Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Call for feedback: Community Board seats

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Combine community Board and IGC processes

Community board (s)elections are upcoming. So are elections for IGC members. Please combine both processes, and have them at the same time. Please involve the standing Wikimedia Foundation elections committee. @KTC, Mardetanha, ProtoplasmaKid, and AbhiSuryawanshi: Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 18:42, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is there an announcement of elections elections for IGC (Interim Global Council) members? If so, I missed it. Discussions on how to establish the IGC are taking place this coming weekend (January 23 and 24). Vexations (talk) 18:50, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There will be an IGC. SWAN sentiment at their January 10th, 2021 meeting is to have elections of IGC members. Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 21:07, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're pre-empting the outcome of a discussion that has yet to take place, based on an informal discussion among one affiliate. I remember that discussion; slide 2 of the [jamboard] may give some context for people who were not there. The summary of that discussion mentions that participants felt that if the IGC is intended to exist for a considerable period of time, representatives should be elected by the community and/or affiliates to ensure legitimacy. I don't think that "and/or" is quite right though; as I recall it, nobody suggested the IGC could be elected by only the affiliates. Vexations (talk) 22:04, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't suggest IGC to be elected by only the affiliates. Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 09:25, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi all! Great questions and discussions. What an exciting time for our movement! I have noted your questions and feedback. Please keep the discussion going and we will talk more. Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A vote. Period. No exceptions. Only this and entirely this is a remotely acceptable outcome. Anything else is an abrogation of the principles of the entire project. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 23:13, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification request #1

"Useful background" currently says

"Currently, the Board has 10 members:
3 members were selected via a vote by the Wikimedia contributors (these seats are currently overdue).
2 members were selected via a vote by Wikimedia affiliates (chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups).
4 members were selected by the Board directly.
The final member is Jimmy Wales, in a reserved Founder seat.
Recently, the Board has expanded to 16 seats:
3 new Community- and Affiliate-selected seats
3 new Board-selected seats"

The "3 new Community- and Affiliate-selected seats" is unclear. Is that 2 members selected via a vote by the Wikimedia contributors and 1 selected via a vote by Wikimedia affiliates? Or is it 1 for community and and 2 for affiliates? Or is it 0 and 3?

This should be fixable with an uncontroversial wording change explaining exactly how those seats are filled.

Consider this a test to see if anyone at the WMF with the power to change things is reading this page.

If the change I just suggested gets made or if someone at the WMF with the authority to change this page tells my that my suggestion was rejected, that will tell us that this page is being actively monitored.

If I get the inevitable bunch of replies from Wikipedia editors but absolutely nothing from the WMF, that will tell us that nobody who can change anything is listening and that we are wasting our time participating here.

Please note that the WMF has a poor track record of answering reasonable questions if they might require the WMF to change the way they do things. See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/Archives/2019#13 years and the question "So, will anybody from the WMF be answering the questions at the top of this section any time soon? (...Sound of Crickets...)". This, of course, is related to the fact that the majority of the Foundation Board do not appear to have ever read their own noticeboard. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:51, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Guy Macon: Last week there was an announcement about changes in the Bylaws. One of these changes is the combination of community- and affiliate-selected trustees into one category. The relevant section in the current Bylaws is (C) Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustees. The purpose of this call for feedback is to discuss the process to fill these "Community- and Affiliate-selected seats". Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:37, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For those who clicked on the above link and ended up on the wrong page, here is the URL: [1]
It appears that the answer to my question is "undefined", at least for now. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:02, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for spotting the wrong link. Fixed. Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:32, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification request #2

"How to participate" currently says:

"Discuss in the Talk page for each idea, or in this Talk page for general comments."

Where will the list of ideas be found? Who decides which ideas get a talk page to discuss them on and which are rejected out of hand?

There are two way to go wrong here.

On the one hand you could give any troll with a grudge a "talk page for an idea" no matter how unrelated. This would create chaos, with "ideas" like "overturn the recent presidential election" and "make the encyclopedia stop saying mean things about the alt-med quackery I make my living from".

