through
> March 14. [1] We are offering multiple channels for questions and feedback.
> With the help of a team of community facilitators, we are organizing
> multiple conversations with multiple groups in multiple languages.
>
> On February 2 we have three options for office hours. [2]
>
> 2021-02-02 at 12:00 UTC
> 2021-02-02 at 18:00 UTC
> 2021-02-02 at 23:00 UTC
>
> Access links will be available 15 minutes before each session.
>
> Please let me know if you would like to schedule another time for your
> community or group to provide feedback.
>
> I look forward to hearing from you.
>
> Best,
>
> Jackie
>
> --
> *Jackie Koerner*
>
> *she/her*
> Communication Facilitator, Board Governance
> *English language communities and Meta*
>
> [1]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_for_feedback:_Community_Board_seats
> [2]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_for_feedback:_Community_Board_seats/Conversations/2021-02-02_-_First_Office_Hour
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[Wikimedia-l] Some thoughts on the Movement Charter

[Chris Keating]

Hi all, hope you're having a good festive season. England has storms, snow,
Covid and Brexit.

I've taken the opportunity to put some thoughts on Meta about what
principles the Movement Charter might contain. This is not really an
attempt at actually drafting the charter, more a way of organising my
thoughts on what might be important to include, as input for whatever group
does in fact start to write the Movement Charter in due course.

This is where I've got to:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:The_Land/Movement_Charter_Input

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund"

[Chris Keating]

Thanks Lisa, that's very reassuring.

Again, I know there will be more info on the Knowledge Equity Fund in the
> new year.  I ask your patience for the folks initiating this and trust that
> they will share more soon.
>

I look forward to hearing more from those folks in due course. There must
be some more details circulating internally though? I'm guessing the Board
probably had more information than "$4.5M for Knowledge Equity, to be
specified" in front of them when they agreed the grant? (Not that these
questions are addressed to you personally...)

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund"

[Chris Keating]

Thanks Lisa. That statement makes a lot of sense, though I do have some
questions still.

>
> Our first priority was to ensure that we had enough funding to support
> community grants. We transferred the full amount for Annual Plan Grants
> (APG) for FY20-21 over to Tides to ensure that all funding for affiliates
> for this year was secured, regardless of how fundraising performed. It also
> gives staff at affiliates and the Foundation more time to work together to
> make thoughtful grants, instead of an end-of-year rush. All affiliates who
> will be receiving funding through Tides were informed of the arrangement
> last summer. All other grantmaking (Community Grants, Rapid Grants,
> Project Grants) are still being funded through WMF directly, as usual.
> There is a round of APG grants set to go out via Tides this week.
>

Are Tides simply administering these funds at the WMF's direction, or will
Tides start to take over decisions about who gets these grants and what
amount different entities are eligible for? Has there been any change to
the reporting and transparency requirements that go with the APG grants?
What is the intention about how APG grants will work, since the FDC was
abolished a couple of years ago and there is unlikely to be any
community-driven replacement for it until at least a year or two's work has
gone into the implementation of the strategy?


> As of now, this is a one-time commitment of approximately $4.5 million. We
> are still working on the specific initial objectives of the fund and how it
> will operate. As a pilot initiative, we’ll be learning and adapting as we
> go.
>

Funding knowledge equity sounds like a great idea, but I have not
previously heard of an organisation making an irrecoverable $4.5 million
transfer without knowing what that money will be used to fund. Is there
anything more that can be shared apart from "it'll be used to fund
knowledge equity somehow"? And as above - is this going to be a WMF-led
process (maybe even involving the community), or will Tides be actually
making recommendations about who and what is funded? If the latter, how are
Tides going to adjust to the Wikimedia community's expectations about
transparency?

Thanks,

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 201, Issue 38

[Chris Keating]

Hi John,

Well that is part of the answer - though Tides will evidently also be
making other grants as well (what, to whom and what for is unclear)

But this also raises quite a lot of questions about the APG grants. Who is
now determining who gets how much? The FDC has been de facto abolished,
after it was 'paused' to allow more time for the strategy process. Has
their work been outsourced to the Tides Foundation? If so how are they
going to be going about it?

I don't know if any information about this has been communicated to the
affiliates whose budgets are affected, but of course they are not the only
stakeholders!

Chris

On Sun, Dec 13, 2020 at 3:56 PM John Andersson 
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> All of the Annual Planning Grants (APGs) to Wikimedia affiliates are next
> year paid through Tides Advocacy. Wikimedia Foundation has communicated
> this change to all of us affiliates that are affected many months ago, and
> there is nothing secretive going on. Please assume good faith.
>
> Best,
>
> John Andersson
> Executive Director
> Wikimedia Sverige
>
> Den sön 13 dec. 2020 13:02 
> skrev:
>
>> Send Wikimedia-l mailing list submissions to
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>>1. Re: WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity
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>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2020 12:39:31 +0100
>> From: Christophe Henner 
>> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
>> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia
>> Knowledge Equity Fund"
>> Message-ID:
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>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> It is the endowment.
>>
>> Le dim. 13 déc. 2020 à 10:37 AM, Yair Rand  a écrit
>> :
>>
>> > No, the Wikimedia Endowment is a separate thing.
>> >
>> > -- Yair Rand
>> >
>> > ‫בתאריך יום א׳, 13 בדצמ׳ 2020 ב-4:18 מאת ‪Michael Peel‬‏ <‪
>> > em...@mikepeel.net‬‏>:‬
>> >
>> >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment ?
>> >>
>> >> On 13 Dec 2020, at 08:33, Yair Rand  wrote:
>> >>
>> >> According to the recent Independent Auditors' Report of the WMF [1], at
>> >> some point prior to the end of June 2020, an entity called the
>> "Wikimedia
>> >> Knowledge Equity Fund" was established, and $8.723 million was
>> transferred
>> >> to it by the WMF, in the form of an unconditional grant. The Fund is
>> >> "managed and controlled by Tides Advocacy" (a 501(c)(4) advocacy
>> nonprofit
>> >> previously led by the WMF's current General Counsel/Board Secretary,
>> who
>> >> served as CEO, Board Secretary, and Treasurer there). Given that a
>> Google
>> >> search for "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund" yields zero results prior
>> to
>> >> the release of the report, it is clear that the WMF kept this
>> significant
>> >> move completely secret for over five months, perhaps over a year. The
>> >> Report FAQ additionally emphasizes that the WMF "has no right of
>> return to
>> >> the grant funds provided, with the exception of unexpended funds."
>> >>
>> >> The WMF unilaterally and secretly transferred nearly $9 million of
>> >> movement funds to an outside organization not recognized by the
>> >> Affiliations Committee. No mention of the grant was made in any Board
>> >> resolutions or minutes from the relevant time period. The amount was
>> not
>> >> mentioned in the public annual plan, which set out rather less than
>> this
>> >> amount for the entire grantmaking budget for the year. No application
>> was
>> >> made through any of the various Wikimedia grants processes. No further
>> >> information has been provided on the administration of this new Fund,
>> or on
>> >> the text of the grant agreement.
>> >>
>> >> I am appalled.
>> >>
>> >> -- Yair Rand
>> >>
>> >> [1]
>> >>
>> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2019-2020_Audit_Report.pdf
>> >> ___
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>> >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> <
>> >> mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund"

[Chris Keating]

So, the text in the FAQs is as follows:

"This year’s report says that the Wikimedia Foundation provided an
unconditional grant of $8.723 million to Tides Advocacy for the Wikimedia
Knowledge Equity Fund. What is the Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund?

A portion of our grant to Tides Advocacy will be used to launch the
Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund, a new fund that the Wikimedia Foundation
is establishing this fiscal year to invest in new grant-making
opportunities in support of groups that are advancing equitable, inclusive
representation in free knowledge. The remainder will be used to equitably
fund the annual operating expenses of other Wikimedia affiliate
organizations in service of our mission of free knowledge. The Wikimedia
Foundation is still setting up the specifics of the Knowledge Equity Fund
and will share more information in late 2020."



Which sort of answers "what", but not at all "why" ... we know Wikimedia
movement grantmaking is a complex area and the WMF has fairly good
experience in doing it. We also know that the WMF's record of outsourcing
anything relating to the Wikimedia movement is pretty disastrous, even
(especially?) where it's outsourced to an American consultancy, no matter
how focused on nonprofits. What exactly will Tides be doing, and why do we
think they are going to be any good at doing it? How is the movement going
to exercise scrutiny of this $10M?

Since the FAQs says more information will be available in "late 2020" maybe
this could be answered now?

Thanks,

Chris  / The Land







On Sun, Dec 13, 2020 at 1:29 PM Dan Garry (Deskana) 
wrote:

> It seems disingenous to describe it as "secret" given that it was
> willingly acknowledged in the the FAQ of the annual financial audit
> .
> The information provided in the FAQ is somewhat lacking, but these are not
> the actions of people trying to sweep it under the rug.
>
> Let us politely ask for more information without being unnecessarily
> alarmist.
>
> Dan
>
> On Sun, 13 Dec 2020 at 08:54, Yair Rand  wrote:
>
>> According to the recent Independent Auditors' Report of the WMF [1], at
>> some point prior to the end of June 2020, an entity called the "Wikimedia
>> Knowledge Equity Fund" was established, and $8.723 million was transferred
>> to it by the WMF, in the form of an unconditional grant. The Fund is
>> "managed and controlled by Tides Advocacy" (a 501(c)(4) advocacy nonprofit
>> previously led by the WMF's current General Counsel/Board Secretary, who
>> served as CEO, Board Secretary, and Treasurer there). Given that a Google
>> search for "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund" yields zero results prior to
>> the release of the report, it is clear that the WMF kept this significant
>> move completely secret for over five months, perhaps over a year. The
>> Report FAQ additionally emphasizes that the WMF "has no right of return to
>> the grant funds provided, with the exception of unexpended funds."
>>
>> The WMF unilaterally and secretly transferred nearly $9 million of
>> movement funds to an outside organization not recognized by the
>> Affiliations Committee. No mention of the grant was made in any Board
>> resolutions or minutes from the relevant time period. The amount was not
>> mentioned in the public annual plan, which set out rather less than this
>> amount for the entire grantmaking budget for the year. No application was
>> made through any of the various Wikimedia grants processes. No further
>> information has been provided on the administration of this new Fund, or on
>> the text of the grant agreement.
>>
>> I am appalled.
>>
>> -- Yair Rand
>>
>> [1]
>> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2019-2020_Audit_Report.pdf
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Donations - show the editors you care?

[Chris Keating]

I think it would be great if this sub-thread could come to an end and we
could stop having the list clogged up with questions about one person's
editing history.

Also, I can't quite remember the list policy on people who are blocked from
one or more Wikipedias for disruptive behaviour contributing here. Could
one of the list admins clarify?

Thanks,

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Foundation and affiliates disclosing salaries on job ads & the effect of this on workplace equity

[Chris Keating]

Glad to see this is prompting some discussion!

Dan -

Asking candidates for their current salary is prohibited in San Francisco
> as of July 2018 [1] which means that, as a San Francisco based
> organisation, the Foundation will undoubtedly not be doing this.
>

Very glad to hear it!


>
> There are some complexities in disclosing salary ranges for the Foundation.
> One practice that can be used for encouraging diversity in candidate
> applications is to specify that a position is open to candidates with a
> wide range of experience and in all locations in the world, in which case
> the salary range posted will be so large that it will basically be
> meaningless.


That's a fair point. Though it would be possible for the WMF to be clearer
about this - if a post is advertised but  it could end up at several
different pay scales based on how senior a post it ends up being, that
could be noted. And the method by which salary for non-SF-based roles is
calculated could also be explained... "On our US Office scale this role
would pay $50-60k, but as candidates could be appointed anywhere in the
world we adjust salaries based on the cost of living where you are
located". I'm guessing the WMF has developed a systematic method of doing
this somehow.

Thanks,

Chris
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[Wikimedia-l] Foundation and affiliates disclosing salaries on job ads & the effect of this on workplace equity

[Chris Keating]

Good morning everyone!

There's a campaign(1) for nonprofits to disclose the salaries, or at least
salary ranges, on job ads.

An increasing body of evidence(2) shows that practices like not disclosing
expected pay, and requiring applicants to disclose their current salary, is
harmful to equity in the workplace.

Not disclosing salaries affects pay levels within the organisation -
because white men are usually relatively confident in negotiating their
salaries upwards, so tend to end up with a better deal.

It can also affect the diversity of candidates who apply. Candidates who
have stronger networks within the industry they're moving into (again, more
commonly white men with privileged social and educational backgrounds) also
have clear expectations because they are 'in the know' about industry
norms, while people who don't, find the lack of salary information a
barrier to application. (After all, why take the time and effort to apply
for a job when you have no idea how the likely pay compares to your current
employment?)

I know practices vary within the movement - I believe the WMF never
mentions salaries on ads, and I don't know whether the range is disclosed
to applicants or not - some chapters I know do advertise a salary. However,
I'd urge all entities within the movement that hire staff to disclose the
expected salary ranges for posts they are advertising, as part of their
commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion.

Thanks for reading,

Chris



(1): https://showthesalary.com/
(2): e.g. at https://showthesalary.com/resources/
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board Update on Branding

[Chris Keating]

On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 11:26 AM Gnangarra  wrote:

>
> I think its fair to call for you to stand aside since taking full
> responsibility for the failing to communicate the Boards actions with the
> community and the communities position with the Board.
>
>
Really, no.

We want Board members who are prepared to take responsibility and prepared
to communicate in a clear and honest way. It would have been easy (but
wrong) to hide behind staff members, or not say anything until there had
been a Board meeting, or to address less of the issues.

Reading the Board's self-assessment that was published on Meta the other
month, there are clearly issues with how well the Board works at the
moment. I do not really understand why or what, but it's clear they're
there.  But getting rid of Board members who take responsibility for things
and engage with the community on difficult issues is not the answer.

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid API?

[Chris Keating]

It's interesting that of all the strategy recommendations, two are so far
being implemented. One is the Universal Code of Conduct, which has at least
had plenty of discussion and publicity, that even precedes the strategy
process. The other is this, which hasn't been particularly prominent
before, but the WMF seems to have a team working on it just a couple of
weeks after the final recommendations were published.

So while doing this is one of the strategy recommendations, it doesn't seem
that is is now happening *because of* the strategy recommendations

Chris

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 10:46 AM Gergő Tisza  wrote:

> You can find some more discussion at
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Iteration_3/Promote_Sustainability_and_Resilience#Freemium
>
> As I mentioned there, the premise of the recommendation is that the
> movement needs new revenue sources; in part because the 2030 strategy is
> ambitious and requires a significant increase in resources, in part because
> our current lack of diversity (about 40% of the movement's budget is from
> donations through website banners, and another 40% from past banners via
> email campaigns and such) is a strategic risk because those donations can
> be disrupted by various social or technical trends. For example, large tech
> companies which are the starting point of people's internet experience
> (such as Facebook or Google) clearly have aspirations to become the end
> point as well - they try to ingest and display to their users directly as
> much online content as they can. Today, that's not a whole lot of content
> (you might see fragments of Wikipedia infoboxes in Google's "knowledge
> panel", for example, but nothing resembling an encyclopedia article). Ten
> years from now, that might be different, and so we need to consider how we
> would sustain ourselves in such a world - in terms of revenue, and also in
> terms of people (how would new editors join the project, if most people
> interacted with our content not via our website, but interfaces provided by
> big tech companies where there is no edit button?).
>
> The new API project aims to do that, both in the sense of making it
> possible to have more equitable arrangements with bulk reusers of our
> content (who make lots of money with it), and by making it easier to reuse
> content in ways that align with our movement's values (currently, if you
> reuse Wikipedia content in your own website or application, and want to
> provide your users with information about the licensing or provenance of
> that content, or allow them to contribute, the tools we provide for that
> are third rate at best). As the recommendation mentions, erecting
> unintentional barriers to small-scale or non-commercial reusers was very
> much a concern, and I'm sure much care will be taken during implementation
> to avoid it.
>
> Wrt transparency, I agree this was communicated less clearly than ideal,
> but from the Wikimedia Foundation's point of view, it can be hard to know
> when to consult the community and to what extent (churning out so much
> information that few volunteers can keep up with it can be a problem too;
> arguably early phases of the strategy process suffered from it). This is a
> problem that has received considerable attention within the WMF recently
> (unrelated to API plans) so there's at the very least an effort to make the
> process of sharing plans and gathering feedback more predictable.
> Also, the pandemic has been a huge disruption for the WMF. Normally, by
> this point, the community would have been consulted on the draft annual
> plan, which is where new initiatives tend to be announced; but that has
> been delayed significantly due to so many staff members' lives being
> upheaved. Movement events where such plans are usually discussed had to be
> cancelled, and so on.
>
> (Written with my volunteer hat on. I was involved in the strategy process
> and helped write the recommendation snippet Yair quoted upthread; I'm not
> involved in the API gateway project.)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: Recommendations and community conversations launching next week

[Chris Keating]

Hi Aron,


>
> I see this as a fundamental issue, that's strongly related to why so much
> harassment (and lesser forms of incivility) are part of our everyday
> editing experience (I'm talking about less-known members of the community,
> who aren't protected by their established status, not us). Those
> differences can't be dealt with anger, but only with level-headed, honest
> and just moderation.
>
>
I entirely agree with this. In fact, this is why the movement strategy
recommendations put emphasis on creating shared expectations (through the
movement charter) as well as methods of conflict resolution.

