Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thinking outside the box

2016-09-07 Thread Pine W
Agree. Our flat population of active editors [0], while the Internet population continues to grow, suggests that we have a problem. As a part of the upcoming WMF strategy, I hope that there will be work on growing the population of active contributors, as well as developing the number and skills of

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thinking outside the box

2016-09-06 Thread Jane Darnell
Yes to this: "the key issue is for us to build room for people to emerge but also to feel entitled to run for those position" I would say this is a key issue at the very bottom as well, for example just getting people to become a contributor to any one of our many projects, whether it's Wikipedia

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thinking outside the box

2016-09-06 Thread Yaroslav M. Blanter
On 05.09.2016 23:41, Asaf Bartov wrote: You clearly have a strong and abiding interest in movement governance, and have been asking some good questions. You should have submitted your candidacy.[1] To your point, I guess it can be taken as a reminder, but it does not seem to me that the appoi

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thinking outside the box

2016-09-06 Thread
Picking up on Christophe's idea of improving "organically". It is a good thing to be open to gradual organic improvement, this means that the Wikimedia ecology of organizations adopt proven improvements based on the results of varied and experimental changes. This is one big drawback, referred to

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thinking outside the box

2016-09-06 Thread Christophe Henner
Hi Rogol, The weird thing in this discussion is I kind of agree with everyone. Yes more diversity would be awesome. But in my opinion diversity should be something we achieve organicaly. So, from my biased perspective, the key issue is for us to build room for people to emerge but also to feel

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thinking outside the box

2016-09-05 Thread Anders Wennersten
I am very happy how this nowadays works out. We have now a lot of chapters, each with a Board. And here the members are not oldtimers and here is the appropriate first place to get into the Wikmedia world. And there are many bodies who you can then turn to to get further into the Wikimedia w

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thinking outside the box

2016-09-05 Thread Rogol Domedonfors
I think Pine's message rather illustrates my point. Pine seems to assume that the alternative is between people experienced in the WMF ways of doing things and novices. Actually, there are plenty of people in the world with experience in being trustees of non-proft organisations, and technical ex

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thinking outside the box

2016-09-05 Thread Pine W
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I agree that we need to work on developing new leaders. That includes: * On-wiki administrators * On-wiki program leaders * Affiliate board and committee members (including user groups, which IMO get far too little support from WMF) * Affiliate p

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thinking outside the box

2016-09-05 Thread Asaf Bartov
You clearly have a strong and abiding interest in movement governance, and have been asking some good questions. You should have submitted your candidacy.[1] To your point, I guess it can be taken as a reminder, but it does not seem to me that the appointments were made *so as to minimize* influe

[Wikimedia-l] Thinking outside the box

2016-09-05 Thread Rogol Domedonfors
We have seen various appointments to influential committees within the WMF "system" in recent weeks: the Funds Dissemination Committee and the Board Governance Committee Volunteer and Advisory members; the Board Election Committee is being geared up and new Board members will soon be selected by th