On the other hand you could have someone at the WMF acting as a gatekeeper and only allowing a "talk page for an idea" for the "ideas" that they have already decided to accept and not allowing a "talk page for an idea" for any "ideas" that involve the WMF changing course from the predetermined outcome. This would make a mockery of the concept of community involvement, replacing it with a giant rubber stamp.

This requires an open discussion that includes members of the community and of the WMF. Please start that conversation here or provide a link to the place where we should be discussing this. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:53, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Guy Macon, thanks for your feedback. Regarding where to discuss, we are offering many channels and places to discuss and provide feedback and in various languages. Please feel free to discuss here or on one of the other options.
There is a team of discussion facilitators documenting feedback. I am the discussion facilitator for the English language and Meta. Feedback will be collected and published in weekly reports, which are forthcoming.
We welcome diverse ideas and participation. If someone asks a question or asks for clarification, the facilitators ping the people who can answer questions or offer clarification. Let me know if this does not sufficiently address your concern. Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 00:15, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Boards, governance, and competencies

I constantly observe in every group of community candidates for Board seats that their nomination statements almost always talk about their on-wiki contributions and in some cases their outreach work in chapters etc. I don't have a problem with candidates demonstrating that they live and breathe being part of the "community" (it's desirable). But what is almost invariably absent is information about their training and/or experience in Board skills, such as strategy, risk, finance, legal, etc. This has always suggested to me that these candidates don't realise what a board does and what skills it needs (and as a consequence I rarely vote for more than a small handful of candidates who do mention at least one of these areas of skill in their nomination). I think WMF needs to do a lot more to educate the community on what a board actually does, what skills it needs, and specifically require that community nominations address board skills training/experience in addition to their community experience. It would also be useful to require elected community members to engage (at WMF expense) in upskilling through formal board training. It would also be advantageous to extend those programs into chapters and other affiliates (I know some training is done at the WMF Conference in Berlin but relatively few people get the opportunity to go to Berlin) so making these available online to community members who either have goverance roles (or ambitions to do so) in a WMF or an affiliate would contribute to upskilling. Obviously it would be desirable to demand board-readiness immediately but realistically this probably can't be achieved so an education path is needed to improve the goverance skills of current and aspiring board members. My own experience is that formal training is beneficial even for people who think they are experienced directors. With WMF being based in the USA, the training for WMF board members should be specifically designed for the USA regulatory environment, but for chapters it probably should be locally sourced as they need to understand their own national regulatory environment. Kerry Raymond (talk) 23:38, 31 January 2021 (UTC) -- but it is 1 February in my time zone![reply]

Hi Kerry Raymond, Thanks for this thoughtful feedback. I hear three things from your feedback:
  1. Encourage nomination statements to speak to experience and skills that would benefit the Board directly (legal, finance, strategy and so on) - I will note site you shared.
  2. Better communicate what the Board does and what skills are beneficial for Board members to have
  3. Provide growth opportunities for Board members and affiliates

Could you let me know if I have missed anything? Thanks! Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 12:50, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

here would be some examples of non profit management training: [2], [3], [4], Slowking4 (talk) 22:17, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Great! Thanks for the resources, Slowking4! @Kerry Raymond:, I don't mean to put more on you, but if you have the time could you see if any of these resources that Slowking4 shared are like what you were thinking? Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 17:11, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
well, i only meant to point out that post-graduate certificate programs are ubiquitous in business schools. WMF might actually get a custom designed one for the board, if they tried hard. and it would model good behavior of continuous training for all people in the movement. Slowking4 (talk) 20:43, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I want to sound a contrarian voice here. We don't have community-selected trustees because it is a good way to get people with financial or legal expertise. If you want someone who knows how to run a $100 million organisation then you should be going to an executive search firm; hence why we have board-appointed trustees. Community selected trustees exist to a) make sure the board knows how the Wikimedia Movement operates, and b) prevent destructive schisms between the Foundation and the community. Being able to help manage the Foundation is desirable, but not essential.
Additionally, the 'corporate' side of the WMF doesn't seem to be where the problems are. Income and net assets are increasing rapidly. Legal has successfully navigated the regulatory environment. Comms gets its message into print; look at all those articles about Wikipedia@20 and the UCOC. There's been whispers of some problems at a management level now and again, but that's inevitable for a large organisation and other than the previous ED they've been handled quietly. Product has to work with an old codebase that can't really be replaced.
Where things seem to go haywire is when the Foundation has to interface with the community. --RaiderAspect (talk) 14:26, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Eliminate the Board's legal ability to overturn election results