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: Recommendations and community conversations launching next week

[Chris Keating]

>
> Superprotect is now over five years old. Superprotect's removal is now over
> four years old. It was a mistake, and it was explicitly acknowledged as
> such: the then-ED of the WMF said it had "set up a precedent of
> mistrust". Almost all of the people involved in it are no longer affiliated
> with the Wikimedia Foundation, and in fact, plenty of the staff members at
> the Wikimedia Foundation were hired *after* superprotect was removed.
>
> I don't think bringing up superprotect in this discussion is especially
> relevant or helpful.


I sort of want to agree with this, but actually I think it goes a bit
deeper.

If you ask questions about the relationship between the WMF and the
community, sooner rather than later someone will talk about Superprotect.
If you ask any of the 1,000 people who signed the petition against
Superprotect, most of whom are still active one way or another, then
Superprotect will probably be the first thing out of their mouths, even
though it happened 6 years ago. It's sufficiently ingrained in peoples'
minds that asking these people not to talk about Superprotect is like a
British person asking someone from the USA not to talk about the Boston Tea
Party.

In part this is because people were very angry about the issue at the time,
and that anger was dealt with very poorly at the time.

In part it's because people perceive there is nothing to prevent an
identical situation recurring. In some ways I think this perception is
unfair, for all the reasons you mention. But it still exists, and in part
it exists because of things the WMF has not done.  The Foundation's
expectations about how it interacts with the community remain fairly
unclear and fairly undocumented, from the Board level down. I recall there
have been some written statements of how the WMF now handles product
features, though I think this didn't come the ED or less the Board. I don't
believe there was ever a written review publilshed of Superprotect, while
there are written reviews and statements lessons learned from many other
situations that had much less impact. In short, the WMF is not seen as
having put the issue to bed in a way that results in everyone involved
moving on.

Thanks,

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] AffCom - Candidates for new mandate

[Chris Keating]

To me the main surprise is that AffCom continues to exist despite being
obviously broken.

It does not fulfill its mandate, it never has done, everyone knows this,
yet still the WMF is happy to have a non-functional committee.

Chris

On Thu, Jan 23, 2020 at 12:23 AM Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l <
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

>  On January the 10th I put it in the home page of meta
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Main_Page/WM_News&diff=prev&oldid=19695407
> , I think I did the same last year but I was considering obvious we had
> received some mails and I did not pay attention.
> I am surprised there are so many candidates considering the limited
> publicity the page gets in the month of December.
>
> Next year I will try to put it on the news section of the meta home page
> sooner.
> Alessandro
>
>
>
> Il giovedì 23 gennaio 2020, 01:14:00 CET, Paulo Santos Perneta <
> paulospern...@gmail.com> ha scritto:
>
>  Not sure this made it to the Wikimedia-L - I couldn't find it easily, at
> least. But the candidates for the new mandate in AffCom are under
> discussion now (and have been for some time already.
>
> Interested ppl, please follow the link and comment/endorse/ask questions to
> them there:
>
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Candidates/December_2019
>
> Best,
> Paulo - DarwIn
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation elections committee: Call for volunteers

[Chris Keating]

Hi Joe,

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

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

Thanks!

Chris

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

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

[Chris Keating]

On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 6:29 AM Paul J. Weiss  wrote:

> I find the disbanding of the Community Engagement department at WMF to be
> quite concerning. I will go so far as to say that I view it as a mistake
> that will have negative impacts well into the future.
>

Actually I think the opposite is just as likely to be true. I've been
thinking for a while that actually the best way for the WMF to be good at
working with "the community" (or, indeed, the many other communities that
we should be working with) is not necessarily for the WMF to have a
department called "community engagement". The other departments within WMF
should (and, in many cases, do) have many competencies, projects and areas
of focus that involve working with communities, and it looks like the aim
here is to make 'community engagement' more mainstream within the other
parts of the WMF.

You're right to point out that there are ways that this could go wrong, if
parts of CE end up being put in places where their new managers and wider
teams don't get it or don't prioritise that kind of work. However, it could
also go right, if those other teams/departments broaden in scope in
response to include more goals around working with the community. It all
depends how deeply embedded a culture of community engagement becomes
across the organization.

I did just want to ask about this, though:

Some people may be wondering, what does this mean for ... the planned
> restructure of the
> Community Engagement department to a new regional approach?


I'd not heard that this was happening, possibly because I'd not been paying
attention or because it's been discussed in other fora but not this one. If
this is still likely to happen in the new structure, can someone tell us
more?

Thanks!

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Greener travel and the ethics of carbon offset for Wikimedia community events

[Chris Keating]

>
> This has nothing to do with how green WMF operations might be. It has
> to do with the greener choices /we/ as volunteers can make for /our/
> conferences.
>

Since a fortnight ago you were haranguing* the WMF for using too much air
travel and lacking "any actual measurable commitment to picking up a
telephone, holding a video conference, or holding a VR conference session",
it will be interesting to see what solutions you can come up with for this
conference you're organising. Did you consider the options other than an
in-person conference that you recommended the WMF adopt, out of interest?




*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-09-30/News_from_the_WMF
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Affiliates] Recognition of the Wikimedians of Saint Petersburg User Group

[Chris Keating]

Hi Ziko,

I believe the only "official" rationale is in the 2012 Board resolution:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Resolutions/Recognizing_Models_of_Affiliations

and the thinking behind this is documented here, also from 2011-12.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles_project

I do not know of any serious discussion on the subject until 2019, when a
you may know the Roles and Responsibilities strategy working group looked
at this and similar issues, and came to the conclusion that we should move
away from the idea of "WMF and affiliates"  to a more distributed approach
with a network of equal entities filling different roles, and more
structures to support and coordinate between them. (There are some
similarities between that and what the Wikimedians in Russia seem to be
moving towards organically, which is interesting.)

Chris



On Mon, Oct 7, 2019 at 12:50 PM Ziko van Dijk  wrote:

> Sorry, people, but I would like to read an official statement of the WMF
> (committee) what is the reason or rationale behind this policy to accept WM
> user groups in countries where you already have a chapter. Does anybody
> have a link?
> Kind regards
> Ziko
>
> Am Sa., 5. Okt. 2019 um 19:16 Uhr schrieb Paulo Santos Perneta <
> paulospern...@gmail.com>:
>
> > Hi Farhad,
> >
> > Very interesting, thank you very much for sharing your insight.
> > The advantages at an organizational level are quite obvious, indeed, and
> > it's a smart way to deal with those membership limitations.
> > I'm glad that the WMF & Wikimedia is abandoning the very rigid chapter
> > model as the preferred one, and is evolving into more flexible and
> nuanced
> > options and varieties, such as those confederations.
> >
> > Best,
> > Paulo
> >
> >
> > Фархад Фаткуллин / Farhad Fatkullin  escreveu no dia
> > sábado, 5/10/2019 à(s) 15:38:
> >
> > > Hi folks,
> > >
> > > I can probably comment this, as a member of both Wikimedia Russia and a
> > > Tatar language-specific UG.
> > > On top of participation in Wikimedia Language Diversity initiative on
> > > meta, I am also contemplating and working towards starting a
> > > territory-specific UG for my region + an incubator UG for more
> > > language-specific UG in the languages of Russia.
> > >
> > >
> > > Wikimedians of Russia seem to see the matreshkas of (1) "global
> > conference
> > > - regional conference - topic-specific conferences"  & (2) WMF &
> > affiliates
> > > general meeting - national chapters - UGs" as natural structures, each
> > > addressing different tasks, having different priorities, whilst
> > cooperating
> > > in various projects.
> > >
> > > * Wikimedia Russia legal requirements (in-person quorum for
> > > decision-making, etc.) doesn't allow us to accept into membership all
> > > members of all our regional, language or topic specific UGs. So our
> > chapter
> > > is evolving towards a mixed confederation status, selectively welcoming
> > > some members from various groupings around Russia (which themselves
> can't
> > > be neither cells nor branches of WMRU).
> > >
> > > * SPB is not purely a city, but a one of 85 provinces (read states) of
> > the
> > > Russian Federation (like my home Republic of Tatarstan, neighbouring
> > > Republic of Bashkortostan with its Bashkir Wiki-grandmas, or a city of
> > > Moscow).
> > >
> > > * Once we will spin out UG MSK, we will complete transforming Wikimedia
> > > Russia into a collective entity for join tasks, working on
> national-level
> > > advocacy & other projects.
> > >
> > > * We currently have 5 existing UGs, have two more filed & at least one
> > > more at the preparation stage - as this is a good way to engage locally
> > or
> > > topically interested public into Wikimedia universe.
> > >
> > >
> > > regards,
> > > farhad
> > >
> > > --
> > > Farhad Fatkullin - Фархад Фаткуллин Тел.+79274158066 / skype:frhdkazan
> /
> > > Wikipedia:frhdkazan / Wikidata:Q34036417
> > >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Community Tech: New Format for 2020 Wishlist Survey

[Chris Keating]

>
> > the wishlist only reflects
> > the needs and perceptions of highly active contributors [at present I
> think
> > it only accepts submissions in English ,which is another obstacle, but
> that
> > could be addressed].
>
> The wishlist has explicitly accepted wishes in any language.


Thanks for confirming - and glad to hear it!

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Community Tech: New Format for 2020 Wishlist Survey

[Chris Keating]

Hi Yuri,

I just wanted to respond to this as I think there are two levels of issue
here, and on one level I agree and on another I disagree!

On the more immediate level about "ok, there's a technical wishlist, what
should we do with it" - I think it's a reasonable decision for the WMF to
opt to have a year where the wishlist focuses on non-Wikipedia projects.
Certainly if you talk to people who are mainly active on Wikisource or
Commons or somewhere else they feel Wikipedias get all of the attention,
and it seems to me that this decision is based on people at the WMF hearing
that and finding a way to act on it.

However I agree with most of the rest of your email, particularly the issue
about overall alignment of priorities between the community and the WMF. I
think your question about "what if all the WMF's efforts were focused on
the results of the wishlist?" is quite thought-provoking. I imagine a large
part of the reason this doesn't happen is that the wishlist only reflects
the needs and perceptions of highly active contributors [at present I think
it only accepts submissions in English ,which is another obstacle, but that
could be addressed]. Of course highly active contributors are not the only
audience the WMF is building products for, but "community input" isn't
sought in prioritising projects that mainly affect e.g. reader experience.

Which poses some questions about what a more collaborative approach to
setting priorities for product across the piece might look like - which is
something you can see some of the strategy process recommendations moving
towards. Probably a vote on a wishlist wouldn't be the right way to do it,
because it's a challenging task to try to prioritise e.g. something that
makes life easier for readers in Nigeria vs something that makes life
easier for editors in Germany, and there probably isn't a really simple
solution. However there is almost certainly a better solution than all of
that prioritisation being done within the WMF staff, part for the certain
amount of resource that gets dedicated to the wishlist...

Thanks

Chris

On Sat, Oct 5, 2019 at 12:44 AM Yuri Astrakhan 
wrote:

> Ilana, restricting wishlist to non-Wikipedia this year is a very sad news.
>
> For many years, wishlist survey was the best way for the community to talk
> back to the foundation, and to try to influence its direction. WMF mostly
> ignored these wishes, yet it was still a place to express, discuss,
> aggregate and vote on what community needed. Big thank-you is due to the
> tiny community tech team that tackled the top 10 items, but that's just ~3%
> of the foundation's employees.
>
> WMF has been steadily separating itself from the community and loosing
> credibility as a guiding force.  Take a look at the last election -- almost
> every candidate has said "no" to the question if WMF is capable of
> deciding/delivering on the direction [1].  In **every** single conversation
> I had with the community members, people expressed doubts with the movement
> strategy project, in some cases even treating it as a joke.
>
> This is a huge problem, and restricting wishlist kills the last effective
> feedback mechanism community had.  Now WMF is fully in control of itself,
> with nearly no checks & balances from the people who created it.
>
> I still believe that if WMF makes it a priority to align most of its
> quarterly/yearly goals with the community wishlist (not just top 10
> positions), we could return to the effective community-governance.
> Otherwise WMF is risking to mirror Red Cross Haiti story [2] -- hundreds of
> millions of $$ donated, and very few buildings actually built.
>
> With great respect to all the people who made Wikis what they are today,
> --[[User:Yurik]]
>
> [1]
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2019/Questions#Do_you_believe_the_Wikimedia_Foundation_in_its_present_form_is_the_right_vehicle_for_the_delivery_of_the_strategic_direction?_If_so_why,_and_if_not,_what_might_replace_it
> ?
>
> [2]
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Red_Cross#Disaster_preparedness_and_response
>
> On Fri, Oct 4, 2019 at 5:18 PM Ilana Fried  wrote:
>
> > Hello, everyone!
> >
> > My name is Ilana, and I'm the product manager for the Community Tech
> team.
> > We’re excited to share an update on the Community Tech 2020 Wishlist
> Survey
> > . This
> > will
> > be our fifth annual Community Wishlist Survey, and for this year, we’ve
> > decided to take a different approach. In the past, we've invited people
> to
> > write proposals for any features or fixes that they'd like to see, and
> the
> > Community Tech team has addressed the top ten wishes with the most
> support
> > votes. This year, we're just going to focus on the *non-Wikipedia content
> > projects* (i.e. Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Commons, Wikisource,
> > Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, and Wikinews), and we're
> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] FY1819 Fundraising Report

[Chris Keating]

Hi Chuck,

The reasons the question keeps getting asked is because it was never really
answered in the first place.

The only good reason I can think of for not publishing country-level data
is that there are some countries where that could create risks to the WMF
or individuals because they're places where giving donations to a US
nonprofit is either illegal or politically risky.

However that doesn't apply to most countries, so why not publish the data
for most of the world?

Chris

On Thu, Oct 3, 2019 at 1:34 AM Chuck Roslof  wrote:

> Hi Philip,
>
> We do not publish country-level fundraising numbers. My colleague Stephen
> discussed why on this list a few years back, so rather than paraphrasing
> his previous email I'll just provide a link to it:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-November/085576.html
>
> Best,
> Chuck
>
> ==
> Charles M. Roslof
> Legal Counsel
> Wikimedia Foundation
> Pronouns: they /he
> 
>
> NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged
> information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please
> delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the
> Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice
> to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff
> members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see
> our legal disclaimer
> .
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 1, 2019 at 6:05 AM Philip Kopetzky 
> wrote:
>
> > Hi Patricia,
> >
> > thanks for the report! Is it possible to get a country-by-country
> breakdown
> > of the donations as well?
> >
> > Kind regards,
> > Philip
> >
> > On Tue, 1 Oct 2019 at 01:25, Patricia Pena  wrote:
> >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I’m excited to share with you our FY1819 Fundraising Report
> > > . This
> > report
> > > is an opportunity to provide insight into our revenue model and the
> > > strategy that goes into creating an impactful fundraising campaign. A
> > > sincere thank you to the millions of donors in nearly 30 countries who
> > > support our mission.
> > >
> > > I'd also like to thank everyone who contributed and collaborated on
> this
> > > document: Online Fundraising, Major Gifts & Endowment, Fundraising
> > > Operations, Donor Services, Fundraising Tech, Legal, Communications,
> > > Finance and more! Special thanks to Thea Skaff for once again project
> > > managing this entire effort.
> > >
> > > We welcome your feedback and questions on the talk page.
> > > Thank you,
> > > Pats
> > > --
> > > *Pats Pena (she/her) *
> > > Director, Online Fundraising I Wikimedia Foundation
> > > 1 Montgomery Street I San Francisco, CA 94104
> > > pp...@wikimedia.org I +1 (415) 816 3349
> > >
> > >
> > > *Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
> > the
> > > sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. Donate.
> > > *
> > >
> > >
> > > Please Note: If I am emailing after hours or on the weekend, it's
> because
> > > Wikimedia allows me an awesome flexible schedule. Please do not respond
> > > until reasonable business hours in your timezone, unless of course I am
> > > shouting for help ;-)
> > > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: Draft recommendations are here!

