Chapter-selected Board seats/2012/Candidates/Questions/Lodewijk Gelauff

Lodewijk Gelauff (Effeietsanders)

Please ask here your question to be answered by Lodewijk, the moderators will pass the questions to the candidate and place the answers in this page.

Thank you for the questions. Because these are quite a lot of questions (quite a few already, and probably more to come), and the people reading the answers will have to read them for eight candidates, I will try to provide short answers. Where absolutely necessary I will provide a longer version too. This might result in the situation that I do not touch on every single aspect of a question. Please contact me again if you feel I missed a major point.

1. Answer to Question 1 (see above the questions)

   I outlined in my statement some of my activities, which have been to promote the mission of the chapters and foundation alike. However, more specifically I have undertaken some activities which were also to help chapters specifically. Such as:

   • Organizing Wiki Loves Monuments on an international scale and trandferring knowledge online and through workshops (2011 & 2012)
   • Presenting the 'coolest projects' by chapters at Wikimania (2011)
   • Organizing the chapters meeting (2008 & 2010)
   • Participating in the Movement Roles and other discussions, while keeping my experiences as (Wikimedia Nederland) board member in mind.
   • Being a board member for Wikimedia Nederland (2006 - 2011)
   • Being an active member on the Chapters Committee (2009 - present)

2. Answer to Question 2 (see above the questions)

   I have been member of the Chapters Committee during part of this (failed) approval process. I support the approval criteria as chapcom interprets these, which Amical failed to meet. At the same time I recognize that in their own way they can be of value to the movement and can be enabling volunteers in their cultural context. They could and should be recognized for that (as an affiliate/association), if they meet the appropriate criteria such as a fitting mission statement and scope.

3. Answer to Question 3 (see above the questions)

   I have a strong preference for decentralized fundraising and programs; whenever legally, financially and strategically realistic.

4. Answer to Question 4 (see above the questions)

   While my private conversations with the board members are exactly that, private, I can assure you that there is no relationship whatsoever with any board member of the Wikimedia Foundation that it would lead to a perceived conflict of interest. I am also not in such bad standing with any board or staff member (that I know of) that I could not work together with them.

5. Answer to Question 5 (see above the questions)

   I have been board member of Wikimedia Nederland for five years. I have been and still am involved with the organization of Wiki Loves Monuments. I will remain involved with that organization at least in 2012. I am a regular member of the Dutch, German and UK chapters. I have been appointed 'advisor to the board' in Wikimedia Nederland, which is not any formal position. I maintain friendly relationships with many chapter board members through the world, as well with members of the GLAM community and members of the GAC.

6. Answer to Question 6 (see above the questions)

   I have spoken with several chapter board members on the topic of the Board of Trustees. I dont make a habit of disclosing confidential conversations and am surprised you would ask this of me. If those chapter board members wish to come forward they can do so - but I will not do that myself.

7. Answer to Question 7 (see above the questions)

   I have followed most discussions on these topics (even when I didn't respond) and participated in several. This is not something of the past months when things heated up further, but something I have taken an interest in ever since founding Wikimedia Nederland (2005). A query in your mailbox or on meta will probably tell you more than I can specify. I guess you could safely say I have been quite active, but not as active as some.

8. Answer to Question 8 (see above the questions)

   I think this is best covered in my candidate statement.

1. Answer to Question 1 (see above the questions)

   I am not very well informed of the sites you mention. I looked into it a little bit, and if you're looking for a legal estimate I am afraid I cannot give you one - I am not a lawyer. As a Wikipedian I do dare to say it is unlikely to be very effective in reaching a result or change of culture. I am unsure how effective it would be to try and attack those sites in case they were on the border of being legitimate, because a new site would be quickly set up.

2. Answer to Question 2 (see above the questions)

   To the best of my memory I have never contributed to such websites. I did edit 'uncyclopedia' a few times under the nickname 'altijdhetzelfde' but that seems to fall outside your definition.

3. Answer to Question 3 (see above the questions)

   I do not have a solution for this problem, and I can't promise specific actions to take. However, I am (selected or not) willing to listen to the problems and potential solutions. I think that the collective wisdom of the community is much larger than that of a group of ten people in a board room. The odds for the joint communities to come up with an actually effective solution is higher. The task of the board could be to ask the staff to implement (s)one of these solutions - as a board member I would obviously be willing to listen to the problems, potential solutions and what the foundation can do to implement those.