Legally, the Board is under no obligation to implement the results of Board elections, and we have simply trusted that the Board would consider election results to be inviolable. It has become clear that this assumption is no longer risk-free. I propose changing the structure of the WMF such that the Board is no longer legally self-perpetuating, and cannot unilaterally overturn election results or otherwise give themselves permanent control over the Wikimedia Foundation.

Further details outlined in User:Yair rand/WMF membership proposal.

The continued ultimate control over the WMF must be held by the community. Recent events have shown that the future of community elections is very much in doubt. It is extremely important that the WMF must not continue down the course of removing community influence. --Yair rand (talk) 07:07, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I subscribe to that, since at least the Doc James disaster, as a community member with good standing was ditched by the board without any proper reason, explicitly against the community, it should be clear, that such antiwikimedian behaviour must not be tolerated. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden) 13:07, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely, subscribe to that. Enough with AffCom style of nominations, which never represented the communities. This is especially true in the case of the BoT.--- Darwin Ahoy! 23:22, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Yair rand, your membership proposal falls out of the scope of the call for feedback (processes to appoint community- and affiliate-selected trustees). Even if accepted, it would take a long time to implement and this call for feedback is about ideas that can be implemented to appoint six trustees this year. However, it is related to Board governance, it is a genuine proposal, and we will mention it in our report to the Board as part of the feedback received. Qgil-WMF (talk) 13:56, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
much appreciated Qgil-WMF! --ThurnerRupert (talk) 17:23, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How to Add a new idea?

Hello everyone, and thank you for putting effort on organizing this important discussion and according to section 3 of this meta page "ideas discussed within the board", it is mentioned that "The Board has discussed several ideas to overcome the problems mentioned above. Some of these ideas could be taken and combined, and some discarded. Other ideas coming from the call for feedback could be considered as well". There are also sub-pages for each of the ideas to be discussed. My question is: If a person has another/different idea to complete what the board discussed, where should this idea be mentioned? Should it be put directly under these ideas (with its own link)? Or should it be mentioned separately?