[Chris Keating]

Just to follow this up, we in the Roles and Responsibilities working group
have now supplemented our recommendations with three potential future
structural models for the Wikimedia movement. (These have were being worked
on still on in the light of other feedback on Thursday, hence them not
being published at the same time as our recommendations.)

While comments and questions are welcome on Meta, we have created a survey
for each model to help gather granular feedback on the strengths and
weaknesses of each and that is our preferred method of getting detailed
comments.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_Groups/Roles_%26_Responsibilities/Recommendations


Thanks,

Chris Keating
User:The Land

On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 7:37 PM Nicole Ebber 
wrote:

> Dear fellow Wikimedians,
>
> They’re here! [1] We are delighted to announce the first round of
> draft recommendations for structural change within our movement have
> been published. The recommendations have been developed by the nine
> Wikimedia 2030 working groups and are a key tool to help us build the
> future of our movement.
>
> Working group members have been working tirelessly for a year to
> research the movement, analyze community input shared via community
> conversations, and gain insight into external trends. A huge thank you
> to each and every member for helping us reach this key milestone.
>
> The draft recommendations are a first look at ways we can adapt our
> movement’s structures to help us advance in our strategic direction.
> They are the starting point for conversations about what kind of
> future we want to create together.
>
> The recommendations are not final. In order to get them to that stage,
> your input is needed! We would like to hear from you all what these
> changes would mean for you in your local or thematic context, what do
> you like about them, and where you potentially see any red flags. And
> of course, always critically question whether these recommendations
> support the strategic direction.
>
> There are a few ways to do this:
> * Read through the recommendations online and provide your input
> directly on Meta. [2]
> * If you will be at Wikimania, join us in the Wikimedia 2030 space. [3]
> * Attend a Strategy Salon hosted by an affiliate where you live. [4]
> * Reach out to a Strategy Liaison in your language to share feedback,
> or lead a conversation of your own. [5]
>
> Over the next month, working groups will take the input they receive
> into the recommendations, alongside external advice and research, and
> use it to refine and finalize them. Share your views, and help shape
> what Wikimedia will look like in 2030 and beyond.
>
> If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to get in touch.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Nicole
>
> [1]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations
> [2]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations
> [3] https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2019:Wikimedia_2030
> [4]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Strategy_Salons
> [5]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/People/Community_Strategy_Liaisons
>
> --
> Nicole Ebber
> Adviser International Relations
> Program Manager Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy
> Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
> Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0
> https://wikimedia.de
>
> Unsere Vision ist eine Welt, in der alle Menschen am Wissen der
> Menschheit teilhaben, es nutzen und mehren können. Helfen Sie uns
> dabei! https://spenden.wikimedia.de
>
> Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
> V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts
> Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig
> anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin,
> Steuernummer 27/029/42207.
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Welcoming Ryan Merkley to the Wikimedia Foundation

[Chris Keating]

> "*support the strategy core team to move the Working Group recommendations
> into implementation within the community and Foundation over the course of
> the coming year."*
>
> Does that mean that it has already been decided to implement those
> rcommendations, irrespective to the views of the Community?
>
>
No, just that it's expect that at least some recommendations will be
implemented in some way. In some areas it might well be that some of the
final recommendations involve a further period of consultation and
discussion.

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: Draft recommendations are here!

[Chris Keating]

>
>
> I have some bigger concerns with a few of the other strategy proposals and
> I am thinking about how to engage with the people who made those proposals.
> I don't want people to feel that their ideas are being casually dismissed,
> nor do I want to have hostility between the WGs and the wider community. I
> would prefer to have constructive discussions, but I don't know how best to
> do that at this point. I think that waiting a week or two for tempers to
> cool might be good before engaging.


Hi Pine - any comments on the Meta talk pages of the recommendations will
definitely be read and help shape the next round of development of the
recommendations. Thoughtful, considered comments are more helpful than
angry ones, of course :)

(I don't think most the working groups have much capacity to respond
promptly, though!)

Thanks,

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: Draft recommendations are here!

[Chris Keating]

Hi Ziko,

There is in fact a rationale within the text of the recommendation. In
essence, it's that some communities will never share their heritage if it
can then be re-used in a manner they consider disrespectful.

Of course one can disagree with that statement on a factual level, or ask
for evidence behind it.

Or one can agree with it but disagree with the intention of the
recommendation.

Or one can agree with the intention, but disagree about the the
effectiveness of allowing some NC or ND content on some Wikimedia projects
as a method of achieving it.

What is rather less constructive is gathering pitchforks and flaming
torches against the OUTRAGE of THE WMF making every Wikimedia project
immediately accept unfree content.

Chris


On Mon, 12 Aug 2019, 17:25 Ziko van Dijk,  wrote:

> Am Mo., 12. Aug. 2019 um 17:51 Uhr schrieb Nicole Ebber <
> nicole.eb...@wikimedia.de>:
>
> > Dear all,.
>
>
>
> > As such, constructive
> > feedback and solution-oriented suggestions are welcomed.
>
>
> Hello Nicole,
> For example, if I say that I am against NC and ND content on Commons, would
> such a feedback be welcome? Or would it be dismissed as not "constructive"
> and not "solution-oriented"?
> Maybe you can explain to me what the actual problem is that is supposed to
> be solved by ND and NC content?
> Kind regards
> Ziko
>
>
>
>
>
> > > specific expressions of those ideas certainly can be, but the
> underlying
> > > facts and ideas cannot. If the expression of those ideas is to be on
> > > Wikimedia, they must be under an open content license, allowing reuse
> > > without regard to purpose. If someone would prefer to put their work
> > under
> > > an NC license, then a free-content project is not the appropriate place
> > for
> > > it. Many other places are happy to accept NC-licensed material. But
> even
> > > then, reuse of the concepts and facts cannot be prohibited no matter
> what
> > > one does.
> > >
> > > Todd
> > >
> > > On Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 5:47 AM Philip Kopetzky <
> > philip.kopet...@gmail.com
> > > >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Please don't generalise frustration with your conduct on this list.
> > > You're
> > > > the only one telling people to shut up here.
> > > >
> > > > And just to keep this on track, what is your view on how we can
> > > incorporate
> > > > indigenous knowledge without it becoming commercialised by the
> current
> > > > licensing scheme?
> > > > ___
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> > > 
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Nicole Ebber
> > Adviser International Relations
> > Program Manager Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy
> > Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
> > Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0
> > https://wikimedia.de
> >
> > Unsere Vision ist eine Welt, in der alle Menschen am Wissen der
> Menschheit
> > teilhaben, es nutzen und mehren können. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
> > https://spenden.wikimedia.de
> >
> > Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
> > Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
> unter
> > der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
> > Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: Draft recommendations are here!

[Chris Keating]

Hi Yaroslav,


> No, it does not work like this. Large communities are only going to accept
> decisions which were discussed with them properly, on their project and in
> the two-way interaction mode. The discussions on Meta in the mode "we will
> listen to you and then let you know of our decision" are not going to be
> accepted. We have had enough recent examples to illustrate this.
>
>
And that is why, even a year into this working group process, a number of
the recommendations are *still* phrased as suggestions that the Wikimedia
movement collectively should develop principles for such-and-such an area.

I think many people are reading these draft recommendations as something
they are not.

Also, I find it very ironic that many people are reacting to these strategy
process as if it was some method of the WMF inflicting its will on everyone
else, when actually many of the recommendations would result in very
significant changes to the WMF as an organisation.

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Some goodbye to all

[Chris Keating]

>
> It is extremely disappointing, and *extremely typical* of the Wikimedia
> movement, to see an entire thread like this dedicated to supporting someone
> who Trust & Safety has found to have acted in such a way that they had to
> intervene. It is even more disappointing to see a person who was affected
> by his actions told "this is not your story" and "it may help you when you
> grow some sensitivity and respect this experience, the
> feelings of others."
>
> If you're wondering why women leave the Wikimedia movement, and why
> Wikimedia has such a bad harassment problem in general, just reflect on
> this thread.


Thank you, Molly, for expressing what I was just trying to summon the
energy to write.

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community Health, Roles & Responsibilities

[Chris Keating]

>
> Here's a fundamental source of disagreement. It gets at something I'm not
> sure the strategy process is properly addressing. Does the WMF lead and
> direct the Wikimedia movement?


Personally, I don't think the WMF knows the answer to this, either in
practice, or what they want.

We are in a sort of weird situation where "the WMF" often feel they don't
have any power because "the community" won't let them exercise it, and/or
they (as the WMF) don't feel they have enough mandate or are representative
enough to do things. At the same time, most of "the community" feels they
don't have any significant power or influence because the WMF makes the
real decisions and no-one is ever going to pay attention to them, the
individual community member.

Part of the reason the WMF has outsourced much of its long-term planning to
the Movement Strategy process is because it isn't confident it has the
mandate to actually make decisions like this.

Or is its role to provide support and
> services to the movement's contributors, who are (collectively) its
> leaders? Should it impose change on projects based on its own determination
> of need, or respond to needs identified by project communities?
>

I think really it depends on the quality of leadership provided by movement
contributors. Indeed, when Wikipedia was first set up the whole idea was
about empowering everyone to make decisions and assuming that good-faith
contributors would work issues out between them. This has turned out to not
work in many important areas, for reasons that I won't attempt to go into
here (and no, it's not all the WMF's fault)


> I think this becomes the true basis of the anger and resistance on the
> English Wikipedia: *the sense that the WMF has declared that it is
> leading now, instead of supporting*. That's also the message in comments
> that assert the WMF has the authority to do what it likes, and no
> obligation to explain or justify its decisions. Each time the WMF has taken
> similar decisions the reaction has been similar, but as I mentioned in a
> previous post... They are not learning the appropriate lessons.


I think you have correctly identified why so many very active Wikipedians
get so frustrated with the WMF. I am not sure how much light that sheds on
the right solution, though.

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Results of the Affiliate Selected Board Seats voting

[Chris Keating]

Hi all,

I just wanted to note that the facilitators have now posted their meeting
notes from the election process:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2019/notes

These clearly raise some issues. Hopefully these issues can be addressed
before any future similar elections (in fact, I think some solutions are
relatively simple):

1) Evidently not all voters understood the voting system - a small number
appear to have allocated 'points' rather than preferences e.g. "this
candidate got 10 votes from our members so we are putting 10 in the box" -
which had the effect of giving them 10th preference (pretty low)
- This can probably be addressed by improving ballot paper design, e.g. by
asking voters to select "First" "Second" etc etc rather than type numbers
into boxes.

2) There seem to have been some issues around affiliates realising they had
mis-voted, and then changing their minds and asking for replacement ballot
papers. This is kind of what you'd expect, but there appears to have been
at least one case where a replacement ballot was requested using an
unexpected channel and then not issued.
- I'm not sure how thorough the instructions/communication on this issue
were but strikes me as a learning point for the future.

3) There appear to have been some challenges in the relationship between
the WMF staff involved and the election facilitators, including
(apparently) at one point a possibly inaccurate election result being
circulated  within WMF before the facilitators had counted it
- This was the first time the WMF staff had assisted with the ASBS process
and I'm not sure how clear the boundaries of the different roles were.
Certainly one to clarify in future...

If I read these notes correctly, it is the case that if the election
facilitators had taken different interpretations of how to handle points 1
and 2, the result might well have been different.

However, so far as I can see the facilitators have done as much as they can
to report the result accurately. Ultimately, facilitators can only count
the votes that are actually received through the election process, and
can't start double-guessing voters' intentions.

Chris






On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 5:59 PM Jan-Bart de Vreede 
wrote:

> Hi All
>
> Thanks to the election committee for facilitating this election, and all
> those who voted. And as Pierre said: thanks to all those who put their name
> forward, it is a lot of work and involves a lot of responsibility.
>
> Congrats to Nataliia and Shani!
>
> And thank you so much to Christophe for serving!
>
> Jan-Bart “recycled” de Vreede ;)
> Board Member Wikimedia Netherlands
>
>
>
> On 13 June 2019 at 00:56:18, Ad Huikeshoven (a...@huikeshoven.org) wrote:
>
> *Dear Wikimedians, We are writing to let you know the result of the
> election for the 2 Affiliate Selected Board Seats on the Wikimedia
> Foundation board. The successful candidates were Nataliia Tymkiv and Shani
> Evenstein Sigalov. A total of 122 affiliates voted, 85% of the 143 eligible
> to vote, which is a record. As you know the election was conducted under a
> variation of the Single Transferable Vote, which meant that prorated votes
> were redistributed between candidates to come up with the final result. In
> the 10th step of counting the final place, after Nataliia Tymkiv was
> elected, was between Shani Evenstein Sigalov (40.519678) and Richard Knipel
> (40.480322). We have put the full count narrative on meta so that others
> can verify it if they wish.[1] It is the closest ASBS result for some time,
> and all candidates brought very valuable perspectives to the work of the
> WMF. In the 9th step of counting Reda Kerbouche lost by a very small
> margin. Adding a ballot with rank #1 for Richard or Reda would result in
> them being elected instead of Shani. The same goes for removing a ballot.
> Changing the ranking on one of the ballots in a specific can way can result
> in a different outcome for the second seat. This is an election in which
> every vote counts. As in any election, there is a chance that some voters
> misinterpreted the instructions and voted wrongly. We don't see a
> justification for an action as extraordinary and controversial as opening
> votes for review after the vote period is over. The instructions were
> visible and clear: "Rank any candidate from 1 (your preferred candidate) to
> 11 (your least preferred candidate)." After voting, voters received a
> confirmation email stating the name of each candidate they voted with the
> number of their rank: Rank 1, Rank 2, ... The agency of voters should be
> respected. As part of the retrospective we may identify areas of
> improvements on our side, but still the process was quite simple and
> documented. Some voters realized they made a mistake and requested a new
> ballot. New ballots were issued in those cases. This choice was done
> because of the specific situation of this election, since the process was
> complex for new affiliates and

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fram en.wp office yearlock block

[Chris Keating]

On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 11:48 PM Paulo Santos Perneta <
paulospern...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Going there dismissing the whole issue as a sexist mob doing GamerGate kind
> of stuff, what was she expecting, really.
>
>
Maybe she was expecting people to read what she actually said, and engage
with it, rather than twist her words so they're easy to dismiss?

Maybe she was hoping people might think about whether there WAS some sexist
harrassment happening, and whether parts of our community were actually
behaving a bit like Gamergaters?
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fram en.wp office yearlock block

[Chris Keating]

>
> So, pretty much every discussion is decided by those who choose to
> participate in it. I don't know any way around that; we can't force people
> to participate. At some point, if you don't stick your hand up, you don't
> get counted.
>
>
Well, Maria Sefidari (Raystorm) showed up and ended up being faced with a
torrent of abuse.

If you don't stick your hand up, your views are invalid. If you do stick
your hand up, people will shout at you about how invalid your views are.
Particularly if you're a woman.

I don't know what lesson we're all supposed to draw from this
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fram en.wp office yearlock block

[Chris Keating]

I think we should probably reflect on the fact we've got to the point where
arguments along the lines of

"This guy shouldn't be blocked, he was only telling people to fuck
themselves"

are sort of normal.

This kind of behaviour wouldn't be acceptable in any other movement or
community or workplace... Why here?