1. Answer to the question (see above the questions)

   I have been on the board of Wikimedia Nederland for five years and have encountered multiple such situations. Also in the chapters committee, Wikimania program committee, national conference organizing committees and even in the Wiki Loves Monuments organizing committee I encountered differences of opinions, which were resolved with varying success. Even as a steward I have encountered such situations, like with the Yiddish Wikipedia crisis, where two groups of users opposed each other strongly, both with admins. I played a role in resolving that crisis. The community voted in the end to de-admin all sysops, and temporarily appoint three outsiders to make a fresh start together that way.

   I don't follow a theory or a by-the-book approach when it comes to conflicts. I think it is extremely important to always listen to arguments, be willing to change my opinion and remain constructive. As a Dutch person I am comfortable with the polder model approach where participation of all parties is asked. I usually treat that as a given, which even within Wikimedia it not always is. But basically I just go with the flow and do what makes most sense.

   I should however say that I find it hard to take credit for what I have done (and if done successful, conflicts are of course avoided and non-public); I suggest you ask people who I have collaborated with about this.

1. Answer to the question 1 (see above the questions)

   I have no position whatsoever in my nominating chapter (Wikimedia Polska). In Wikimedia Nederland I am an active volunteer and advisor to the board (I have currently access to the board wiki but not to the mailing list). I run several projects, such as a project with Nyenrode New Business School and Wiki Loves Monuments on an international level. I am an active participant in the General Assemblies. I am also a (not so active) member of Wikimedia Deutschland and Wikimedia UK. In 2010 I was hired by Wikimedia Deutschland to assist in the organization of the third Chapters Meeting in Berlin.

   In the past I have been board member (2006 - 2011) of Wikimedia Nederland, of which a few months as treasurer and 2 years as vice chair (of which roughly 1 year assuming chair responsibilities). I have run several projects for Wikimedia Nederland, such as the Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland, Wiki Loves Monuments (2010 and 2011 for NL, 2011 and 2012 international), organized the first Chapters Meeting (2008) in Nijmegen. I have been involved in several more projects too.

2. Answer to the question 2 (see above the questions)

   Short answer: I will stand on the side of the mission that we all share.

   Longer answer: Fist of all: I have no "own chapter". I hold the values of chapters, decentralized programs and volunteer development close to my heart. I strongly believe that the chapters are and will be key to scaling the Wikimedia Movement in many different ways. At the same time there are some legal responsibilities that the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has - and I definitely would accept those. The Board is in the unfortunate position that it both has a leadership role for the movement and for the Foundation which may complicate things.

   But ultimately it is all about the mission. If it would be in the best interest of accomplishing our mission to abolish the Wikimedia Foundation, I would vote for that. I expect the same of every single chapter board member with respect to their chapter. I strongly doubt that this will be the case any time soon, but that is how I feel about it.

   I refuse to end up in a position where we have to make a choice - we should work towards solutions which help both the Foundation and the chapters alike to accomplish this joint mission as effectively as possible. But were the board to make a decision that I truely believe to be not in the best interest of our joint mission, I think it is more helpful to put my energy into avoiding that situation, than to stand against the rest of the board after that decision has been made.

1. Answer to the question 1 (see above the questions)

   Short answer: The movement wide standards should be set in joint discussion and not only by the board. My personal directions include: Membership should be in charge, local rules and practices are most important and all accountability and transparency has to be aimed at improvement. Positive reward rather than negative.

   Longer answer: I think these standards should not be set by individuals, but by the movement together in joint discussion. Not just by the Board of Trustees. However, I am willing to give a more general personal viewpoint here, but please keep that in mind, I'm open for arguments and discussion and prefer the specifics to come out of a joint discussion.

   Most Wikimedia organizations are membership organizations. The very first responsibility regarding accountability is towards those members. The members should have full control over the organization (directly or indirectly) and need the tools to accomplish that. They are also tied to a jurisdiction and obviously they have to fulfill whatever requirements are set inside that jurisdiction - but also what is common practice and what donors and volunteers can reasonably expect from a charity in their jurisdiction.