Thank you for clarifying. Regards -- Anass Sedrati (talk) 09:43, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Anass Sedrati, Thanks for joining the conversation. Please feel free to add your feedback here. I am watching the Meta pages for feedback and will collect feedback for the weekly reports. Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 12:57, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Jackie and thank you for your answer. So if I understand well, if I have a new idea/suggestion, I will add it in this talk page and it will be collected in the weekly reports. Did I understand well? If not please correct me.
That's my understanding from reading the page. –SJ talk 
Giving this understanding, is there any reason why the suggestions given by the board are given more priority and visibility than these that can emerge from community members? Especially that there was no mention or call to share ideas and suggestions until today (where community is almost "obliged" to choose between a pre-chosen set of choices)? Thank you again for the clarifications. Best. -- Anass Sedrati (talk) 17:32, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Anass! I share your questions - it would be helpful to have a refactoring cycle through which everyone can share new ideas, refactor or clarifying ones, and see the most popular or representative ones proposed so far. –SJ talk  21:57, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Anass Sedrati, SJ, what about this: new ideas are proposed in this Talk page, only to ensure that they are within the scope of the call for feedback and sensible (a sanity check). Then the ideas that pass this check can be listed in the main page, in their own section in order to differentiate ideas discussed within the Board from those that have a different origin. There will be other details to figure out but the principle remains: "Other ideas coming from the call for feedback could be considered as well." Please bring these ideas to the table. Qgil-WMF (talk) 23:46, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Quim and thank you for your answer and clarifications. I think that your alternative is a good one, as I can also understand that not all ideas might need to be highlighted, depending on the context. I will do so that I will add a new idea in a separate section in the talk, and we see where it will lead us :) Thank you again for the clarifications. Best -- Anass Sedrati (talk) 08:03, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Anass Sedrati Our team has discussed the process for your idea about Regional Seats and others to come.
  • We will create a section "Ideas from the community" under "Ideas discussed within the Board"
  • We will edit the navigation template to show separate "Board ideas" and "Community ideas"
  • Community ideas will be posted here first, and will go through a basic sanity check.
  • Those accepted will be listed in these sections
  • Each new idea will have their own subpage with an attribution at the top identifying the author(s) of the idea, to differentiate these ideas visible from the ones brought by the Board.
  • Our facilitators and our reports will process feedback about community ideas and feedback about Board ideas equally.
Tomorrow in the GMT morning we will proceed with these changes and the publication of your idea about Regional Seats. Thank you for your contribution, and your patience betatesting this process. Qgil-WMF (talk) 22:34, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Quim, I have now created a new page for the idea of regional seats. Please go through it, and it you find it satisfactory, you can proceed and create the section related to community ideas, and link the idea there. Hopefully, other ideas can emerge soon. Thank you for the support. -- Anass Sedrati (talk) 11:33, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Anass Sedrati Thank you! I will proceed with the rest if changes in the next couple of hours or so. Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:56, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Single transferable vote

Comment by BethNaught moved to Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Call for feedback: Community Board seats/Ranked voting system. Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:28, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Overviews, discussion, and refactoring

  • What's the idea for capturing discussions per topic? One talk page per idea, or one section per idea here, with subsections?
  • What about an overview of the summaries of each idea? I created an overview page transcluding all of the individual idea pages; if you have a better approach, feel free to refactor that or make something new.
  • It seems that facilitators will try to summarize / refactor discussion. Any other thoughts on how to make refactoring fast, iterative, useful? A catalog of links to places where discussions are happening would be welcome. When contributions are on-wiki, commenters can quickly get feedback on where their input sits in an overall conversation, so that they can clarify, refine, or find related places to contribute. [peer synthesis around feedback loops, rather than many parallel comments w/o immediate feedback, can be encouraging.]

–SJ talk  22:19, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Hi SJ, the idea is to keep single-topic discussions in their own pages. While having everything in one place might look like a better solution for dedicates volunteers with enough time to follow everything, these are probably a minority compared to the rest of interested participants. We are promoting this call for feedback in multiple channels and we are doing our best to involve volunteers who usually don't participate in governance discussions (and rarely discuss on Meta). It is likely that most volunteers will be more interested in some topics than in others. Focusing conversations helps people with limited time watching the pages they are most interested about.
  • Thank you for your transclusions page. If people find it useful, we can integrate it.
  • I think we are already working on this "catalog" that you describe? Conversations and meetings are announced in the Conversations page. They result in Reports for each conversation/meeting. The weekly report captures and links to the highlights of the past 7 days. The main report is capturing the most relevant information of all this activity. Meanwhile, each idea page offers a summary of the ongoing conversation too, for those who mostly care about some of these ideas.
Qgil-WMF (talk) 00:12, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

New Alternative: Regional Seats

Instead of the alternative suggesting "broadly" a quota system, that I do absolutely not think is a wise idea, I suggest to address the gap problem in a more structured way, and to allocate one or two seats for a specific region (or for the global south, but with a clear definition of it). The quota system has its limitations, because it neglects the skill aspect, and privileges only the aspect for which the quota is taken into consideration (gender, geography, etc.).

In my opinion, diversity is key, and is an important aspect to take into consideration, not only when talking about the board, but in the whole movement also. In order to ensure more geographical diversity, one or two community seats (out of the total 6) can be exclusively reserved for a rather broad region (such as global south, as mentioned earlier, or Africa/Asia - where more than the half of humans live). This will ensure that at least one member will be representing these regions. As the regions will be broad, this ensures also that the required skills can be found in *at least* that one person. Of course, this person should also be chosen by vote (either from its peers from the region, or by all - to be discussed).

