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Board Update on Branding: next steps
Updates on Branding from June 26, 2020 are posted as a separate subpage here: Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/Board Update on Branding: next steps. Please post your thoughts/comments on the talk page of the message itself, so we can have a structured discussion and people can "subscribe to it" if they want to. Thank you! --NTymkiv (WMF) (talk) 23:47, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
Briefing postponement
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees was notified by staff on the night of July 7th that the briefing of July 8th needs to be rescheduled because of the illness of one of the key staff members. We are looking for a new date before the August board meeting, and we shall share an updated timeline in a few days --NTymkiv (WMF) (talk) 17:50, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
- Get well soon, whoever you are! I hope it's not Covid-19. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden) 18:31, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
- Update on timing: this Board briefing has been rescheduled for July 28th. - ZMcCune (WMF) (talk) 17:23, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
Next board meeting
Has been moved from August to Sept 24th, 28th and 30th. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:07, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
- Board decision to pause the Brand project. Raystorm (talk) 15:43, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Expertise seats and the community
Two of the Board's appointed members' terms are almost up, and given the typical length of appointed board members' time on the Board, I wouldn't be surprised if one or both of them are not going to continue after their term finishes. I imagine the Board might be looking into finding new members, so I'd like to make a few points about filling appointed seats:
The appointed seats, sometimes called "expertise seats", serve a valuable role in filling out the Board's range of skills and capacities. However, these trustees are usually unfamiliar with Wikimedia. If I might make a recommendation: Before looking for candidates from outside the movement, perhaps first try to recruit from within the community? The Board could put together a list of particular qualifications/qualities they're looking for, and calls could be put out to the communities to see if anyone around has those qualifications. We have tens of thousands of very active volunteers, and I expect that at least one willing Wikimedian will have the qualities that are sought. (Also, an effort could be made to specifically target certain languages, to fill out the Board's issues with geographic diversity.)
- Going on a brief tangent on the point of geographic diversity: The current Board has, IIUC, four people in the
USNorth America, four in Europe, and two in the Middle East. The Board currently has no members east of 60th meridian, an area that includes 60% of the world's population. Of the 35 members that the Board has had over the past 17 years, only one has been in this area. Additionally, none have ever been from Africa. Might be something to work on.
The appointed seats in particular, have several times included individuals with high-level experience in executive positions in large tech organizations (eg Kawasaki, West, Geshuri, Battles, and Capuano), every single one of which has been an American company. It's not like there are no major tech companies in Japan, Taiwan, Israel, South Korea, Singapore, etc. (I don't actually know whether or not this was deliberate; for all I know, it's quite possible that experience with American companies is actually more relevant to the WMF's work. But if it's just that it's easier for the WMF and Board to find Americans, that sounds like another problematic bias introduced by the selection process.)
Besides for the issue of trustees' unfamiliarity with Wikimedia, I'm generally concerned by the extent to which the staff are involved in filling positions of the group that is supposed to oversee the organization and keep them accountable.
There are currently six members of the Board that we ever hear from, six that have editing experience, six that we really know who they are. I'd like it if we could increase that to ten. --Yair rand (talk) 06:26, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
- User:Yair rand am I being counted as being from the United States? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:06, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
- @Doc James: Whoops, sorry, I meant North America. (I cannot believe I made that mistake. I think I need to hand in my Canadian citizenship.) --Yair rand (talk) 17:38, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
- User:Yair rand am I being counted as being from the United States? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:06, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
- Hi Yair, thanks for your message. If the Board approves the expansion to 16 seats after the community has reviewed and provided comments, there will be three additional community-sourced seats that will require a new process. Something along the lines of what you propose sounds good to me - we have a standing Elections Committee that could be repurposed for this type of process too, and they could prepare the selection from the communities for the Board. I'm sure there will be lots of ideas of possible pathways. As for the appointed seats - there is value in an external perspective. They may not be initially familiar with the movement, but that doesn't mean they are unfamiliar with the projects (particularly Wikipedia). The reader/final beneficiary perspective is also a valuable one, which we would lose if all trustees were to be editors. We do recruit for the Audit Committee chair position in particular, which necessitates specific knowledge of pretty much a US CFO and so tends to be a US trustee - West, Battles, and currently Capuano. But otherwise, we are striving towards a different set up - the two trustees you initially refer to are from Bahrein and India. Thanks for your message, Raystorm (talk) 16:00, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
This may require some input.--GZWDer (talk) 14:25, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
- My understanding is that this is on the radar, there were some challenges with the upgrade on the technical front and some other stuff, but the Legal team did not lose sight of this. (I don't know where in the queue it is after this highly atypical year though.) Raystorm (talk) 16:39, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Universal code of conduct revisions
Would the Board allow for two draft revision cycles from community comments instead of just the one presently on the Universal Code of Conduct#Timeline, please? James Salsman (talk) 14:39, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
IP ban on pt.Wiki
The following vote taking place on Portuguese Wikipedia could lead to an unprecedented decision in the entire project: ban IPs from making edits, releasing only registered users. Knowing that Wikipedia is "a free encyclopedia" and that the Portuguese strand is increasingly isolated, it loses active editors and becomes an increasingly toxic community, how does the Board of Trustees receive this information?