   Further I think that both accountability and transparency needs to be practical and at least accommodate local standards for similar organizations (this will be different in each country). Practical as in achievable and not too much work, but also practical as in effective for those who would like to make use of this information.

   Finally, I think that both should be aimed at improvement rather than punishment for bad behavior. There is no use in taking away rights just as a response to a mistake - it is much more constructive to evaluate together what is realistic to expect from both sides, and how the rest of the movement can help that entity to improve itself. Thanks to the right kind of accountability it is both possible to improve the organization itself, and inspire other organizations to implement processes or projects that they account for.

2. Answer to the question 2 (see above the questions)

   Short answer: The board participated in the discussion, motivates chapters and helps build support for good guidelines.

   Longer answer: Trustees play an interesting role in our movement. On one side they are (legally) the ultimate authority inside the Wikimedia Foundation, and have therefore a legal obligation to keep that foundation accountable and also account for its grants. At the same time, the trustees have taken up over time a more movement wide role - the extent of which has been debated often. In this role I see them (at this point in time with the current structures) as example setters and compass for the movement. The board could stimulate chapters to develop these standards - but I don't think the board is in a place to impose those standards immediately upon the other movement entities. To make accountability and transparency really work (and not a slush of unstructured data) there has to be strong intrinsic support from the other movement entities. Right now, that seems to be lacking in for example the enthusiasm with which Chapter reports are being written - although everybody agreed it had to happen, it doesn't for many chapters (and cheers to those that do!) It takes a culture change, time and diplomacy.

1. Answer to question 1 (see above the questions)

   First of all: I do not claim to be the expert here, and this is a continuous discussion. The real solutions are likely found inside communities and not inside the foundation.

   • Culture change - this is immediately probably the most impossible one, but also the most important. We have somehow to improve how welcomed people feel when they join project - so that they also actually stick around. Make everything more fun. This is not something the foundation can easily fix, but it is something the community has to think about. Some work here could include in helping the community see where the problems lie.
   • We can think of lots of patches and decorations to make it seem better - but the really added value for the foundation lies in supporting local communities (especially through chapters and other movement entities) and facilitate them to resolve issues.
   • Obviously there is a whole set of software solutions that will help. Making discussions easier and more comfortable (and less disturbing) through a proper talkpage management (improved liquid threads), what you see is what you get etc.

2. Answer to question 2 (see above the questions)

   • Culture change is impossible to measure - and if it can be measured, the methods will always be contested. The best we can do is survey-guesstimate.
   • Supporting local communities can of course be measured in many ways - but that is not so interesting in this context because the goal here is to improve editor retention. Also very hard to measure, but to just keep a close eye on it.
   • Software solutions are easier to measure through surveys, test persons and A/B tests.

   There are of course several large scale variables that can be measured, but they are influenced by too many factors to do that properly.

3. Answer to question 3 (see above the questions)

   This is a long term process. One can't yet draw conclusions from the efforts so far. There is much still in the pipeline, and its impact is still unclear if it has been rolled out. There are most likely things I would have liked to do different, but who would have been right is hard to say right now.

1. Answer to question 1 (see above the questions)

   A decentralized movement is probably most likely to make things scale. Locally they know best what projects are most likely to find volunteers for, to have an impact and be successful. It seems that we're moving towards a certain level of centralization when it comes to fundraising and fund dissemination and seems unavoidable. I do however think that healthy movement entities are membership organizations for a reason, and their members should have a strong say in what the organization does.

2. Answer to question 2 (see above the questions)

   I am not a native speaker of English myself. I can feel with the hard times some people must be having following (let alone understanding) large amounts of complicated text written by native speakers. A certain divide will be unavoidable - but we should work to make it smaller. Initiatives like Iberocoop aiming to make that gap smaller are useful but rare. I see three directions for improvement:

   1) self-constraint when writing emails, discussions and answers. Be shorter, to the point and avoid complicated sentences.

   2) Improvement of translation network and translate the core reports (which have to be built first) summarizing relevant movement activity in both activities and discussions.

   3) Making more use of ambassadors in both directions

   If other people have more ideas I'm always open for trying them of course.

1. Answer to the question (see above the questions)

   I don't have any conflicts of interest with this process to my best knowledge. I consider it statistically likely that over a period of two years a conflict of interest will arise. I will of course follow established procedures for that (there is a detailed board policy for that). I currently don't foresee any major Conflicts of Interest.