As far as we have seen, it is mostly Asian and African community members that were not represented earlier at the BoT, while the gender balance is rather respected and seems doing better in comparison. It can be therefore a good alternative to allocate one seat for this region (Africa/Asia), where only a community member from this region can be chosen, to guarantee at least their presence, as well as an inclusion and empowerment. This alternative is more specific than the one stating "quota", which is rather broad and can be interpreted in many different ways. The aim here with this suggestion to identify specifically this gap (regional representation), and suggest a solution exactly for it.

Anass Sedrati (talk) 15:14, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Anass Sedrati From the point of view of the Board, "regional seats" would be a type of quota. "Geography" is mentioned in the Quotas page. Your proposal, using the same terminology, would say that regional quotas could be considered, but that would be the only type of quota acceptable. Then there is the conversation about how exactly these regional seats/quotas would be implemented. First I want to check whether you find this reasoning... reasonable.
If you do, then we should discuss how to make your point visible. One idea could be to add a mention at the top of "Summary of ongoing feedback". People checking the Quotas page would see the link to the Regional Seats idea. We can also think how to make it very visible in the Quotas talk page. Maybe the discussion itself could start/continue in the Quotas Talk page itself, with a possibility of spinning it off if it catches a lot of feedback. What do you think? Qgil-WMF (talk) 20:31, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Quim, thank you for your answer and good summarization. Yes you caught the point very well. I do think that mentioning "quotas" as an alternative is too broad, and can be subject to all sorts of interpretations. It is also an idea that is rather easy to criticize (as I am not supportive of its general tone either).
So yes, you understood my formulation well, and it is that I suggest to address a specific point, which is geography, and have it as a separate point (as I believe it is the most critical point coming to diversity, if we see the history of the composition of the community seats). If we keep it within the quota page, this would seem like an "endorsement" or an "add-on" to the idea, while it is not (I have myself written that I am against it in its current formulation). If possible, I would go with both alternatives (having it mentioned in the summary, and also linked at the quota page). I know that other people can come with close ideas (such as a seat for underrepresented communities/minority languages), so if this grows and gets interest, maybe we can have a separate discussion for these threads/alternatives? Best -- Anass Sedrati (talk) 21:03, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Anass Sedrati Alright, this makes sense. Let us finish this long day of office hours, sleep a bit, and discuss tomorrow in our team how we can best accommodate for this idea (and others to come). In any case, have no doubt that in our conversations with projects and affiliates we will add the specific aspect of regional seats to the list of ideas to consider. Qgil-WMF (talk) 21:11, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Anass Sedrati Can you publish your proposal at Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Call for feedback: Community Board seats/Regional seats using a neutral style, please? Basically rephrasing sentences written in first person and avoiding personal judgement of other ideas. It is useful to say that this idea about regional seats doesn't endorse the other idea proposed about quotas in general. I guess you understand what I mean, and we can polish the text just by editing it if needed. Once we are all happy about the text, we will link it from places. I am watching the page and I will try to respond as soon as possible. Feel free to ping me on chat for quicker response. Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:23, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Qgil and sorry for my late answer. I just saw that you sent two messages in that matter. I will do what you suggest and publish the proposal at the suggested page. You should see a text there in few minutes. Thank you for the help :) -- Anass Sedrati (talk) 10:53, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Anass Sedrati See the Regional seats page, now linked from different places. I have edited the mention to the Quotas page because it implied that it is a final idea that is broad and with an unclear scope. The Quotas page aims to start a conversation, and it is broad precisely to not limit the conversation from the start. I have done my best keeping your intention of clearly statement that this suggestions doesn't imply an endorsement of the idea of quotas in general.
I want to make a second round later today to simplify the language a bit, without any changes in meaning. After some polishing, hopefully we will have a text we are all happy about, and then we will mark the text for translation. Sounds good? Qgil-WMF (talk) 16:58, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

post to wikimedia-l and all-affiliates-l

Post to Wikimedia-l and All-Affiliates-l by ASBS election facilitators

(originally posted at

Members of the Board of Trustees and staff of the Wikimedia Foundation,

Please WMF Board of Trustees grant control of the WMF Board elections to the Wikimedia community, especially to the two existing committees. The Wikimedia community can manage its own values and ethics and has no need of non-volunteer, non-community members to assist with the fundamentals of designing the election.