Take into account that the community itself does not want the public to know this, limiting the notice of voting to registered users only. .J. tlk 07:35, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
- Ain't that against the five pillars? Why don't they try flagged versions first? It works fine in the deWP. not really a small one. Banning IP-Users completely from editing must be a strict no-go, imho anyone voting for such anti-wikimedian stuff should be restricted from editing in the Wikiverse. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden)
- Sänger The five pillars are being ignored in part of the discussions. See: "Não sei como impedir que IPs editem é contra qualquer pilar. Nenhum direito seria atingido. É fácil se registrar. Muito fácil." / "[...] os cinco pilares não são nenhum 'princípio fundador'. São uma página escrita cinco anos depois do início do projeto." (ps: i did not translate the excerpts so that you understand the point where the five pillars are ignored. it is interesting to note that in these two comments they suggest a subversion to a possible refusal to implement the IP ban.) .J. tlk 08:51, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
- I don't know Portuguese, in neither dialect, so I can't read the discussions there, let alone participate, but has anyone ever mentioned Flagged Revisions at all? That's imho a good possibility to keep IP-vandals at bay, while keeping the threshold low for participation. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden) 13:21, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
- Or the Founding principles? This is quite clearly a decision beyond the individual community's will as it involved what Wikipedia is, so it would be rejected outright based on this discussion alone. However, if there is a very strong local consensus that such a measure should be investigated, the Portuguese Wikipedia community can launch a global RfC or other discussion to ask whether there is consensus for Wikipedia to go in this direction. (Before that it's probably useful to have some fact-collection in conversation with relevant Wikimedia Foundation folks.) I'll note that the current discussion doesn't show a strong consensus, only a relatively small majority. Nemo 17:08, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
- Some editors claim that the situation of the project "requires" blocking IP editions to prevent vandalism, ignoring the fact that the participation of active users has been low lately. They are very firm in this regard, so much so that in two days the vote ends and, with the vast majority of votes in favor, the implementation of the blockade begins. Regarding the "founding principles", the discussion of the last topic wants to suggest that the page is a "joke or personal essay" ("[...] will you continue to worship this golden caf, or let the worshipers of that joke interfere in our decisions?").
- Or the Founding principles? This is quite clearly a decision beyond the individual community's will as it involved what Wikipedia is, so it would be rejected outright based on this discussion alone. However, if there is a very strong local consensus that such a measure should be investigated, the Portuguese Wikipedia community can launch a global RfC or other discussion to ask whether there is consensus for Wikipedia to go in this direction. (Before that it's probably useful to have some fact-collection in conversation with relevant Wikimedia Foundation folks.) I'll note that the current discussion doesn't show a strong consensus, only a relatively small majority. Nemo 17:08, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
- I don't know Portuguese, in neither dialect, so I can't read the discussions there, let alone participate, but has anyone ever mentioned Flagged Revisions at all? That's imho a good possibility to keep IP-vandals at bay, while keeping the threshold low for participation. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden) 13:21, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
- Sänger The five pillars are being ignored in part of the discussions. See: "Não sei como impedir que IPs editem é contra qualquer pilar. Nenhum direito seria atingido. É fácil se registrar. Muito fácil." / "[...] os cinco pilares não são nenhum 'princípio fundador'. São uma página escrita cinco anos depois do início do projeto." (ps: i did not translate the excerpts so that you understand the point where the five pillars are ignored. it is interesting to note that in these two comments they suggest a subversion to a possible refusal to implement the IP ban.) .J. tlk 08:51, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
As far as I know, this is unprecedented? My Portuguese is not good enough to follow all the conversations on the Esplanada, but I wonder if more anti-vandalism tools (I'm thinking ORES for instance, I don't know if it's been tried) would help in the face of such a drastic measure. Raystorm (talk) 16:03, 2 October 2020 (UTC)