(Also I think it's clear this was not the only issue... so while I have
some  concerns about the "how" here, I'm struggling to disagree with the
outcome)

Chris

On Wed, 12 Jun 2019, 07:44 Yair Rand,  wrote:

> Philippe, the email from Trust & Safety said quite clearly that the ban was
> triggered by edit 895438118. I assume that T&S would not lie about their
> reasons for something like this.
>
> ‫בתאריך יום ג׳, 11 ביוני 2019 ב-22:35 מאת ‪Philippe Beaudette‬‏ <‪
> phili...@beaudette.me‬‏>:‬
>
> > Nathan writes:
> >
> > *“Why are WMF staffers so*
> >
> > *deeply, fundamentally disconnected from the communities where they feel
> > the*
> > *right to ban people for saying "fuck arbcom"?”*
> >
> >
> > I’ve seen no evidence that this is the case here and would be utterly
> > shocked if a t&s staff member had indeed banned for saying that.
> >
> > If the situation is anything like what it was when I was at WMF, a ban
> such
> > as this requires multiple levels of review by a couple of different teams
> > (in my time, we would not have considered a ban such as this without sign
> > off from the community and legal teams, for instance). I don’t know if
> the
> > process is the same now but I would be surprised to hear that any single
> > staff member would feel comfortable banning on his or her authority
> alone.
> > Multiple levels of review exist in order to ensure that ban reasons are
> > valid and appropriate.
> >
> > Philippe
> >
> > On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 6:55 PM Nathan  wrote:
> >
> > > Wow, what a cluster. How does the WMF get themselves into these
> things? I
> > > have ten edits to en.wp since 2018 and even I could have 100% predicted
> > the
> > > entire spectrum, and scale, of the reaction here. Why are WMF staffers
> so
> > > deeply, fundamentally disconnected from the communities where they feel
> > the
> > > right to ban people for saying "fuck arbcom"?
> > >
> > > On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 3:49 PM Todd Allen 
> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Amir, yes, ArbCom members must sign the WMF confidentiality agreement
> > for
> > > > nonpublic information (
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Confidentiality_agreement_for_nonpublic_information
> > > > )
> > > > , as must all functionaries (checkuser, oversight, etc.). I was on
> the
> > > > English Wikipedia ArbCom for two years, and it was routine for us to
> > deal
> > > > with sensitive, private information.
> > > >
> > > > Todd
> > > >
> > > > On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 9:46 AM Amir Sarabadani  >
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > People who oppose the ban: Are you aware of all aspects and things
> > Fram
> > > > has
> > > > > done? Do you have the full picture? It's really saddening to see
> how
> > > fast
> > > > > people jump to conclusion in page mentioned in the email. I
> > personally,
> > > > > don't know what happened so I neither can support or oppose the
> ban.
> > As
> > > > > simple as that.
> > > > >
> > > > > So what should be done IMO. If enwiki wants to know more, a
> community
> > > > body
> > > > > can ask for more information, if body satisfy two things:
> > > > >  - They had signed NDA not to disclose the case
> > > > >  - They are trusted by the community
> > > > >
> > > > > I think the only body can sorta work with this is stewards but not
> > sure
> > > > > (Does ArbCom NDA'ed?)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 3:58 PM Paulo Santos Perneta <
> > > > > paulospern...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > Lack of transparency from the WMF, whatelse is new.
> > > > > > I'm currently under a funding ban secretly decided (by who?)
> based
> > > on a
> > > > > > false accusation, without providing any evidence. Until now I'm
> > > waiting
> > > > > for
> > > > > > an explanation from the WMF. So, this sort of attitude doesn't
> > > surprise
> > > > > me
> > > > > > at all.
> > > > > > It is very unfortunate that the WMF apparently thrives in this
> kind
> > > of
> > > > > > medieval obscurity, the opposite of the values of the Wikimedia
> > > > Movement.
> > > > > > Matter for Roles & Reponsibilities.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Best,
> > > > > > Paulo
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Benjamin Ikuta  escreveu no dia terça,
> > > > > 11/06/2019
> > > > > > à(s) 05:45:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Thanks for this.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I'm glad to see I'm not the only one dismayed by the
> > unilateralism
> > > > and
> > > > > > > lack of transparency.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > On Jun 10, 2019, at 8:25 PM, Techman224 <
> > techman...@techman224.ca>
> > > > > > wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Forwarding to WIkimedia-l sin

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Be the change you want to see (was: WMF commitment for a Wikimedia projects archive)

[Chris Keating]

Thanks Asaf for this thoughtful email!

I just want to respond to this bit - after all, the history is the history:

>
> It is WMF that is not behaving collaboratively here.  And it is within
> WMF's power to change it.  C-levels, the ED, and other managers at WMF
> could all decide to participate more actively in this list; to respond to
> questions or delegate the answering to their subordinates, who are awaiting
> their cue; and indeed, they could themselves make more use of this list as
> a sounding board, a consultation room, and a reserve of experience and
> diverse context.  They can be the change they (and you, and me) would like
> to see.
>
>
I agree it would be great to see more active discussion on this list
including the WMF Board and senior staff. While it's not a perfect forum,
it's currently one of the better forums we have. Who knows, perhaps at some
point there will be other fora or other methods of putting things on 'the
WMF's' agenda. [Obligatory Movement Strategy reminder: Who knows, perhaps
the WMF is going to take a very different form in 3 years' time!]

But in the meantime I would like to think about what we can all ('WMF' and
'non-WMF') do to encourage this kind of culture change at the WMF.

Thinking about what this list looks like from inside the WMF (a place I
have never been, literally or figuratively), I imagine people find the
following reasons to hesitate before participating:
* The list covers a broad range of topics, some of which are very
high-level in nature and it's not clear who, if anyone, *should* respond. I
expect some people are worried about interfering with other peoples'
responsibilities, or that someone else always has a better understanding?
How can we make people feel empowered to respond to these broad issues?
* Emailing lists is timeconsuming and engaging with further replies that
are angry/dissatisfied/demanding more details is even more demanding of
time and emotion than that. I imagine people are concerned that starting a
dialogue can end up as a huge time sink and emotional drain. How can we
make sure this is a 'safe space' for staff to contribute without certain
people picking up pitchforks? How can we make it clear that contributions
are valued?
* This list is not reflective of the breadth of the movement. If a staff
member wants to engage with community members they may wonder whether this
is this the right place to do so. How can we address that, even if only in
part?

These problems are probably easier to overcome than they look or feel. But
how can we, collectively, overcome them?

(It's also worth noting that these problems will apply to almost every
other potential channel of community engagement, so if it's possible to
make progress on having productive dialogue on this list, there may be
learning points that we can apply to other fora)

What do people think?

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New Board WMNL

[Chris Keating]

>
> (new) Jan Bart de Vreede, community health
>
>
I'm not sure "new" is quite the right word, possibly "recycled" ;)

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] branding is bikeshedding, how about CTO criteria or working group lists instead?

[Chris Keating]

Hi Gerard,


> So lets focus on what *you* consider the big
> difficult questions making this rebranding issue not so relevant..
>

Well, there is a list of about 90 scoping questions from the movement
strategy process. Many of these questions in fact overlap or are
alternative ways of asking the same thing, but still there are plenty! :)

In particular, your questions about avoiding Anglo-American bias relates to
questions 3, 4 and 5 from the Diversity working group (1), and question 9
from Roles and Responsibilities. There doesn't seem to be anything from
Product & Technology along similar lines (though one could ask why not)

It would be absolutely great if there was as much thoughtful discussion of
these really broad issues as there has been about the proposal to basically
change one letter in the Wikimedia Foundation's name. The reason there
hasn't been is because big, broad issues are difficult to engage with,
while specific issues are easier to engage with. That's not a criticism,
more an invitation for more people to invest the time and energy to engage
with the big issue questions as well.

Chris

(1)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Diversity
(2)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Roles_%26_Responsibilities



> Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
> On Tue, 16 Apr 2019 at 10:53, Chris Keating 
> wrote:
>
> > In many ways yes - not that branding isnt important, but these two
> > conversations are a great example of people engaging with the narrow
> > questions that are easy to have a view on, and not the big, difficult
> > questions.
> >
> > (Though also, there is nothing more interesting on the working group
> email
> > lists - the summaries are high level and the documents are high level
> > because that's where we're at)
> >
> > On Mon, 15 Apr 2019, 21:09 James Salsman,  wrote:
> >
> > > I withdraw any opinions and suggestions about the branding discussion,
> > > and don't intend to continue participating in it. Instead, I would
> > > like to have a more substantive discussion:
> > >
> > > (1) I ask that the CTO search team please publish their search and
> > > requirement criteria, including the CTO job description and any and
> > > all goals for the CTO position whether in current planning documents
> > > or unpublished drafts of planning materials.
> > >
> > > (2) Why are the Strategy Working Group lists not on
> > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo ? I recall several people
> > > involved with the strategy process as saying it is "open" and asking
> > > at length for additional participation (e.g.
> > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxCFzA3PEaQ&t=23m and
> > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxCFzA3PEaQ&t=30m et seq.) To be
> > > honest, there doesn't seem to be much community engagement from
> > > working groups or strategy process facilitators on meta, and the
> > > meeting summaries are very abstract and difficult to understand. If
> > > there is a need for private strategy working group communications, can
> > > people use off-list emails instead?
> > >
> > > Best regards,
> > > Jim
> > >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] branding is bikeshedding, how about CTO criteria or working group lists instead?

[Chris Keating]

In many ways yes - not that branding isnt important, but these two
conversations are a great example of people engaging with the narrow
questions that are easy to have a view on, and not the big, difficult
questions.

(Though also, there is nothing more interesting on the working group email
lists - the summaries are high level and the documents are high level
because that's where we're at)

On Mon, 15 Apr 2019, 21:09 James Salsman,  wrote:

> I withdraw any opinions and suggestions about the branding discussion,
> and don't intend to continue participating in it. Instead, I would
> like to have a more substantive discussion:
>
> (1) I ask that the CTO search team please publish their search and
> requirement criteria, including the CTO job description and any and
> all goals for the CTO position whether in current planning documents
> or unpublished drafts of planning materials.
>
> (2) Why are the Strategy Working Group lists not on
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo ? I recall several people
> involved with the strategy process as saying it is "open" and asking
> at length for additional participation (e.g.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxCFzA3PEaQ&t=23m and
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxCFzA3PEaQ&t=30m et seq.) To be
> honest, there doesn't seem to be much community engagement from
> working groups or strategy process facilitators on meta, and the
> meeting summaries are very abstract and difficult to understand. If
> there is a need for private strategy working group communications, can
> people use off-list emails instead?
>
> Best regards,
> Jim
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[Chris Keating]

> At the occasion, we should also reconsider the expressions "chapter"
> and "user group".
> "Chapter" is more suitable for local divisions of a national
> association. And "user group" sounds just like some group. We also
> already have "user group" as a technical term in MediaWiki.
>

You may be aware that the movement strategy process is thinking about this
issue, albeit at a broader level :)

For instance one of the questions the Roles and Responsibilities group is
looking at is "What governance and organizational structures do we need to
support the delivery of the strategic direction?"(1)

You will notice that there is no mention of chapters, user groups or indeed
the WMF in this question. That's because there is no presumption that any
of those bodies (or types of bodies) will continue to exist in their
current form - the changes from the strategy process may well be much more
profound than finessing the names of categories of entity that currently
exist.

Thanks,

Chris



(1)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Roles_%26_Responsibilities#Scoping_questions
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Affiliate Selected Board Seats - Resolution finalized. Next steps.

[Chris Keating]

Thank you, facilitators, for your hard work on this process!

Chris
(ASBS facilitator the last two times around)

On Sat, Apr 6, 2019 at 11:12 AM Ad Huikeshoven  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> The Election Facilitators met on Friday, April 5. We finalized the
> resolution, which is now frozen.[1] The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
> Foundation will be asked to approve the resolution.
>
> We have made two small changes to be more inclusive. We extended the date
> for compliance with AffCom reporting and being in good standing to May 8 to
> allow time for as many Affiliates as possible to be current with these
> requirements. The Election Facilitators adjusted the language in case a
> quorum is not met during the election.
>
> On the talk page of the resolution one issue was raised. The issue looks
> like to be about a possible candidate. Affiliates will have ample time to
> discuss the merits of candidates during nomination time, screening time,
> and they can cast their votes on candidates. The Election Facilitators
> didn't see the necessity for this change, and left the resolution on this
> point unchanged.
>
> The Election Facilitators will be Abhinav Srivastava, Lane Rasberry,
> Jeffrey Keefer, Ad Huikeshoven, Neal McBurnett and Alessandro Marchetti. We
> will welcome more volunteers to assist us in this process, to reach out to
> the diversity in language and gender in our communities, and do so in an
> advisory role.
>
> The nomination period opens op April 15. We are going to prepare nomination
> pages on meta. You can expect a call for nominations. There is a draft
> call, including a candidates' profile section with non-binding guidelines
> about experience and characteristics for nominees.[2] You are welcome to
> add your insights, or discuss on the talk page.
>
> Erica Litrenta (WMF staff) supports us in this process. She will reach out
> to all affiliates through mail and other channels to make sure we are up to
> date with (user)name and contact details of your primary contact.
>
> On behalf of the Election Facilitators,
>
> Ad Huikeshoven
>
> [1]
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/Resolution_2019
> [2]
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2019/Call_for_Candidates#Candidates%27_profiles
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [strategy process] Fwd: I decided to leave the working group

[Chris Keating]

Hello,

I just want to chime in here. Like Itzik I'm a working group member with a
community and chapter background, unlike him I am not resigning  :)

I certainly identify with many of the frustrations he shares. Everything in
the process is slow and that is very frustrating for those of us who just
want to get on with the work.

Some of that is because the scope and breadth of what the process is trying
to achieve. Some is because of the amount of the governance equivalent of
"technical debt" the movement has accumulated as decision after decision
has been put off and ultimately swept into this process to resolve. Some of
the slowness is due to the particular way the process is being aporoached
and the supporting resources that are available (it seems while WMF can
spend immense amounts of money on this process, it can't make any quick
decisions on how to spend that money because of an ossiffied procurement
process... *shrugs*). I won't say any more about the process now because I
expect there to be many discussions at the WMSummit about how it works from
here.

In spite of these frustrations, I think it's likely that the outcomes of
the process will be a significant, lasting, positive  change for the
movement.

Chris


On Thu, 28 Mar 2019, 17:09 Paulo Santos Perneta, 
wrote:

> I subscribe what Yaroslav wrote, line by line.
>
> My personal impression is that for the people who are at the onwiki
> communities, in which I include myself till 2018, this whole Strategy 2030
> thing looks indeed like something happening in a distant galaxy, led by
> people with very little notion of what is actually happening in the
> projects. And there is also this notion that sometime in the near/mid
> future vogons would came in to impose whatever they had decided there, and
> that they will have to be chased off.
>
> I attended Iberoconf 2019[1] early this year in Santiago, where Strategy
> 2030 was supposed to be very much in focus, and I was hoping to have a
> better idea of what it was over there. However, we ended up never talking
> about it (at least that I can remember), so the idea I got was that it is
> something of no importance or of very little importance, but on which, for
> some reason, huge amounts of WMF funding is being thrown in.
>
> I do not care about the money - it's their money, they do whatever they
> want with it. But it kind of annoys me that Strategy 2030, while being
> apparently useless, tends to pervade all Wikimedia events and spaces. It
> kind of stays there, doing nothing and occupying space that could be better
> used for more practical stuff.
>
> Nothing against the people that is on the Working Groups, I'm sure most of
> them are doing their best, as Itzik, but this whole thing at this point is
> really looking as some failed experiment, and it would probably be better
> to salvage what is possible from this and the other past "strategy"
> experiments, look at what failed and start something new and better
> thought.
>
> [1] -https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WMCL/Iberoconf_2019
>
> Best,
> Paulo (DarwIn)
>
>
> Yaroslav Blanter  escreveu no dia quinta, 28/03/2019
> à(s)
> 15:38:
>
> > Hello Itzik,
> >
> > thanks for sharing this.
> >
> > I actually did not want to react, because I presumably sound too critical
> > on this list in the last couple of years. However, 24h passed, and nobody
> > reacted, and It would be unfortunate if we let this go.
> >
> > My own experience brought me to the same conclusions, even though I have
> a
> > very different background. I am a project contributor, highly active on
> > several WMF projects and having some advanced permissions there. I belong
> > to the category which became common to refer to as "unorganized
> volunteers"
> > (which we actually read as a derogatory name). I participated in the 2010
> > strategy consultation, which was pretty much community driven, and I
> liked
> > that one. My name is on the final document. However, I did not like the
> > current process from the very beginning. In the first stage, facilitators
> > were hired, and some of them genuinely wanted to do things but did not
> know
> > how to activate the communities, and others did not even make an effort.
> As
> > I already shared on this list, on one of the projects I am active in we
> > took the challenge seriously and formulated quite a few of strategic
> > directions - just to be told by the facilitator that this is not what we
> > were expected to do. The final document had no trace of our suggestions.
> I
> > was one of those who opposed the final document and signed for this on
> Meta
> > - about 70 people signed and were duly ignored. I was not looking forward
> > to the second round, but when I saw a call, I though "ok, I was
> criticizing
> > the process a lot, but did I do enough to fix it", and I applied. My
> > application was rejected, and a couple of days later there was a second
> > call stating that the first one did not get enough appl

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New Foundation events team

[Chris Keating]

Thanks for the update Maggie and welcome Joel and Isabel!