On behalf of the ASBS committee I request you

  • remove the "problems to solve" section from that page,
  • remove the "ideas discussed with the board" section from that page,
  • remove the 8 subpages with "ideas"
  • include a section with words like:

"The Board asks the Election committee and ASBS election facilitators to work together to set up a process, define rules, and hold a (s)election process for six community- and affiliate sourced board seats. The board asks the joined committee to pay respect to the strategic direction of the Wikimedia Movement and the strategy recommendations. The board would like to welcome a diversity of candidates. The board oversees an organization with an annual budget over one hundred million dollaras and a staff of over 500 people. The board would like to welcome candidates with governance experience in non-profit organizations of the same magnitude."

The ASBS election facilitators published their debrief of lessons learned in 2019.[1] We as a committee are committed to act upon them. The ASBS committee is prepared to collaborate with the standing election committee for this process.[2] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee>

Regards,

Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 10:21, 3 February 2021 (UTC) On behalf of the ASBS election facilitators.[reply]

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2019/Debrief. [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee

I'd like to read what the ASBS facilitators suggest about how to set up a process and rules for this, whether or not that is written on this page. (since there's a Team listed on this page, it's not clear to me if this is a place to capture all discussion around the topic, or the description of a specific WMF effort to facilitate some of the discussion; but either way the important thing is finding a good way to proceed.). –SJ talk  15:09, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just for the record, Nataliia Tymkiv has replied to this post on wikimedia-l. Qgil-WMF (talk) 20:51, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you... Let's find ways to make this whole discussion warmer, somehow. –SJ talk  20:55, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Slates

An idea for the Election/ASBS Committees, the Board, the next Board, or whoever organizes the elections:

I'm wondering if a reasonable idea would be to somehow run slates of candidates that are voted in as a group, rather than individual candidates. Many of the issues that we consider important, like making sure the community board seats can contribute to the board in the multiple ways that are required, and making sure that the board is sufficiently seem like things that would be better solved by electing a group of candidates as a slate, rather than electing individual candidates. This would then make it possible for the community to consider, in advance, if it believes that the group can function, is sufficiently diverse, and satisfies other requirements that the community imposes.

I think this might be a better way to go about it than a situation that considers individual candidates. I mean, everyone is diverse, and everyone can contribute something. What might help with board dysfunction would be to make sure the ways in which groups of people elected at the same time cover the necessary skill sets.

Just tossing this idea out there, to see if it goes anywhere. It's admittedly half-baked, and I'm not 100% sure of it, but I wonder if slates could be a more community-driven approach to board reform. TomDotGov (talk) (hold the election) 15:07, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi TomDotGov, thanks for thinking about this and sharing your feedback. In interest of discussion, would you mind coming up with an example? I want to make sure others joining the discussion clearly understand your idea for this. I also appreciate you said this is "half-baked" and respect your time and energy on this. Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:27, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sure.
Let's take four skills that the Foundation needs from the board. Since I'm not sure what these skills are, I'll make them up - (Fundraising/)Finance, (Executive and Staff )Management, (Government )Outreach, and (Software )Development.
Right now, potential board members run independently. This means you can get problems where say, the Outreach people are better at campaigning that the Development people are, and you wind up with the top three people are in Outreach. This leads to the feels-bad situation of the outgoing board saying "We don't need three Outreach people", and rejecting two of the top three candidates.
What I'm suggesting is that, for example, we elect slates of multiple people. Each slate would consist of four candidates, and be able to explain how among them, they're able to address the Foundation's needs. The community would rank the slates using some election mechanism (I'm no expert in this part, but some sort of ranked voting seems right here), and then the slate as a whole would join the board. The community would consider each slate in its entirety, and could debate how well the group of four (or however many) people would satisfy the requirements. By electing a slate that has, say four people - one with Finance/Management experience, one with Outreach Experience, one with Gopvrnment/Finance experience, and one with Development experience, we can be sure all spots are covered.
Does this give a more concrete example? TomDotGov (talk) (hold the election) 20:34, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This seems in turn unfair to candidates who don't happen to be on good terms with 3 other people they think meet the other skillsets, or, perhaps more likely amongst trustee candidates, have overlapping but differing groups and find the people they would prefer to slate with already grabbed by someone else. Trustee elections would start getting earlier and earlier (in the background) as people tried to make sure they weren't left off a strong slate. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:23, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Deserves a more detailed introduction + "motivation" section

