Well stated Yaroslav, and congratulation to the people
elected/selected/appointed
I see this election process as the best yet in the movement. I believe
the election/selection/ appointed worked very well and gave a well
balanced group. Looking through the stages of the Single Transferable
Vote method I think it worked very well. Raven was 18 at beginning but
became elected at the end, she being a very good candidate but not so
well known
Anders
Den 2021-11-02 kl. 09:43, skrev Yaroslav Blanter:
Dear Bodhisattwa,
this is an issue which has been raised at the strategy transition
group I was part of, and also during the events following these
discussions which were intended to shape the specific process to draft
the Charter. Basically, the choice was between two options - either
have a (relatively) small group elected/appointed fast which would not
be fully representative but would be efficient and would draft the
Charter quickly, or to go for representation at the expense of the
time and possibly also size of the group - if it includes everybody
needed for representation it would be unworkable. The decision, which
I personally also supported, was to go for speed and efficiency at the
expense of representation. I see your arguments, and they have merit,
but we can not do everything at once. It was clear that the community
elections would favor North American and East European candidates, as
for example the board elections always do. There was some hope that
affiliates would elect more candidates from the rest of the world,
which is indeed what happened (I am not an affiliate member and I am
not familiar with the specific selection process). The WMF mitigated
that even further by appointing one person of Indian background (even
though residing in the US if I am not mistaken). There are other
safeguards in place - I assume the draft Charter will be up to the
community discussion, and if there are omissions they will be noticed.
But the main idea was to elect/appoint people who understand what they
are doing and who would implement what is best for the movement,
taking into account that the Charter is for evetrybody, and not their
personal vision. Those drafting committee members I know fit this
definition. This is now our turn, as a community, to make sure that we
read the draft - when it is out - carefully and make sure it is
acceptable for everybody.
Best
Yaroslav
On Mon, Nov 1, 2021 at 7:08 PM Bodhisattwa Mandal
<bodhisattwa.rg...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Samuel,
On Mon, 1 Nov 2021 at 21:35, Samuel Klein <meta...@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't believe the idea is for anyone to explicitly represent
their geography, affiliations, or organizations -- rather to
draft a meaningful and empowering starting point for us all.
People develop their perspectives based on their environment,
culture and surroundings and it is almost impossible for anyone to
understand comprehensively about what is going on in other places
without dealing with their real situation there. It doesn't matter
how honest or how experienced a person might be, an Western
European will have hard times to understand all the real issues in
South Asia, A South Asian will have little understanding about
what is really happening in Latin America and that is why
geographical representation is needed. If the question or process
is about something global, then it is needed even more. To draft a
document for us all, it is essential to get voices from as many as
possible, if not all. How can a movement charter be drafted if it
does not echo the concerns of all our existing communities clearly?
We chose to follow popular elections which have always brought
North Americans and Europeans on the top of the table and
historically abandoned other parts of the world, even though there
are capable people in those parts too but do not have the voter
base. We have seen it repeated in this election process too. Here
we had 7 seats through community elections, so its almost futile
for Global South candidates to compete there, the proof of my
statement is that only 1 candidate from the Global South actually
made through this election. So, they only have 6 affiliate
selected positions from 8 Wikimedia regions (and 1 Thematic hub),
where they have minimal chance because 6 seats from 8 regions
count to < 1 candidate per hub. So, regions like South Asia,
ESEAP, Sub-Saharan Africa, etc. was extremely lucky to get 1
candidate in the committee, 2 is not at all expected. Don't you
think that this is a totally unfair process from the start for
under-represented communities and affiliates? No wonder, people
here are getting aloof from the movement strategy process.
Of course broad geographic and project backgrounds, and good
language diversity (within the drafting group and through
available tools to support work with others) are important for
this work. But please don't exclude any participant from
that, based on the experimental mix of selection processes.
We are all wikimedians. Runa and Jorge for instance have been
advancing the global movement towards free knowledge, culture
and tools for a very long time. And having a translation
expert actively involved should help amplify different voices :).
Sorry for my English, I am not a native English speaker, so maybe
there is a misunderstanding. I have not excluded anyone as you are
saying. Runa and Jorge are amazing people in the movement but I
was talking about geographical representation of the communities
and they are appointed by WMF as their representative, so
geographical representation does not stand there.
PS - There are still many, many systemic gaps and biases in
our communities and our knowledge. The focus on elevating and
connecting regional hubs may help address this, and I dearly
hope to see thriving hubs in Asia. But I wouldn't say the next
billion participants, editors, and learners will come from any
one region; rather from underserved communities everywhere in
the world! (And by stats like readership
<https://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/animations/wivivi/wivivi.html>,
communities in Africa are still the least reached, including
proportional to connectivity.)
More than 4 billion people live here in South Asian and ESEAP
countries. If our next billion readers will not come from here by
2030, then where will it come from? These are developing countries
embracing technology at a high rate. (Anyway, my opinion concerns
Africa too. There is only 1 representative from the entire
Sub-Saharan Africa.)
Regards,
Bodhisattwa
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