I just wanted to ask about this bit of your email:


> this new Events
> Team, which will be focused on convenorship -- a critical part of our
> outreach and growth dynamic.


I haven't heard the word "convenorship" before, could someone explain what
it means in our context?

Thanks!

Chris
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[Wikimedia-l] Roles & Responsibilities working group - Short update

[Chris Keating]

Dear all,

I just wanted to share that the Role & Responsibilities Strategy Working
Group has just published a summary of perspectives on existing movement
governance and structures:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_Groups/Roles_%26_Responsibilities/Interviews_Insights_Summary

This document is based on c.25 in-depth interviews we in the working group
have performed with people with varied roles in and perspectives on the
movement as it stands. The aim has been for us as a group to understand
what different people in different parts of the movement think and feel
about movement structures as they stand. Just to be clear, we have not
weighted / prioritised the issues raised at present, just described them. :)

Your comments and views are very welcome on the Talk page - especially if
you have a view or perspective that you do not see represented in the
document. We will certainly read all those comments and incorporate them in
our thinking. However there will also be much more news and consultation
coming from the movement strategy core team in coming weeks, in the lead-up
to the Wikimedia summit.

Thank you to everyone who helped us by agreeing to share their views in
this process to date, and happy reading!

Yours,

Chris Keating
on behalf of the Roles & Responsibilities Working Group
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reducing stress and friction in interactions between WMF, affiliates, and community

[Chris Keating]

On this note, here's an essay I wrote along similar lines in 2016. I think
things have improved significantly since then, but most of the observations
are still true...

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:The_Land/Why_do_They_always_do_It_wrong

On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 7:01 PM Pine W  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Recent events have brought to mind the recurring challenges of stress and
> friction in the Wikiverse that can happen in interactions, or lack of
> interactions, between WMF, affiliates, and community members.
>
> I realize that some friction is inevitable, but the feeling that I get is
> that the levels of stress regarding these interactions are, on average,
> fairly high.
>
> This stress can happen on both sides. My understanding is that some staff
> are afraid to communicate in public because they worry about making people
> angry for unpredictable reasons. Affiliates and community people may feel
> frustrated or ignored.
>
> For me, this situation is painful and frustrating, and I'm currently
> feeling worn by the friction of our groups.
>
> The Wikiverse will probably always have a some friction, and some of that
> friction may lead to insightful conversations and good refinement of ideas,
> but the average level of WMF-affiliate-community friction feels high.
>
> I'm not saying that there should be no conflicts or no difficult
> conversations. Sometimes I think that being frank is the best thing to do,
> and a high level of stress is difficult to avoid in certain situations.
> However, I would like for the average level of stress and friction in our
> interactions to be more moderate. I would like for staff to feel generally
> okay regarding communicating in public, and I would like for affiliates and
> community members (in which I include myself) to feel less pain.
>
> I think that the mission to share verifiable and reliable knowledge with
> the world is amazing, and I'm grateful that we do this. However, the stress
> level regarding WMF-affiliate-community interactions feels high in a way
> that I think that this is a problem. Maybe a question to ask about our
> interactions is, "How can improve the quality of our interactions in a way
> that is generally beneficial for all groups and beneficial for our common
> goals?"
>
> Would anyone like to make suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Pine
> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws changed plus next steps

[Chris Keating]

The way I'm making sense of the timeline is:

Last summer the Board remembered that the ASBS was coming up (in among all
their conversations about the strategy). Probably in July they discussed it
for the first time and they asked AffCom to look at a way of including User
Groups. At the November meeting they looked at AffCom's recommendation and
decided not to accept it 'as is' but to leave the door open to other
solutions. They then started the formal community consultation. At the
January meeting they adopted the still very open proposals they'd consulted
on.

Personally I would have preferred the Board to consult in public back in
July rather than just consulting AffCom at that point, then we might be 3
months in advance. And I expressed my reservations about this change, so
did many other people. But it's the job of any board to make decisions, and
in this case it seems they felt there were good reasons for going ahead in
spite of the objections raised - and to be fair the voices on the Meta page
were a relatively narrow slice of the overall Wikimedia community.

To those who still have concerns, there is plenty of space to still design
a process that meets them.

And if this issue makes people have wider thoughts about the role of
affiliates and the WMF, please hold onto them, because there is much more
movement strategy thinking coming up in the run up to the Wikimedia Summit,
and the strategy process is probably going to work on a scale that makes
this issue seem insignificant.

Thanks,

Chris

On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 8:05 PM Strainu  wrote:

> În joi, 21 feb. 2019 la 16:59, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel
>  a scris:
> >
> > No, you aren't missing anything. The timeline is strange.
> >
> > As Antanana wrote, *"The conversation about how User Groups may
> participate
> > in this process has been on for years, it is not a new topic [4]." *
> > So if it isn't a new proposal, why the board jumped to do this change so
> > close to the election instead of a year or so before?
> > On the other hand, if this issue is old enough, so why do the change now,
> > instead of holding the elections and then conduct (without pressure) a
> REAL
> > discussion and DEEP thinking about how to involve UGs while maintaining
> > equal elections.
>
> Actually, the timeline (give or take a couple of weeks) seems quite
> well chosen to force a timely discussion. Realistically speaking, if a
> wiki-discussion has lagged for years, it would have also lagged until
> the next round of elections, in 3 years. Also, having a solution in
> place for the current election does not prevent another round of
> discussions afterwards, based on the then-existing experience.
>
> I understand that the chapters have concerns regarding their ability
> to have a say in the board, but the fact that there has been a lack in
> new chapters in recent years has given them an unfair advantage over
> other organizations in the ecosystem. Most of the objections on the
> talk page focused on how the UGs will double vote, skew the elections
> etc. without considering that many user groups have established
> internal policies and decision-taking procedures on par with smaller
> chapters. I urge all of the chapter representatives to give up the
> fearmongering and work with the interested parties to make this
> dialogue a showcase of openness and collaboration "à la Wikimedia".
>
> Strainu (for himself)
>
> >
> >
> >
> > *Itzik Edri*
> > Chairperson
> > it...@wikimedia.org.il
> > +972-54-5878078
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 8:01 PM effe iets anders <
> effeietsand...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > As for process.. While I appreciate that this time, the change was at
> least
> > > announced before the vote, and that some board members at least
> engaged in
> > > some conversation - I have yet to see how this was taken into
> consideration
> > > by the board as a whole. It feels like the board already made up its
> mind.
> > >
> > > What is surprising me most, is that it took a month for this
> announcement
> > > to be made - especially considering a time sensitive process being
> impacted
> > > by this decision. Or did I miss a more timely announcement elsewhere?
> > >
> > > Best,
> > > Lodewijk
> > >
> > > On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 3:19 AM Santiago Navarro <
> > > santiagonava...@wikimedia.es> wrote:
> > >
> > > > In fact, I did not participate in the discussion page on meta about
> > > > that, because I guessed that my opinion would not be taken in
> account,
> > > > neither discussed, and now it seems that, sadly, I was right in that
> > > > thought.
> > > >
> > > > El 2019-02-19 17:25, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel escribió:
> > > > > Antanana and the board,
> > > > >
> > > > > I find it sad and disappointing that after such a long
> conversation on
> > > > > the
> > > > > talk page, there wasn't any comment on the talk page or in this
> > > > > statement
> > > > > about the problem of double voting by many UG's members. Did the
> board
> > > > > even

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Inisghts from a meeting with NGO representatives

[Chris Keating]

Hi Micru,

How about documenting your insights on here. I know a number of people in
the Roles & Responsibilities group have been reading with interest, thank
you very much for sharing.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_Groups/Roles_%26_Responsibilities

Chris


On Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 4:23 PM David Cuenca Tudela 
wrote:

> @Benjamin: It is already there, as answer to Farkhad.
>
> @Ziko: I have no idea where to store this. If you find a suitable place,
> please go ahead and let me know.
>
> Regards,
> Micru
>
> On Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 3:11 PM Ziko van Dijk  wrote:
>
> > Hello, maybe there is a suitable place on Meta Wiki to conserve this?
> Later
> > it will be a little bit difficult to find it again on a mailinglist.
> > I myself find this point of view of "outsiders" very interesting and
> worth
> > to notice e.g. in strategic discussions.
> > Kind regards
> > Ziko
> >
> > Am Mo., 18. Feb. 2019 um 11:41 Uhr schrieb David Cuenca Tudela <
> > dacu...@gmail.com>:
> >
> > > Hi Bodhisattwa,
> > >
> > >
> > > *Governance recommendation *
> > > I assisted to a session on sociocracy organized by the Transition
> Network
> > > that basically blew my mind. The speaker explained how for her it has
> > been
> > > always difficult to participate in decision-making because she feels
> that
> > > she is a very vocal person, and she felt that with democracy it was
> > mostly
> > > about taking sides and wining or losing, which was quite disappointing
> > for
> > > her. Then she started to explain the sociocratic principles of decision
> > by
> > > consent, and what does that mean.
> > >
> > > What is interesting about sociocracy itself, is not the process or the
> > > method, but how it challenges the participants to truly understand the
> > > meaning of a decision, and their own relationship with it. Objections
> are
> > > seen as a gift that will help improve the proposal, once they have been
> > > properly understood. Normally it takes effort from the participants to
> > > address their own personal issues as well, because they have an impact
> on
> > > how the group can operate.
> > >
> > > Trust can be built during in person sessions, and it is necessary for
> the
> > > group to operate smoothly. Sociocracy is not for people who like to
> > > accumulate power, or are not able to share power with others, and that
> > can
> > > drive people away. On the other hand, those who stay feel more included
> > and
> > > supported by the organisation. There is also an element of celebration,
> > > which sometimes we forget. Taking decisions is hard work, and we should
> > > celebrate when we reach one.
> > >
> > > Sociocracy it is easy to grasp, but difficult to master. The members of
> > the
> > > Transition Network had to undergo a training during a long time at the
> > > Université de Nous, to become proficient in this method. There is also
> a
> > > software that assists self-organization: https://www.holaspirit.com/
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > > Micru
> > >
> > > On Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 8:45 AM Bodhisattwa Mandal <
> > > bodhisattwa.rg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi Micru,
> > > >
> > > > I am interested about your thoughts about governance recommendation
> for
> > > the
> > > > movement and community model of affiliates.
> > > >
> > > > Regards,
> > > > Bodhisattwa
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On Mon, 18 Feb 2019, 12:14 Фархад Фаткуллин / Farkhad Fatkullin <
> > > > f...@yandex.com wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Micru,
> > > > > I would be interested to learn about "External perception of the
> > > > > movement".part of your insights.
> > > > > Thanks.
> > > > >
> > > > > from Russia with love,
> > > > > farhad
> > > > > https://ru.wikimedia.org/wiki/Smart_region
> > > > >
> > > > > --
> > > > > Farhad Fatkullin - Фархад Фаткуллин http://sikzn.ru/
> > Тел.+79274158066
> > > /
> > > > > skype:frhdkazan / Wikipedia:frhdkazan / WMRU:
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > 18.02.2019, 02:35, "David Cuenca Tudela" :
> > > > > > Hello,
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Last Friday I participated in a workshop in Brussels where people
> > > from
> > > > > > different NGOs met to learn from each other to foster flat,
> > > > > > democratic, and diverse organisations. I was one of four speakers
> > in
> > > a
> > > > > > "world cafe" format (basically a circle where participants can
> > > > > > interact with the speaker). I represented the Wikimedia movement
> in
> > > > > > general, with the intention that participants would learn from
> our
> > > > > > movement, and so that I would learn from them. There were also
> Open
> > > > > > Space sessions.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > If there is interest, I can share with you my insights on any of
> > > these
> > > > > topics:
> > > > > > - External perception of the movement
> > > > > > - Recommendations to the WMF
> > > > > > - Governance recommendations for the movement
> > > > > > - Community model for affiliates
> > > > > > - How to increase diversity
> > > > > 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Proposed changes to the Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws

[Chris Keating]

Hi Maria,

I wondered if there was any news about whether the Board had, in the end,
adopted any of these proposals.

I see that the ASBS process is now on the agenda for the Wikimedia Summit
in late March. There is now not much time to figure out who is going to run
this process and what the process will look like!

Many thanks,

Chris




On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 3:46 PM María Sefidari 
wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is considering amending the
> Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws. Nataliia Tymkiv, Chair of the Board Governance
> Committee, is leading this process. She has posted the proposed changes on
> Meta for discussion
> <
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws/December_2018_-_Affiliate-selected_trustees,_term_limits,_and_diversity
> >
> prior to our vote on them during the Board meeting scheduled for January
> 23, 2019. We invite you to comment on the proposal's talk page. As usual in
> these cases, two weeks are provided for community comment, from December 7
> to December 21.
>
> By making the proposed changes to the Bylaws, the Board intends to achieve
> three goals:
>
> *1. Include User Groups in the trustee selection process*
>
> Though User Groups have existed as a model of affiliation within the
> Wikimedia movement for a number of years, they have not been included
> together with Chapters and Thematic Organizations as participants in
> selecting Wikimedia Foundation trustees. There are now over 100 recognized
> User Groups, many of which represent emerging communities within the
> Wikimedia movement. The Board believes that the perspectives of User Groups
> combined with those of Chapters and Thematic Organizations will lead to the
> selection of the best trustee candidates.
>
> The Board acknowledges that the ongoing Wikimedia movement strategy process
> may result in changes to many aspects of the Wikimedia movement, including
> the structure of movement affiliates. As a result, any changes we make now
> to the Foundation Bylaws regarding the role of affiliates in the trustee
> selection process may need to be modified again in the future, in turn
> requiring additional amendments to the Bylaws. However, the Board did not
> want to delay providing User Groups with a voice in the upcoming 2019
> trustee selection process.
>
> *2. Raise term limits for trustees from two to three consecutive terms*
>
> Term limits for trustees were added to the Bylaws in 2015. At the time,
> there was a desire on the Board to bring in new voices and specific
> skill-sets needed for the growth and development of Wikimedia projects. The
> changes made at that time have resulted in some notable successes in that
> regard. The Board remains committed to seeking out new voices, and
> providing the community with ample opportunities to promote such voices as
> candidates for the Board.
>
> As the Wikimedia movement and the Wikimedia Foundation think forward
> further to the future, the Board will need to oversee the Foundation in
> setting, following through on, and achieving longer-term goals. The Board
> believes it will be better able to fulfill its role if it allows for the
> potential of a longer time on the Board for individual trustees who bring
> essential expertise and insight to the Board. The possibility of serving
> one additional term on the Board also reduces the amount of time the Board
> and Foundation staff spend on trustee recruitment and onboarding. Raising
> the maximum number of consecutive terms a trustee may serve from two to
> three terms achieves these goals, and is also consistent with the practice
> of many other boards. Raising the maximum number of terms that can be
> served consecutively does not change the fact that the community, including
> affiliates, will continue to be able to determine every three years whether
> or not to re-elect currently serving trustees or whether to elect new
> candidates - just as is the case now.
>
> *3. Reaffirm the Board’s commitment to diversity*
>
> The Wikimedia movement is global, built on a vision of reaching every
> single human being and working toward a strategic goal of knowledge equity
> for all. The Board believes that it can best serve the Wikimedia Foundation
> and the movement by reflecting a wide range of human experiences. We want
> to underscore and codify this belief in the Bylaws by adding express
> language affirming our commitment to diversity and inclusion of all voices,
> throughout our communities - new, older and emerging.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> María Sefidari
> Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Board
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Questions about proposed new Chapter agreement for Wikimedia Portugal

[Chris Keating]

Hi  Gonçalo,

Looks to me like someone in the WMF has decided that, given the recent
challenges with WMPT, it's a good idea to create a chapter agreement that's
somewhat more restrictive in terms of trademark usage and reporting as a
way of mitigating any future problems the chapter might encounter.

