Circling back to a subject that I've mentioned before, I favor having meetings of the WMF Board be open and recorded by default, with limited exceptions for discussions of legally privileged information and other subjects for which there is a strong reason that deliberations should remain private. Note that "wiki-political sensitivity" is not one of those reasons.
I hope that recent events illustrate that it may be better to be transparent from the beginning than try to suppress information that eventually leaks out or emerges after a lengthy series of questions. The WMF Board minutes tend to be brief, and the Board's deliberations are rarely public. This is disappointing for an organization in the open source movement. WMF should be an exemplar of transparent and open governance. To illustrate the kind of detail that can be omitted from Board minutes and the temptation to omit information for questionable reasons, I suggest this clip from the British satire "Yes, Minister", in which two civil servants discuss the Prime Minister's wish to suppress the publication of a chapter of a book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNKjShmHw7s I hope that, as the WMF Board moves forward, it transforms into a model of transparency and openness; less "Yes, Minister" and paralysis and resistance to the community, and more transparency and vigor in public service. Having WMF Board meetings be open and recorded by default would be a wonderful step in aligning the Board with the value of transparency. Pine _______________________________________________ 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>