This will clarify what we are discussing, and how people can contribute most effectively! Example Q's to A:

  1. What is working and not working with the status quo?
    Problems are listed, but not balanced. It doesn't provide clear motivation for those whose have worked on current approaches. Be more specific about where current election models are specifically being challenged, and describe the opposing challenges faced by appointment models.
  2. What alternatives have been considered historically, and by whom?
    Current election groups do consider alternatives each year, though often not w/ enough advance notice to make substantive changes to process. A nod to those conversations offers continuity and recognizes that past work.
  3. What alternatives are already being considered this year, and on what timescale (for the ~6 open seats)?
  4. How does this all (discussion, timeline, process) parallel that of the proposed Global Council?
    Parallels in process are relevant. Timing + discussion would benefit from coordination. (which happily is in ample supply)
  5. Can we break these proposals into different layers of abstraction / implementation?
    To paraphrase Chris Keating: "Should it be a vote? / Who should participate + be represented? / How should that be implemented?"

–SJ talk  22:01, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Sj (I was replying to your question and all of a sudden your text had changed. For a moment I thought I had broken something! Let me try again.  :) Qgil-WMF (talk) 21:01, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Sj I see your point. At the same time, I need to explain that publishing content signed by the Board takes time. If new content raises new disagreement, then more time will be spent discussing the intro instead of the ideas themselves. I'm not sure about the best approach. I will check what we (the team running this call feedback) can answer quickly.
About Chris' feedback. The idea was to present more pre-cooked options easier to digest (wording is mine) with specific combinations of ideas. Doing this had the risk of feedback falling in the pattern of "These are the options, let's support/oppose." The Board is seeking diversity and depth of opinions, with all the nuances. This is why the ingredients (wording is still mine) are presented separately, to get specific feedback about each one, and also about possible combinations.
Many of these ideas are new in the context of our movement. Many communities we are reaching out to, never have discussed about the Board. It is our belief that after an initial phase of confusion, some topics will raise more interest than others, and some trends will start to emerge. We are trying a couple of new approaches in this call for feedback. Please give us the benefit of the doubt until we have published our first weekly report (Feb 10) and our first iteration of the final report (Feb 17). Qgil-WMF (talk) 22:09, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, looking forward to those reports. [there's a longer conversation to be had about how to combine broadcast <-> response loops w/ peer-to-peer conversation and polylogue. :) ]
I understand the time lag in publishing + annotating something approved by committee. Especially here where the group involved is large, and has other responsibilities. (This is also one of the challenges of a larger Board: a slower turning of gears, unless there is concise delegation to small groups)
Perhaps combining the "official background language" with the "page summarizing the conversation + how it is going" makes this harder than it needs to be. You might consider sth like an overview page that is open to transient editing (for instance by the various groups who have tackled / are tackling the challenge of appointing + electing representative governance across the movement), and linking that page to the static introduction by the Board and other context. –SJ talk  17:24, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"confirmed candidates"