Of course, I may be misinterpreting this (which is easy to do). But if
you're someone in the WMF whose job it is to worry about the risks of
various courses of action, including signing chapter agreements, then this
would probably look like a sensible thing to do.

From a broader perspective... well, it does look like we're creating a new
kind of chapter with slightly fewer rights as a result of the chapter
encountering governance issues. This is a new way of approaching this kind
of issue (many chapters and the WMF have all had significant governance
issues at some point, without anyone wanting to renegotiate the founding
agreements between them), and I am not sure it's healthy, at least not
without being embedded in a broader framework.

Pretty much the only thing you can do in the circumstances is go back to
the WMF with queries and/or a counter-proposal. This is what is normally
what happens in contract negotiations, including within the Wikimedia
movement, and generally speaking these proposals are usually open to
negotiation.

It's already clear from the WMPT situation (and others) that how the
movement deals with 'difficult situations' involving affiliates is pretty
unclear. I think there are questions to ask about the right balance between
investigation, development support, conflict resolution, and risk
mitigation/disciplinary measures. There are also questions about whose job
it is to do all of these things. And it's not helped by the fact that there
is no clear definition of what a chapter (or any affiliate) is for, and
what the expectations of the affiliate/WMF relationship should be.

Chris



On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 12:58 AM GoEthe.wiki  wrote:

> (sorry for cross-posting, but since this is a time sensitive issue, I would
> like to get as many comments as possible)
>
> Dear all,
>
> Last 30 October, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) decided it needed more time
> to evaluate the case of Wikimedia Portugal, it extended the suspension of
> Wikimedia Portugal, and said that they must use the time that would
> otherwise be the termination period for the Chapter Agreement between
> Wikimedia Portugal and the Wikimedia Foundation, therefore giving notice of
> termination of the Chapter Agreement. WMF also said that if Wikimedia
> Portugal fully and completely resolved the issues described above and
> otherwise remained compliant with its obligations as a chapter - which
> happened, and the suspension was lifted - then WMF would sign a new chapter
> agreement with Wikimedia Portugal. The current chapter agreement therefore
> terminates this 31 January. On 25 January WMF sent us a new proposal of
> Chapter Agreement for Wikimedia Portugal to sign. It can be seen here, side
> by side with the current Chapter Agreement Wikimedia Portugal has with the
> WMF:
>
> https://pt.wikimedia.org/wiki/Utilizador:Alchimista/Chapter_Agreement
>
> This new proposal differs in many ways from the Chapter Agreement currently
> in place, and from the ones other chapters have signed (at least the ones
> that are public) and we have several questions about it, so we would like
> to ask the Wikimedia Portugal associates, other affiliates and the
> Wikimedia community in general to help us by clarifying some of these
> questions and weigh in on the advantages and disadvantages of continuing
> being a WMF affiliate under these changed conditions.
>
> We have also accordingly asked from the WMF a two month extension of the
> current Chapter Agreement, to allow for proper discussion of their
> proposal.
>
>
> Main concerns:
>
> These are some of the main differences we found that are concerning us
> (first in italic the current agreement, second in bold the new proposal)
>
>-
>
>“This Chapter is authorized to cover the geographic region of the
>Portugal. The Foundation will not seek to create or authorize the
> creation
>of any additional chapter within this geographic region. The Foundation
>will not engage with other local organizations without consulting with
> the
>chapter.” (Current CA) disappears entirely, and becomes “WMF hereby
>recognizes Chapter as part of the Wikimedia movement supporting its
> Focus
>Area.” (i.e. Portugal)
>-
>
>Chapter shall do business as “Wikimedia Portugal, an independent
>organization for Wikimedia volunteers in Portugal”, irrespective of its
>locally incorporated name. - this seems unique among chapters, and in
>our view conflicts  with the possibility of affiliates including both
>volunteers and professionals, as well as both Wikimedians and people
>otherwise engaged and interested in programs, such as teachers,
> librarians
>and museol

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Proposed changes to the Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws

[Chris Keating]

Same here!

TL:DR – This might not be a great idea, because it’s not what User Groups were 
designed for. And shouldn’t the WMF Board be thinking more broadly than this 
sort of fiddling round the edges?

Chris

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Lane Rasberry
Sent: 07 December 2018 17:13
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Cc: wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Proposed changes to the Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws

Hello,

I posted some comments and questions to the talk page.
<
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws/December_2018_-_Affiliate-selected_trustees,_term_limits,_and_diversity
>

I would appreciate anyone else jumping in to comment, fill in information
gaps, or advance the conversation in any way.

Thanks -


On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 10:46 AM María Sefidari 
wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is considering amending the
> Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws. Nataliia Tymkiv, Chair of the Board Governance
> Committee, is leading this process. She has posted the proposed changes on
> Meta for discussion
> <
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws/December_2018_-_Affiliate-selected_trustees,_term_limits,_and_diversity
> >
> prior to our vote on them during the Board meeting scheduled for January
> 23, 2019. We invite you to comment on the proposal's talk page. As usual in
> these cases, two weeks are provided for community comment, from December 7
> to December 21.
>
> By making the proposed changes to the Bylaws, the Board intends to achieve
> three goals:
>
> *1. Include User Groups in the trustee selection process*
>
> Though User Groups have existed as a model of affiliation within the
> Wikimedia movement for a number of years, they have not been included
> together with Chapters and Thematic Organizations as participants in
> selecting Wikimedia Foundation trustees. There are now over 100 recognized
> User Groups, many of which represent emerging communities within the
> Wikimedia movement. The Board believes that the perspectives of User Groups
> combined with those of Chapters and Thematic Organizations will lead to the
> selection of the best trustee candidates.
>
> The Board acknowledges that the ongoing Wikimedia movement strategy process
> may result in changes to many aspects of the Wikimedia movement, including
> the structure of movement affiliates. As a result, any changes we make now
> to the Foundation Bylaws regarding the role of affiliates in the trustee
> selection process may need to be modified again in the future, in turn
> requiring additional amendments to the Bylaws. However, the Board did not
> want to delay providing User Groups with a voice in the upcoming 2019
> trustee selection process.
>
> *2. Raise term limits for trustees from two to three consecutive terms*
>
> Term limits for trustees were added to the Bylaws in 2015. At the time,
> there was a desire on the Board to bring in new voices and specific
> skill-sets needed for the growth and development of Wikimedia projects. The
> changes made at that time have resulted in some notable successes in that
> regard. The Board remains committed to seeking out new voices, and
> providing the community with ample opportunities to promote such voices as
> candidates for the Board.
>
> As the Wikimedia movement and the Wikimedia Foundation think forward
> further to the future, the Board will need to oversee the Foundation in
> setting, following through on, and achieving longer-term goals. The Board
> believes it will be better able to fulfill its role if it allows for the
> potential of a longer time on the Board for individual trustees who bring
> essential expertise and insight to the Board. The possibility of serving
> one additional term on the Board also reduces the amount of time the Board
> and Foundation staff spend on trustee recruitment and onboarding. Raising
> the maximum number of consecutive terms a trustee may serve from two to
> three terms achieves these goals, and is also consistent with the practice
> of many other boards. Raising the maximum number of terms that can be
> served consecutively does not change the fact that the community, including
> affiliates, will continue to be able to determine every three years whether
> or not to re-elect currently serving trustees or whether to elect new
> candidates - just as is the case now.
>
> *3. Reaffirm the Board’s commitment to diversity*
>
> The Wikimedia movement is global, built on a vision of reaching every
> single human being and working toward a strategic goal of knowledge equity
> for all. The Board believes that it can best serve the Wikimedia Foundation
> and the movement by reflecting a wide range of human experiences. We want
> to underscore and codify this belief in the Bylaws by adding express
> language affirming our commitment to diversity and inclusion of all voices,
> throughout our communities - new, older and emerging.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> M

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Contents of annual reports from Wikimedia affiliate organizations

[Chris Keating]

Hi Pine,

Standardising reporting across affiliates is an attractive-sounding
idea in theory but turns out to be very difficult in practice.

A few issues that spring to mind:
- User Groups are meant to be a low-barrier-to-entry, lightweight form
of affiliation. Basically you need 10 people and a good idea. Creating
in-depth expectations around reporting by User Groups would defeat the
object of having them. [Of course there are plenty of User Groups
these days that are incorporated entities with five or maybe
six-figure budgets, full-time staff, and so on... but that's because
the WMF Board decided that User Groups were the only option available
for new affiliates.]
- Where an affiliate has significant programmes and is incorporated,
there are a whole bunch of expectations on them that depend on how
they register. The way a UK-registered charity has to prepare its
annual accounts is different to how a nonprofit anywhere in the world
has to. Dual-reporting everything according to local laws and the
WMF's expectations already creates issues and extra work, gold-playing
the WMF's expectations would significantly increase this.
- There is no consensus around what metrics actually matter. Global
Metrics were only ever presented as a first draft of an answer, and
for many projects they are simply poor metrics. The movement's focus
for the last 3-4 years has been on movement entities developing their
own metrics that are relevant to their own activities. Standardising
on naive metrics would be a step backwards.
- Also, we are still very much in the middle of the movement strategy
process. What you've suggested is very much a "This is what WMF should
require affiliates to do" approach, hopefully on the other side of the
strategy process we will not be in a situation where we solve problems
in the movement by the WMF telling people what to do. (I mean, in
practice the WMF doesn't do much issuing diktats any more, but
hopefully we will end up with some more formal creative solutions...)

Chris


On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 3:11 AM Pine W  wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> This email is mainly addressed to Affcom and WMF but I would like to hear
> others' comments also.
>
> Some background information regarding the context for this email: the
> recently published annual reports from user groups reminded me of some
> issues that I first considered a few years ago. I believe that user group
> annual reports are currently not standardized, and I think that the public
> and WMF might like to have standardized quantitative and comparable ways to
> understand affiliates' work, including use of volunteer hours and
> per-program benefits, while minimizing the burden on volunteers for
> administrative tasks.
>
> I would like to suggest that Affcom and WMF require that all affiliates'
> annual reports include:
>
> 1. A list of programs which the affiliate supported in the past year. For
> each program the affiliate should state the financial costs to the
> affiliate including overhead costs and overhead person-hours attributable
> to the program, how much time the organizers and participants spent on the
> program, the Wikimetrics/Global Metrics results of each program, and
> results for any custom-defined measures of success. Auditable performance
> information can be made public and/or shared privately with WMF, depending
> on privacy rules and the willingness of participants to share information
> regarding their participation.
>
> 2. A financial summary for the year that states all sources of income and
> amounts from each source, how funds were spent, funds payable, funds
> receivable, debts, reserves, assets, etc.
>
> 3. Total annual organizer and participant person-hours and a summary of how
> those hours were used, for both programmatic and non-programmatic
> activities.
>
> 4. Total annual Wikimetrics/Global Metrics results for the year, and total
> annual results for any custom-defined metrics. Again, auditable performance
> information can be made public and/or shared privately with WMF, depending
> on privacy rules and the willingness of participants to share information
> regarding their participation.
>
> This information is important enough that I would support reasonable staff
> or contractor expenses to produce reports with these details. I am mindful
> of how precious volunteer time is, and I do not want to burden already
> generous volunteers with administrative work that could be done by
> contractors or staff. Some cooperation and support for reporting from
> volunteer organizers may be necessary, such as when gathering information
> from participants at individual events. Some affiliates may have such
> generous volunteers that they can do all of the reporting with volunteer
> time. But for many affiliates I would support reasonable expenses for
> producing standardized quantitative information in annual reports while
> minimizing the administrative burden on volunteers.
>
> Regards,
>
>
> --
>
> Pine
> ( https://meta.w

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Board of Trustees July 2018 meeting minutes

[Chris Keating]

An interesting read! Thank you Charles (and indeed the Board) for a
significantly more substantive set of minutes than has been the
practice in the past - I don't know how recent that change is but it's
very welcome

Chris
On Wed, Oct 17, 2018 at 9:36 PM Chuck Roslof  wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has approved and published minutes 
> from its meeting on July 18-19, 2018:
> https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes/2018-07-18,19
>
> The minutes from the June 12 meeting are also available, which I believe I 
> neglected to announce to this list previously:
> https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes/2018-06-12
>
>  - Chuck
>
> ==
> Charles M. Roslof
> Legal Counsel
> Wikimedia Foundation
> cros...@wikimedia.org
> (415) 839-6885
>
> NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged 
> information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please 
> delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia 
> Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve 
> as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their 
> personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal 
> disclaimer.
> ___
> Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately 
> directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. 
> For more information about Wikimedia-l:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> ___
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> wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Plea from Wikimedia Portugal

[Chris Keating]

I think there's a question to think about, about how the movement
handles this kind of situation where there are evidently serious
governance problems affecting an affiliate.

There are some clear-cut situations (e.g. total inactivity) where the
current de-recognition process can simply be followed by Affcom. And
there are some situations where there is a large and prominent
affiliate that has plenty of activity, but serious governance issues,
where the WMF Grantmaking and/or Legal teams can get involved in some
depth (thinking about  Wikimedia UK in 2012 and Wikimedia France in
2017).

This is the only case that's "in the middle" that I am aware of - are
there more that have been made public? Of course, it's possible that
there may be other cases where a small/medium affiliate has been
helped to have their governance problems resolved by one process or
another (derecognition or something else) but it's happened silently
in the background.

Chris
On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 5:29 PM Paulo Santos Perneta
 wrote:
>
> Just a quick message to clarify that the only conflict that ever existed in
> Wikimedia Portugal, as far as I know, was with João Vasconcelos himself.
>
> Paulo
>
> Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l 
> escreveu no dia quinta, 11/10/2018 à(s) 15:38:
>
> >  The pro forma statement bout what a chapter is is valuable, but I think
> > many of us kinda got the idea that the problem was not the starting point
> > (otherwise why electing him?) but came later. It's possible that someone
> > else with more community experience would have never behaved such way, but
> > that's speculation.
> >
> > Statistically, in this scenario this lack of community view probably did
> > not help. Whatever his skills in "management and conflict resolution" were,
> > even assuming they were correctly stated based on previous expertise in
> > other fields, they were not the best ones to handle the conflicts that
> > later emerged. Also, considering the resolution we see now, which is not a
> > great resolution.
> > The point is that in all these disputes (I think about Brazil few months
> > ago) it looks like the AffCom position sounds like "you are both wrong".
> > Now, this is never a healthy long-term strategy. If it occurs again, it
> > gives more and more the idea that whoever is in the less correct position
> > can hold still because if the matter arrives to the AffCom everybody pays
> > equally. I am sure the situation is more multifaceted, but let's try to
> > grasp the general vibe here.
> >
> >  This is not wise. King Solomon solved the issue bluffing and spotting the
> > real mother, he never actually cut the baby in two halves ... But wisdom
> > comes also with experience.
> >Il giovedì 11 ottobre 2018, 15:43:01 CEST, GoEthe.wiki <
> > goethe.w...@gmail.com> ha scritto:
> >
> >  Hi Illario,
> >
> > Apologies, I probably explained myself poorly. I never said that a chapter
> > is a representative of the Wikimedia community, rather I was trying to
> > explain that João’s claimed experience (emphasis on claimed) in management
> > and conflict resolution was a major factor in him being elected to the
> > Board. At the time, WMPT thought that that could be very valuable to the
> > chapter. So, we agree, a heterogeneous board is absolutely an advantage,
> > but in this case the issue was not one of diversity, but rather of
> > competence and alignment to the movement goals and principles.
> >
> > In practice, he did not contribute to the management of the chapter, and he
> > was not prepared to an increase of the chapter activities. He very quickly
> > started demonstrating uneasiness with any procedural decision he did not
> > personally vet (which are imperative in volunteer-based, collaborative
> > projects), and soon after, without any previous warning, started sending
> > legal threats going as far as using a lawyer to intimidate one of our most
> > active members on behalf of WMPT (without discussing it with anyone
> > beforehand), and resigned.
> >
> > We have no intention to expose João even more in this public mailing list,
> > so we will not provide a comprehensive list of the problems we found with
> > his term on the board. But to make it clear, when this whole issue began to
> > be addressed, even though we did not ask him to stay on the Board, we did
> > invite him to continue on the chapter, working with us, as AffCom can
> > confirm. Just not in any role with legal responsibilities.
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Gonçalo Themudo
> >
> > *Presidente*
> > *Wikimedia Portugal*
> > *Email: *goethe.w...@gmail.com
> > *Website: *http://pt.wikimedia.org 
> > *Imagine um mundo onde cada ser humano pode partilhar livremente a soma de
> > todo o conhecimento, na sua própria língua.*
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/

[Wikimedia-l] Movement strategy - some thoughts on issues to address

[Chris Keating]

Hello,

I've just written a short essay on Meta about issues I think the
Movement Strategy working groups ought to be thinking about.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:The_Land/Tensions_facing_movement_strategy

tl:dr: Firstly,  '''accountability''' and '''equality''' are both
complicated concepts in the context we work in. And secondly, there is
inherently a tension between those two things and '''independence and
opportunity''', which is another key value we hold. That's not to say
there is a zero-sum choice to be made between these things, but there
may inevitably ''some'' choices to be made between them. I believe
that acknowledging the existence of these tensions is the best way to
achieve the best outcomes from the whole process.

