Re: [Wikimedia-l] Qualities for the next long-term WMF executive director

Related to this thread: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html In particular: "Psychological safety is ‘‘a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up,’’ Edmondson wrote in a st

Re: [Wikimedia-l] last day to nominate for 2 seats on WMF board of trustees...

Nice :-) J On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 9:04 PM, Pine W wrote: > Sounds good, thank you Pharos and WMNYC! > > Pine > > On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 8:02 PM, Pharos > wrote: > > > Hi fellow Wikimedians, > > > > Wikimedia NYC is interested in opening up and diversifying the Wikimedia > > Foundation board no

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

+1 to MZMcBride comment I strongly support us actually elected the community trustees. I have reached out to a couple of lawyers to try to figure out how involved this would be. James On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 5:41 PM, MZMcBride wrote: > Patricio Lorente wrote: > >Today the Wikimedia Foundation B

Re: [Wikimedia-l] last day to nominate for 2 seats on WMF board of trustees...

Sounds good, thank you Pharos and WMNYC! Pine On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 8:02 PM, Pharos wrote: > Hi fellow Wikimedians, > > Wikimedia NYC is interested in opening up and diversifying the Wikimedia > Foundation board nominations process (beyond the typical chapter-affiliated > candidates), so inter

Re: [Wikimedia-l] last day to nominate for 2 seats on WMF board of trustees...

Hi fellow Wikimedians, Wikimedia NYC is interested in opening up and diversifying the Wikimedia Foundation board nominations process (beyond the typical chapter-affiliated candidates), so interested parties are welcomed to submit their self-nominations today on Meta-Wiki, and we will consider all

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Qualities for the next long-term WMF executive director

On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 9:52 PM, Pine W wrote: > On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 4:05 PM, Oliver Keyes wrote: > >> On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 1:57 PM, Pine W wrote: >> > Employees have some rights too, including the right to organize and the >> > right to quit. Good employees quitting may be a sign of problem

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Qualities for the next long-term WMF executive director

On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 4:05 PM, Oliver Keyes wrote: > On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 1:57 PM, Pine W wrote: > > Employees have some rights too, including the right to organize and the > > right to quit. Good employees quitting may be a sign of problems with > > management. > > > > In WMF's case, many of

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

Patricio Lorente wrote: >Today the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees voted to remove one of >the Trustees, Dr. James Heilman, from the Board. His term ended effective >immediately. > >This was not a decision the Board took lightly. The Board has a >responsibility to the Wikimedia movement and

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open and recorded WMF Board meetings

Thanks Risker. Maybe there is a mixing of levels here. I am urging that we address things have become broken on a deep level, namely the gap between what the board says and what James has said and the destruction of trust caused by that gap. If all Pierre was doing was saying that he disagreed w

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Qualities for the next long-term WMF executive director

On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 1:57 PM, Pine W wrote: > Employees have some rights too, including the right to organize and the > right to quit. Good employees quitting may be a sign of problems with > management. > > In WMF's case, many of the staff have plenty of employment options outside > of WMF, whi

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open and recorded WMF Board meetings

Hold on, Jytdog, I think you're reading more into Pierre's statement than is really there. Pierre has not said the decision to retain the ED "was itself trust-destroying for [him]". He said it was a mistake, and he said it was a mistake because the board was wrong to think that the ED could recov

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open and recorded WMF Board meetings

Hi Jytdog, My response was actually more to Oliver than you, but I still would draw a distinction between "unanimous support" and "majority support". It might seem innocuous enough but as Pierre-Selim points out, "majority support" is actually not a great reflection on an employee, as it presumab

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open and recorded WMF Board meetings

Pierre that is exactly what I struggle with. You are saying that throwing integrity out the window in the name of politics is OK. I am saying it is absolutely not OK. The individuals representing the board should have been honest and simply said "The board supports the ED" and left it at that, a

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open and recorded WMF Board meetings

Seriously ? If the board decide to keep the CEO/ED, the board cannot go and undermine the authority of the CEO by communicating doubts. The mistake was not to say unanimous support but the "keep the ED" straw poll result. It really surprised me because the more you wait the more it costs (talents

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Qualities for the next long-term WMF executive director

Hi, Le lundi 7 mars 2016, 13:40:20 Brion Vibber a écrit : > > Third, what happens when the "unicorn" retires and we transition again? > > I think we're going to need to think harder about structural remedies: > communications channels, reporting infrastructures, "escape valves" for > miscommunic

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Qualities for the next long-term WMF executive director

I do feel the need to warn against making a checklist of good qualities for potential candidates... First, a lot of these things are hard to interview for. If you ask someone if they support their employees and give them clear goals, they're probably going to say "yes". To find out if they consist

[Wikimedia-l] last day to nominate for 2 seats on WMF board of trustees...

Hello, The board of trustees for the Wikimedia Foundation has 10 seats. The office holders for 2 of these 10 seats will be selected in the "2016 affiliate-selected board seats" process described at For a candidate to be conside

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open and recorded WMF Board meetings

If the board is choosing not to participate for a particular reason, or Jimmy is choosing not to release e-mails for a particular reason, then they should say so. Nothing keeps them from offering that information themselves. It isn't necessary for other people to speculate on whether the deafening

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open and recorded WMF Board meetings

I would also like to more about the decision to remove James — I am not yet able to reconcile the public statements I’ve seen from James and Jimmy. However, I am less concerned about the apparent disconnect between the board statement of unanimous support and James claim that there was not unanimou

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wmfall] Inspire Campaign on content curation & review launches today!

Just filed another. \o/ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Automatic_article_topic_detection Build a classifier that associates articles with WikiProjects. This could be used to route new article drafts to people with the right subject matter expertise for review. For example, English

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Qualities for the next long-term WMF executive director

Employees have some rights too, including the right to organize and the right to quit. Good employees quitting may be a sign of problems with management. In WMF's case, many of the staff have plenty of employment options outside of WMF, which is all the more reason to select a WMF ED who has good

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open and recorded WMF Board meetings

Craig, thanks for your reply on this. This is actually not about HR matters. It is about what board members chose to do and say. It would have made little difference in the RW if they had said "the board supports Lila" (and if there was a majority vote for that, the board did support Lila) vs "th

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Qualities for the next long-term WMF executive director

On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 2:42 AM, Keegan Peterzell wrote: > On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 1:21 AM, Pine W wrote: > >> If the research results about qualities of effective managers have been >> generally consistent for 30 years, then I wonder why so many managers in so >> many organizations today have medi