Sounds a bit as it would be like "approved by the Guardian Council". This is the opposite of a free election and therefore unacceptable. Habitator terrae (talk) 16:45, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

voting per wiki

In some wikis there are already working mechanisms to elect "officials". This could be used by a partly vote of the seats within the wikis. Habitator terrae (talk) 16:50, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Habitator terrae, thanks for joining the discussion. I see you have concerns about elections. Do you want to take your discussion to this talk page of the Call for Feedback? I think that might fit the topic of your discussion. Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 22:46, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @JKoerner (WMF):, the voting per wiki proposal isn't connected with the "confirmed candidates"-theme. Habitator terrae (talk) 17:06, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Office Hours

It would have been nice had all the office hours been publicised rather more broadly before they took place. The link I followed to find these was only posted yesterday, and so was too late to join them.

Additionally, office hours in the middle of the consultation are also critical because they help handle disagreements about what certain things mean and prevent support and opposition for certain things being interpreted differently

I'd love a second set of office hours at the start of March Nosebagbear (talk) 16:21, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A run through each current idea

I'll drop a more detailed reasoning of each point on the respective subpage, but I wanted to include an overall summary on the page getting the most eyes:

  • Ranked voting system - currently I could be viewed as an oppose, but am still willing to change my mind. STV can risk getting non-objectionable candidates in over generally positive. It also makes the election process more complicated, not to mention that if, say, I had 4 candidates I really didn't want in a 20 candidate election, to maximise the chanced to them not getting in I'd have to cast intermediate ranking votes on those I didn't know, without a clear ability to decide (say) who warranted "7th" and who warranted "16th".
  • Quotas - never, ever. Neither in diversity nor experience, the Community must decide what is good for it and each person should have the same competitive platform as another to be trustee. Quotas risk undermining confidence in the reps, and the process. Nay, a thousand times, nay.
  • Call for types of skills and experiences - yep, seems a good positive to me. So long as it's just skills and experiences being asked for, this seems to come without negatives.
  • Vetting of candidates - I read this and immediately thought of how the Iranian and Hong Kong elections have stopped any reformist candidates from running. It would give backdoor control of community trustee elections away from the Community, and would certainly read as such to everyone. Concerning it was even proposed.
  • Board-delegated selection committee. See the above - even with the Community reps, it risks a couple of major negatives (either of members picking members like them, even subconsciously, or deliberately avoiding members like them) plus a major drop in Community control
  • Community-elected selection committee - while less bad than the ones above, it does risk the exact opposite of what the WMF is trying to avoid. They feel that a few big wikis pick individuals and that the hyper-meta active have too much control. Trustee elections already don't get that much participation, but imagine how much less review and participation each person on this committee would have. Let alone ensuring that everyone voting has done a good amount of research before participating. Even a fairly small amount of hidden canvassing could get a rep onto the committee, and that's a major risk for marginal positives to me, and the loss of direct democracy over Trustees.
  • Election of confirmed candidates - even having read it all, I'm still a little unsure about what this option means. Who would be carrying out the Trustee Evaluation Form in this case? While I wouldn't be firmly opposed to a structure of "1) community-selected panel reviews each candidate against the form 2) They provide non-binding scoring to the Community that is attached to each candidate's statement 3) Community then vote per the status quo, with that additional info to be utilised as each voter wishes (or not)", I would be opposed to Board scoring. I also wouldn't support even the method I give above as somewhat inefficient for the marginal benefits gained. If the topic also covers non-use of the Form, then yes, I obviously support and require election of confirmed candidates. Election of a selection panel is simply insufficient, and feels like no more than the WMF trying to do an end-run around Community representation. Although the Community majority remains, the proportion has shrunk (and will do so even more when Jimmy leaves, if he is counted), which means the safeguard also shrinks. Anything avoiding a proper election of such is an unacceptable overreach.
  • Direct appointment of confirmed candidates - No, for reasons covered directly above. Never

tl;dr Happy for the WMF to say the general areas they would like knowledge in. Any loss of control either over nomination or of selection by direct community democracy is unacceptable.

For those who made it through, thank you. Please feel free to point out areas that could use more clarity/expansion Nosebagbear (talk) 16:54, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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