Comments and criticism very welcome, I hope this is useful for people
on the Working Groups trying to grapple with these issues!

Chris

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Call for Proposals to Host Wikimania in 2020

[Chris Keating]

Hi Andrew,

I think your conclusions are largely the same as the points I'm trying
to make, so all is good! Don't get me wrong, I do think Wikimania has
an important impact, and don't actually want to stop having it every
year, I'm just curious about the silence that has followed that WMF
consultation.

I do think though that of everything that happens in the movement,
Wikimania is (usually, largely) the thing where there is the least
clarity about goals and the least thinking about impact. There are
grant proposals to the WMF for much less expensive (and indeed, less
*important*) things that have gone into significantly more detail
about expected impact and ways of measuring it than Wikimania ever
has. In this way, Wikimania is usually very much an outlier from the
process of learning and evaluation that the rest of the 'organised
part' of the movement is taking part in. So far as I can tell, there
are some good reasons contributing to this (the desire to keep things
flexible for whoever is volunteering to organise it in the host
country, and the relatively short planning cycle for such a massive
event) as well as some not so good.

I was very pleased to see David talking about the impact of Wikimania
at the metrics meeting, and hear about some interesting ideas about
looking at its impact on South Africa - which is great, and
significantly more than Wikimedia UK managed after Wikimania 2014
(another story there) - and it would be wonderful to see some kind of
reflection about how we can measure the impact of Wikimania on the
global Wikimedia community.

Equally, I can't say that I have a clear understanding of who is
responsible for what regarding Wikimania. The last thing I heard from
the Wikimania Committee was the idea of a three-year rotation between
North America, Europe and Everywhere Else, which now seems to have
been quietly abandoned (like... has it?)

Thank you for engaging in this conversation,

Chris
On Sat, Sep 29, 2018 at 4:28 PM Andrew Lih  wrote:
>
> On Sat, Sep 29, 2018 at 4:31 AM Chris Keating 
> wrote:
>
> > Hi Lodewijk,
> >
> > If Wikimania was an entity rather than an event, it would be in the
> > top 5 entities in the movement - a smaller budget than WMF, Wikimedia
> > Deutschland and the Wiki Education Foundation but larger than anything
> > else...
> >
>
> Chris, you seem to have a particular angle determined through fitting
> particular data to your conclusion. A point by point breakdown will be
> mired down in bickering, so let me address some misconceptions while also
> embracing and agreeing with some of your feedback.
>
> Since I've been to every single Wikimania and serve on the steering
> committee, obviously I don't share your existential doubt about Wikimania's
> role in our movement. But read on for things I do agree with you on
> regarding the future of the conference. Again: I'm not speaking on behalf
> of the commitee. This is just me.
>
> - "If Wikimania was an entity rather than an event" - But it's not. The
> goals, format and audience is completely different and makes for a
> problematic financial comparison. But even if you get past that, I would
> argue that annual Wikimania is indeed one of the "top 5" occurrences in our
> community each year, even if it's not universally accessible to all
> volunteers. It's where ideas and experiences are exchanged and the only
> systematic way WMF openly interacts with the community in a face to face
> format. Recall - WMCON/Wikimedia Summit is casting off the "learning and
> capacity-building" and will be capped at 200 participants. This makes
> Wikimania even more crucial in this role.
>
> Important initiatives of our movement started at Wikimania. You state in
> your user page you took part in one of the first GLAM engagement with the
> British Museum in 2010 with the Hoxne Challenge. Did you know that the GLAM
> movement had its genesis with Wikimania 2008 in Alexandria, Egypt, when
> Liam Wyatt and the Wikimania organizers had the first "backstage pass" and
> meeting with their staff? [1] [2]
>
> - "it doesn't have any objectives" - But it does if you read the Wikimania
> page, even if it is not down to the level of detail of an academic
> conference or a board retreat. Wikimania is intentionally wiki-like in this
> aspect, which may be what is perceived as a lack of objective. By design,
> the ability of each team to run with a new concept is part of dynamic. One
> of Wikipedia's pillars is "we're here to build an encyclopedia," and people
> fill it with meaning. Similarly, the goal of Wikimania as "an annual
> gathering of the Wikimedia community" is filled differently with meaning
> from ye

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Call for Proposals to Host Wikimania in 2020

[Chris Keating]

Hi Lodewijk,

If Wikimania was an entity rather than an event, it would be in the
top 5 entities in the movement - a smaller budget than WMF, Wikimedia
Deutschland and the Wiki Education Foundation but larger than anything
else...

And yet it doesn't have any objectives (or at least, not consistent
ones), the governance of it is that there's one staff member, a
committee with an ill-defined role that you can only get appointed to
by organising a Wikimania, and the only serious discussion about what
it's for was one online discussion that reached a conclusion that
no-one appears willing to support. And there is very little formal
followup and attempting to build on the results (something WMCON, for
instance, has been very good at).

This isn't to criticise everyone involved in making Wikimania happen,
I know it's a huge amount of effort and responsibility and often not
very well-supported. And I know there *are* innovations aimed at
making the conference more effective (for instance, this year we
finally had poster sessions, which are a great idea for sharing
thoughts and making connections, because you can fit a lot more into
one room and an hour than if you have someone giving an hour-long
presentation...) - but I can't help but feel that there would be more
things like that happening if there was a clearer idea of purpose and
objectives.

In a different thread I'm being quite critical of the direction
WMCON/Wikimedia Summit is taking. But that's only possible because
there *is* a direction, and therefore it's possible to think about
whether it's the right direction or not.

Chris
On Fri, Sep 28, 2018 at 9:55 PM effe iets anders
 wrote:
>
> Perhaps stating the obvious, but please remember there were some
> significant flaws with the consultation by the WMF that you refer to
> (especially with regards to the way questions were phrased and options were
> limited beforehand, if I recall correctly).
>
> Wikimania's purpose is mostly pluriform and suits different needs for
> different people. That makes it particularly hard to evaluate - I grant you
> that. But given the diverse directions that we're trying to bring together,
> ranging from individuals to highly professionalized 100+ employee
> organizations, this is to be expected. To reduce costs, we have squashed
> more and more activities into this one annual event. That further
> reinforces the pluriform nature of the event(s). At this point it's hard to
> see Wikimania as an event, and it has more become like a piece of
> infrastructure that is being used by many events - including the main
> conference, but also tons of meetups, preconferences, committee meetings,
> strategy processes, consultations and side conferences.
>
> Lodewijk
>
> On Fri, Sep 28, 2018 at 5:36 AM Chris Keating 
> wrote:
>
> > > > So it seems that the main rationale for an annual Wikimania brought up
> > in
> > > > the 2016 meeting was that Wikimania was vital for movement governance
> > and
> > > > accountability. Which wasn't particularly stressed in the WMF's
> > > > consultation, but I can see why that kind of issue was very fresh in
> > > > peoples' minds in 2016.
> > > >
> > >
> > > As the facilitator of the 2016 session discussing Wikimania, I don't
> > recall
> > > the "main rationale" of the discussion being about "governance and
> > > accountability" and instead remember many more issues that stood out.
> > >
> > > For example, the prominent phrases from the first part of the meeting
> > > include the following, with most of the notes echoing these themes:
> > > - inspiring, and connecting
> > > - opportunity for different communities to meet
> > > - important to use opportunity to do outreach
> > > - empower important volunteers
> >
> > Sorry, previous email sent half-finished.
> >
> > Sorry, don't think I expressed myself particularly well. Yes, those
> > themes appear to have been present in the meeting, but they were also
> > very much present in the WMF's consultation, which concluded that they
> > could probably be fulfilled just as well by moving to a
> > one-year-in-two rotation between Wikimanias and other regional
> > gatherings.
> >
> > The thing that was present in the in-person meeting, but not from the
> > consultation exercise, was the statement from all the chapter chairs
> > saying that Wikimania was vital for movement governance and
> > accountability.
> >
> > Then of course there was a lot of enthusiasm about the idea of
> > continuing Wikimania from people attending Wikimania who

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Call for Proposals to Host Wikimania in 2020

[Chris Keating]

> > So it seems that the main rationale for an annual Wikimania brought up in
> > the 2016 meeting was that Wikimania was vital for movement governance and
> > accountability. Which wasn't particularly stressed in the WMF's
> > consultation, but I can see why that kind of issue was very fresh in
> > peoples' minds in 2016.
> >
>
> As the facilitator of the 2016 session discussing Wikimania, I don't recall
> the "main rationale" of the discussion being about "governance and
> accountability" and instead remember many more issues that stood out.
>
> For example, the prominent phrases from the first part of the meeting
> include the following, with most of the notes echoing these themes:
> - inspiring, and connecting
> - opportunity for different communities to meet
> - important to use opportunity to do outreach
> - empower important volunteers

Sorry, previous email sent half-finished.

Sorry, don't think I expressed myself particularly well. Yes, those
themes appear to have been present in the meeting, but they were also
very much present in the WMF's consultation, which concluded that they
could probably be fulfilled just as well by moving to a
one-year-in-two rotation between Wikimanias and other regional
gatherings.

The thing that was present in the in-person meeting, but not from the
consultation exercise, was the statement from all the chapter chairs
saying that Wikimania was vital for movement governance and
accountability.

Then of course there was a lot of enthusiasm about the idea of
continuing Wikimania from people attending Wikimania who have attended
many previous Wikimanias. Putting a load of people present at an event
in a room and saying "should this event continue to happen?" is not
great for rigorous decision-making.

(BTW, I'm not saying I favour the other option - the regional
conferences seem to be happening anyway)

> 2. The Wikimedia Conference (WMCON) has pivoted to become the Wikimedia
> Summit. In the process, they announced "learning and capacity-building will
> not be part of the program." [2] Therefore I'd argue that the onus is even
> *more* on conferences like Wikimania to facilitate this.

That would be good! But it kind of returns to the point that
Wikimania's purpose is still fairly ill-defined. Personally I would
really welcome Wikimania becoming explicitly focused on learning and
capacity-building, because currently its focus changes every year and
often when a focus is articulated it's not necessarily followed
through.

Chris

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Call for Proposals to Host Wikimania in 2020

[Chris Keating]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2018 at 1:10 PM Andrew Lih  wrote:
>
> On Thu, Sep 27, 2018 at 3:40 AM Chris Keating 
> wrote:
>
> > So it seems that the main rationale for an annual Wikimania brought up in
> > the 2016 meeting was that Wikimania was vital for movement governance and
> > accountability. Which wasn't particularly stressed in the WMF's
> > consultation, but I can see why that kind of issue was very fresh in
> > peoples' minds in 2016.
> >
>
> As the facilitator of the 2016 session discussing Wikimania, I don't recall
> the "main rationale" of the discussion being about "governance and
> accountability" and instead remember many more issues that stood out.
>
> For example, the prominent phrases from the first part of the meeting
> include the following, with most of the notes echoing these themes:
> - inspiring, and connecting
> - opportunity for different communities to meet
> - important to use opportunity to do outreach
> - empower important volunteers

Sorry, don't think I expressed myself particularly well. Yes, those
themes appear to have been present in the meeting, but they were also
very much present in the WMF's consultation, which concluded that they
could probably be fulfilled just as well by moving to a
one-year-in-two rotation between Wikimanias and other regional
gatherings.


> > Now the Wikimedia Conference / Summit looks set to assume this role, what
> > is the continued rationale for having Wikimania every year?
>
> Given the above, I think the basis of the question is not sufficiently
> established.
>
> In fact, two recent reports or decisions reinforce Wikimania's role even
> more:
>
> 1. From the Community Engagement Insights 2018 Report - "Discovery of new
> projects and ideas is best at Wikimania: While all conferences had a high
> proportion of participants that reported discovering new projects or ideas
> as the most important outcome, Wikimania had the highest proportion of them
> all." - The Community Engagement Insights 2018 Report [1] [2]
>
> 2. The Wikimedia Conference (WMCON) has pivoted to become the Wikimedia
> Summit. In the process, they announced "learning and capacity-building will
> not be part of the program." [2] Therefore I'd argue that the onus is even
> *more* on conferences like Wikimania to facilitate this.
>
> -Andrew
>
>  [1] -
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement_Insights/2018_Report#Community_Resources_team:_Local_and_regional_events_show_more_learning_and_building_skills_as_major_outcomes_than_larger_global_conferences,_while_Wikimania_excels_in_discovery_of_the_new
>
> [2] -
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2018-September/091062.html
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Call for Proposals to Host Wikimania in 2020

[Chris Keating]

So it seems that the main rationale for an annual Wikimania brought up in
the 2016 meeting was that Wikimania was vital for movement governance and
accountability. Which wasn't particularly stressed in the WMF's
consultation, but I can see why that kind of issue was very fresh in
peoples' minds in 2016.

Now the Wikimedia Conference / Summit looks set to assume this role, what
is the continued rationale for having Wikimania every year?

Chris

On Wed, 19 Sep 2018, 16:29 Andrew Lih,  wrote:

> Full disclosure: I’m a member of the Wikimania Committee but I am not
> speaking on behalf of that body in this mail.
>
> The current custom is that Wikimania happens every year and that while the
> selection is made by the Wikimania Committee, the WMF has final approval
> over the selection and the operational parameters around its execution.
>
> There was a consultation and discussion in 2015 about the future of
> Wikimania, and subsequent followup with in-person discussions at Wikimania
> 2016, Esino Lario, where there was overwhelming support for continuing the
> yearly model.
>
> You can read more about the consultation and followups in these links.
> Thanks.
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Towards_a_New_Wikimania
>
> https://wikimania2016.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discussions/The_future_of_Wikimania
> https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Wikimania2016-discussion7b
>
> -Andrew
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 19, 2018 at 11:07 AM Philip Kopetzky <
> philip.kopet...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi Ellie,
> >
> > is there an official statement by the WMF that explains why Wikimania
> 2020
> > is happening and that the funding for this event is secured? Wikimania
> does
> > cost quite a lot of money and I was under the impression that it was
> > unclear as to if, how and why Wikimania should take place 2020. But maybe
> > I'm also mistaken on that point.
> >
> > Best,
> > Philip
> >
> > On Sat, 8 Sep 2018 at 18:53, Ellie Young  wrote:
> >
> > > No.   We are looking more at rotating regions if we can, and excellent
> > > proposals/teams.
> > >
> > > On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 3:31 AM Joseph Seddon 
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hello Ellie,
> > > >
> > > > Is Wikimania still on its programme of "1 EU/US Wikimania" followed
> by
> > an
> > > > "Away Wikimania"?
> > > >
> > > > Seddon
> > > >
> > > > On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 11:44 PM Ellie Young 
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > The Wikimania Steering Committee and Wikimedia Foundation are
> seeking
> > > > > expressions of interest from interested parties for
> > > > >  hosting
> > > > > Wikimani
> > > > > a 2020.
> > > > >
> > > > > Please see the following for more information:
> > > > >
> > > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2020
> > > > >
> > > > > If you are interested in discussing the possibilities and working
> > with
> > > > the
> > > > > WMF Events Manager in preparing a proposal to host and organize
> > > Wikimania
> > > > > 20
> > > > > 20
> > > > > , please contact eyoung at wikimedia.org
> > > > >  by
> > October
> > > > > 15th.  Also, if you
> > > > > know of an individual or group that we should approach about
> hosting,
> > > we
> > > > > encourage  nominations as well. The Steering Committee and WMF
> expect
> > > to
> > > > > make a decision by early
> > > > > 2019.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Thanks, Ellie
> > > > > ___
> > > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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> > > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > > > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > > Unsubscribe:
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> > > > >  ?subject=unsubscribe>
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> > >
> > > --
> > > Ellie Young
> > > Events Manager
> > > Wikimedia Foundation
> > > eyo...@wikimedia.org
> > > c. 510 701 8649
> > > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Conference 2019: New name, new concept, eligbility criteria

[Chris Keating]

I have so many questions.

