On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 4:01 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak <djemieln...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > First, my ideas to reform the Board are not incompatible with a > "senate-like" idea. > > Second, I think that I see at least several reasons why a Senate for > WIkimedia movement may not be the best way to go: > 1) we already advance bureaucracy. Setting up yet another committee in a > hope, that it will solve problems rarely works. It is better to improve the > existing institutions. > 2) Separating the movement's Senate from the WMF's Board will further > advance the divide and disengagement. > 3) We already have bodies, whose responsibility is oversight over the > movement's resources (the FDC). After four years of lobbying for this idea, > I'm really happy to see now that the WMF will be treated more like other > organizations in the movement and will undergo a review. We DO NOT need > more ideas to separate the WMF from the movement, we need just the > opposite. In my view, the Board should gradually include oversight of the > movement, rather than just the WMF. > 4) The costs of having a 15-20 people Senate that meets in person twice a > year match the costs of a small chapter. I don't think it makes sense, > resource-wise. > 5) Ultimately, Denny's proposal leads to polarizing the field into the WMF > vs. everyone else. I would very much rather see a situation in which the > WMF is primus inter pares.
Once again I got instinct to find appropriate literature, which describes properly contemporary bureaucratic nonsense and doublespeak. But I will resist this time. FDC was the product of long-term struggle between chapters on one side and Board, ED and staff on the other one. That will be always the case until we get the unified global body, which democratically represents all of the stakeholders. Thus, not the senate, but assembly is the right form of our organization: assembly which would select *paid* Board members. Besides the load, I want Board members to be accountable to Wikimedians, not to the for-profit or non-profit entities which give them money. Yes, it's scary to be accountable to people you lead. I completely understand that. The costs of having 100 people assembly won't be significant at all. First of all, the most of the people in such large body would be anyways mostly consisted of those going to Wikimedia Conference and Wikimania. If you really care about money, scale the initial body to 40-50 and ask all chapters that sending three or more people to those conferences to contribute expenses for one to such body. If you put that way, the costs could rise up to ~5%, if they raise at all. So, please, reconsider your ideas on the line: from speaking about bad bureaucracy, while in fact increasing inefficient one -- to thinking about efficient, democratically accountable bureaucracy, with everybody content by its construction. It appears in my vision that "more oversight" will practically mean creation of "Community Oversight Committee", which would be used as one more excuse, while their members would be politely intimidated not to talk anything "too hard" to the others, under the excuses of loyalty to anybody else than the movement itself. Said everything above, I have to express that I am pissed off by the fact that the Board members are constructive as long as they are under high level of pressure. Whenever you feel a bit more empowered, I hear just the excuses I've been listening for a decade. Please, let us know how do you want to talk with us in the way that we see that the communication is constructive. -- Milos _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