Is anything concrete planned to replace the learning and capacity-building
work that used to happen at WMCON? (Or has the identification of capacity
building as a strategic priority just resulted in  the abandonment of
the main capacity building event?)

And why after two "strategy focused" conferences, do we need another one?
What will it achieve except acres more flipchart? How many conferences do
we expect to need before the strategic direction starts to become a reality?

Chris

On Tue, 25 Sep 2018, 20:34 Cornelius Kibelka, <
cornelius.kibe...@wikimedia.de> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> As Nicole Ebber already wrote a couple of weeks ago, we would like to give
> you some further information about the next Wikimedia Conference, that will
> take place from March 29–31, 2019 in Berlin, Germany.
>
> The next conference will focus on the Movement Strategy process and
> movement governance for the organized part of the movement in general. The
> program will be designed according to the status and needs of the ongoing
> Movement Strategy process and its working groups. We are hoping to see a
> diverse group of participants next year, and look forward to creating three
> days of working, discussing, and thinking together. The event is made
> possible through the generous financial support of the Wikimedia
> Foundation.
>
> Thus, to make it clearer that learning and capacity-building will not be
> part of the program and cut laces to the previous conference, we will
> change the name to “Wikimedia Summit” (#wmsummit).
>
> The change of the purpose of the event is accompanied by a change in the
> composition of the audience. The event will be a more focused one, and
> therefore we aim to scale down the audience to around 200 participants. As
> it is this still the Wikimedia affiliates conference, every _eligible_
> affiliate can send one (1) delegate. Furthermore, we will invite
> participants from the Wikimedia Affiliate EDs (~10), WMF Board of Trustees
> (10), WMF staff (~10), the committees (~15 from FDC, AffCom and Simple APG)
> and additional members of the Movement Strategy working groups, that do not
> come in another role (~20). You can find more information regarding this on
> Meta.[1]
>
> Registration for the Wikimedia Summit will open on November 2 and end on
> December 17, 2018. We urge participants that need a visa to register no
> later than November 19, so we can support them as best as possible to get a
> visa for the event.
>
> We will keep you updated in the further weeks and months via the usual
> communication channels. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate
> to contact us, preferably via wmsum...@wikimedia.de.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Daniela Gentner & Cornelius Kibelka
>
> [1]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Summit_2019/Eligibility_Criteria
>
> --
> Cornelius Kibelka
> Program and Engagement Coordinator (PEC)
> for the Wikimedia Conference
>
> Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
> Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0
> http://wikimedia.de
>
> Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch an der Menge allen
> Wissens frei teilhaben kann. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
> http://spenden.wikimedia.de/
>
> Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
> Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
> der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
> Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: First round of Working Group members

[Chris Keating]

Hi Paolo,

In my experience Wikimedia staff are always just as committed and
enthusiastic as volunteers - it's not a job anyone takes if all they
care about is collecting their paycheque. :)

But where I share some of your concern is with the balance of some of
the working groups. Staff and board members of large organisations are
much more represented in some WGs than others.

Roles and Responsibilities has 8 members, including three Chapter EDs,
two staff and one board member from the WMF, and two volunteers drawn
from FDC and AffCom.

Resource Allocation has 11 members presently, of whom 9 are from the
WMF, from large chapters, or from the existing FDC.

Are these groups really going to be considering significant changes to
the way things happen at the moment?

By contrast the Diversity WG is wonderfully volunteer-led and diverse,
but then I suspect the Diversity Working Group isn't going to be the
one making important governance recommendations.

Chris


On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 2:20 PM Paulo Santos Perneta
 wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> "*Given the extensive time commitment required for participation in the
> WGs, I think that it's reasonable to  expect that a significant percentage
> of the members will be staff who are  paid to participate because the time
> commitment is probably too heavy for many volunteers *" (
>
> 2018-07-23 0:04 GMT+01:00
>
> Pine W )
>
> Isn't that a problem of "bias by design"? If the design of the groups
> favors the participation of staffers, who are paid by the chapters to look
> after their interests, isn't this an obvious conflict of interest? Why
> would a staffer of Wikimedia Antarctida, whose relation to the Movement is
> mainly defined by the salary (s)he gets at the end of the month, paid by
> his/her chapter, be interested in participating in strategy discussions for
> other reason than to advance the points and interests of Wikimedia
> Antarctida? Even assuming those interests do not conflict with those of the
> Wikimedia Movement (which is not granted), the expected input would still
> be very limited in scope.
>
> All the best,
>
> Paulo
>
>
>
> 2018-07-23 0:04 GMT+01:00
>
> Pine W :
>
> > Speaking in general terms about diversity of the WGs, this is a challenging
> > topic even for people who have the best of intentions. What do we mean by
> > "diversity" and "bias" in regards to the composition of the WGs? That
> > discussion alone could be extensive and there might not be consensus on the
> > definitions.
> >
> > If the goal in general is maximum diversity on as many factors as possible,
> > that is a difficult goal to achieve. Given the extensive time commitment
> > required for participation in the WGs, I think that it's reasonable to
> > expect that a significant percentage of the members will be staff who are
> > paid to participate because the time commitment is probably too heavy for
> > many volunteers, and our existing volunteers already have plenty of
> > important activities to do.
> >
> > There are other ways that this phase of the strategy development process
> > could be run that would be less burdensome for volunteers - and I
> > personally would advocate for such an approach - but the downsides that I
> > could foresee are that (1) the staff involved would likely also not be
> > sufficiently diverse for the aspirations of many of us, and (2) the culture
> > and mindset of staff can be very different from those of the volunteers, so
> > there would almost inevitably be some loss in terms of the richness of the
> > conversations.
> >
> > What I'm trying to do here is to encourage us to have realistic
> > expectations.
> >
> > I lack the knowledge to comment on why particular individuals or groups
> > were or weren't included in the WGs and I hope that Nicole and Kaarel can
> > respond to the concerns that people raise here, perhaps in private
> > communications.
> >
> > Pine
> > ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Israel joins the nationwide strike to protest the exclusion of gay couples the right to become parents

[Chris Keating]

On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 10:23 AM Shlomi Fish  wrote:
>
> Hi Itzik,
>
>
> I do not oppose the LGBT movement, but please explain how an official support
> of that falls under the global Wikimedia project's mission, and does not
> dilute our policy of avoiding having a stance on issues that are unrelated to
> it?

I mean... yeah.

As an LGBT Wikimedian I entirely support changing this law, and I can
completely understand staff members wanting to take part in the
demonstrations, and the organisation wanting to support them in doing
that.

But I really don't see why Wikimedia Israel should formally involve
itself in a general social-policy issue that's nothing specifically to
do with our mission. We need to be careful not to try to be a
general-purpose progressive movement.

Regards,

Chris

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustees participation in the Movement Strategy Process

[Chris Keating]

Hi SJ,

I think everyone who is taking part in this stage of the strategy process
already knows about it.

There was of course an open call for members of the working groups a few
weeks ago, and the working groups will have some unspecified method of
involving the broader community in these conversations, though I expect the
only substantive conversations will happen among working group members -
just as to date the only substantive conversations about movement strategy
have happened at the Wikimedia Conference.

I genuinely don't know whether anyone including WMF thinks the WMF advisory
board still exists.

Chris

On Thu, 19 Jul 2018, 17:07 Samuel Klein,  wrote:

> >
> > On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 4:48 PM Craig Newmark 
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Maria, thanks, much appreciated!
> >
>
> Hear, hear!  It has been good to see the updates all year.
>
>
> > > Which group focuses on information quality and accuracy?
> >
>
> And which group focuses on information breadth and coverage?
> If these are cross-cutting issues touching on many groups, where should
> relevant input go?
>
> On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 5:54 PM Chris Keating 
> wrote:
>
> > No-one seems to be particularly sure if the Advisory Board is still a
> > thing or not.
> >
>
> Let's fix that :)   This seems like something advisors are particularly
> suited to.
>
> SJ
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustees participation in the Movement Strategy Process

[Chris Keating]

No-one seems to be particularly sure if the Advisory Board is still a
thing or not.

https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Advisory_Board is marked as
historical and possibly inaccurate, and it hasn't been edited for
about 7 years!

Chris
User:The Land
On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 4:48 PM Craig Newmark  wrote:
>
> Maria, thanks, much appreciated!
>
> Which group focuses on information quality and accuracy?
>
> What's the role of the Advisory Board?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Craig Newmark
> founder craigslist
> craignewmarkphilanthropies.org
> On July 19, 2018 9:43:21 AM María Sefidari  wrote:
>
> > Dear Wikimedians,
> >
> > In 2017, the Wikimedia movement began a collaborative process to define
> > what we want to build or achieve together by 2030. After eight months of
> > discussion, across languages, geographies, and contexts, the outcome
> > was a Strategic
> > Direction
> > 
> > focused on knowledge as a service and knowledge equity:
> >
> > “By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the
> > ecosystem of free knowledge, and anyone who shares our vision will be able
> > to join us.[1]”
> >
> > Now our task as a movement is to apply the Strategic Direction to our own
> > work. We need to answer questions that define our path forward: What kind
> > of structures are ideal for achieving our strategic direction? What
> > resources and capacities do we need to develop? How do we relate to each
> > other and make decisions as a movement? How do we manage change in a
> > healthy, sustainable way?
> >
> > Over the next year, the Wikimedia movement will engage in a structured,
> > distributed process to answer these questions. The process will be
> > structured around Working Groups who will develop guidance in key Thematic
> > Areas.[2]
> >
> > The Board of Trustees is committed to the Movement Strategy process and
> > each of us will join one of the Working Groups:
> >
> >
> >   -
> >
> >   Roles & Responsibilities: Nataliia
> >   -
> >
> >   Revenue Streams: Tanya
> >   -
> >
> >   Resource Allocation: María
> >   -
> >
> >   Partnerships: Raju
> >   -
> >
> >   Community Health: James
> >   -
> >
> >   Product & Technology: Christophe
> >   -
> >
> >   Capacity Building: Dariusz
> >   -
> >
> >   Diversity: Esra’a
> >   -
> >
> >   Advocacy: Jimmy
> >
> >
> > We will play two specific roles in this process:
> >
> >   1.
> >
> >   Individually, as members of the Working Groups
> >   2.
> >  1.
> >
> >  participate mindfully in ourtheir individual capacity,
> >  2.
> >
> >  bring our their content expertise and experience to the discussion,
> >  3.
> >
> >  ensure the information flow from the Working Group to the Board,
> >  4.
> >
> >  support an effective, and inclusive process.
> >  3.
> >
> >   Collectively, as the Board of Trustees
> >   4.
> >  1.
> >
> >  review recommendations from each Working Group and provide feedback,
> >  2.
> >
> >  resolve difficult questions as required and adhere to decisions made,
> >  3.
> >
> >  delegate approval of recommendations to an appropriate community
> >  mechanism whenever possible (such as endorsement or consensus),
> >  4.
> >
> >  make decisions when there is no other mechanism to make the decision,
> >  5.
> >
> >  accept the recommendations that are consistent with the movement’s
> >  values, the Strategic Direction as well as law and other compliance
> >  requirements,
> >  6.
> >
> >  direct resources, budgets and capacities for the implementation of
> >  approved recommendations.
> >
> >
> > This statement captures the perspective of the Board of Trustees, and we
> > believe that the process is a unique opportunity for the movement to build
> > and shape our future together. We will participate in strategy
> > conversations and sessions at Wikimania[3], and look forward to
> > contributing throughout the process together with many of you. We encourage
> > those who are attending Wikimania to also join these conversations and all
> > Wikimedians to participate in all the upcoming strategic conversations and
> > consultations.
> >
> > On behalf of the Board,
> >
> > María Sefidari
> >
> > [1]
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20
> >
> > [2]
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_Groups
> >
> > [3] https://wikimania2018.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_2030#Schedule
> > ___
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> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
>
>
>
>

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimédia France Governance review

[Chris Keating]

Congratulations to Wikimedia France for undertaking this review and
publishing the results.

I believe all of the 3 governance reviews are important reading for
anyone involved with the WMF or any of the affiliates, and all have
important lessons for the movement. It's interesting to note that this
is the first one that touches on the WMF-affiliate relationship in
much detail.

Also - while so far governance reviews have only happened as a result
of a crisis, this doesn't have to be the case! I would urge Wikimedia
affiliates to take external advice on their governance, the
suggestions offered by governance experts who know the laws, norms and
cutlure in which you operate will be very helpful for you.

Chris
(who was Chair of Wikimedia UK at the point we had a governance review...)
On Sun, Jul 8, 2018 at 10:43 PM Nadine Le Lirzin  wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> As announced last month on this list[1], the Governance Assessment Report
> by external auditors "Associés en gouvernance" has been published, and we
> want to share it with you.
>
> The auditors did a great work, first in their rather good understanding of
> our movement complexity, and then in the numerous improvement suggestions
> they delivered.
>
> The consultation of our members – to fully associate them to the rebuilding
> – is still in progress. Main changes will be submitted to a vote at next
> General Assembly, by the end of the year.
>
> The document has been translated in English and is now available on
> Commons[2].
>
> May these suggestions be useful not only for Wikimédia France, but also for
> any other chapter or affiliate that would be in need of governance advice
> or ideas.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Nadine Le Lirzin
> *Wikimedia France Board Secretary*
>
>
> [1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2018-June/090413.html
> [2]
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_France_-_Governance_Assessment_Report_-_2018.pdf
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Executive Director's Letter to Donors

[Chris Keating]

Very diplomatic, Seddon!

But... no. Seriously. Let's not pretend that having the WMF ED send a
bunch of emails to Wikimedia donors about general US public policy
issues is a remotely good idea.

Chris



On Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 9:46 PM, Joseph Seddon  wrote:
> Hi James.
>
> Your suggestion is noted but there are lot's of things that we want to do
> with email but only a finite amount of resources in this area with which to
> achieve it so it'll be something for to thinking about in the future.
>
> Many Thanks
> Seddon
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 9:11 PM James Salsman  wrote:
>
>> Regarding https://twitter.com/SuePGardner/status/998302792946102273
>>
>> I propose that the Executive Director resume regular periodic
>> correspondence with donors on other ways they can support the
>> movement, beyond copyright and internet law advocacy that the
>> Foundation traditionally supports directly and indirectly. In
>> particular, I propose that the Executive Director ask donors to
>> support other organizations which are working for free college,[1-4]
>> single payer universal health care,[5] shorter work weeks,[6-7]
>> payroll subsidies,[8] and two-bracket taxation.[9]
>>
>> I believe all of these goals are favored by wikimedians, for
>> wikimedians, I predict at around 80% for the least popular. If there
>> is any question I ask that a statistically robust and significant
>> survey of the question among community and staff be conducted with the
>> urgency commensurate that work in these areas deserves.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Jim Salsman
>>
>> [1]
>> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/16/free-community-college-california_n_6474940.html
>>
>> [2]
>> https://www.treasury.gov/connect/blog/Documents/20121212_Economics%20of%20Higher%20Ed_vFINAL.pdf
>>
>> [3] https://www.docdroid.net/epSjOI2/peracchi2006.pdf
>>
>> [4] https://www.docdroid.net/joXd2MZ/heckman2006.pdf
>>
>> [5] https://twitter.com/jsalsman/status/1007106802507378689
>>
>> [6]
>> https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/03/does-working-fewer-hours-make-you-more-productive/
>>
>> [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend#Length
>>
>> [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_Work_Pay_tax_credit
>>
>> [9]
>> https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1595/12bb30b0ceddfe0525addf777bb2c31542b6.pdf
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Seddon
>
> *Community and Audience Engagement Associate*
> *Advancement (Fundraising), Wikimedia Foundation*
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