1. Answer to question 1 (see above the questions)

   I think it is commendable if staff members also spend part of their free time on Wikimedia activities. If they choose to do so in the chapter activities, I guess that speaks for the chapter, that it is able to create a welcoming environment. I understand from your question and the discussion on the wikimediaindia mailing list that not everybody shares this opinion, but in my experience having multiple functions is perfectly possible. Although a WMF board membership is not a paid position, I will likely, if selected, also hold volunteer positions in chapter activities besides that (although not officer positions obviously, as the WMF bylaws dictate) such as in the Wiki Loves Monuments organization.

   It is up to the individual, the chapter and the employer to handle potential Conflicts of Interests when they arise. They will certainly arise at some point - but you should seriously consider if avoiding those COI's should happen at all cost, or that you trust those people involved to handle it decently. From a WMF perspective I personally see at this point with the information to me available no problems - but this would primarily be an issue to be handled by the direct superiors of the employees in question.

2. Answer to question 2 (see above the questions)

   Short answer: I'm all for a volunteer run scalable movement. Staff members can sometimes support those volunteers and make them more effective. A balance has to be found and maintained to let volunteers do what they can and want to do, and making their time investments most efficient.

   Longer answer: I am as always sorry to hear that the discussions surrounding the India Program of the WMF and the Wikimedia India activities are causing so much turbulence. I hope you will understand that I can't answer your question in detail because I do not possess the necessary information to do so - but I can share some general lines of thought. In my view programmatic staff members should primarily support volunteer driven efforts - make sure that the volunteers can be more productive, more effective and spend their time most efficiently. Volunteers are the very core of our organization, and I would be very disappointed if staff members were hired to do work that volunteers would like to do. That would not only be a waste of money, but also damaging the motivation of the involved and other volunteers.

   But paid staff members can definitely have an added value to a volunteer driven initiative too. In the Netherlands for example we hired a part time consultant (or whatever you call it) to help with the communication side of the local Wiki Loves Monuments contest. She was extremely helpful and driven - and made lots of things happen which otherwise would have been unthinkable. Thanks to her contributions press releases were more effective, magazines placed articles and the impact was improved. I think it was a wise decision of the board to hire her. And then there are also staff members to coordinate things that are crucial and sensitive (and often boring), such as fundraising, administration, legal and certain areas of technology.

   We have to keep a healthy balance between the advantages and disadvantages.

1. Answer to question 1 (see above the questions)

   Short answer: Sometimes, and to some extent. It is important that if the board makes a decision, other stakeholders are involved in the decision process.

   Longer answer: Sometimes, it depends a lot on the situation. The board has a dual role and responsibility here. Externally (press etc), I guess it is OK to have the board speak for the movement. That is simply the most practical - if we ever develop different structures we can evaluate that. For the approval of new chapters, the decision is mainly delegated to the Chapters Committee, which' advise is almost always followed. The board validates that decision, although having the final responsibility. I think that is a good approach in general for the Board (or WMF staff) if it wants to make movement decisions - always make sure to ask the input of all stakeholders involved. In the past this has not always happened well. I think the chapters have (or should have) the right to be involved in the decision making process when the board will make a decision which involves or influences them.

   For all major decisions in the foundation or the movement I think also that it would be good to work to a situation that the community can be involved in the decision making process. This would probably require changes in our structures, because currently that would not scale.

2. Answer to question 2 (see above the questions)

   I unfortunately do not have the ability to look into the future: I don't know yet 100% sure if those bodies will come into existance and how they will look like. I also do not consider this relevant to this selection procedure. What I can tell is that I will *not* likely run for the Chapters Council if I am elected to the board.

3. Answer to question 3 (see above the questions)

   I strongly doubt they "just reappoint" people, but I understand the intent of your question. In the past the WMF had a nominating committee, but that was considered ineffective by those involved. People seemed to agree (I enquired about this in June 2011) this was not because it was a faulty principle, but because of practicalities. I would personally like to see more input from the community in this process. Maybe not from the community as a whole (it has to remain practical) but at least several selected individuals should be able to give input and make it a less internally directed process. But before I formulate a solid opinion on this I would like more feedback from current board members on this, and learn their lessons (which may not all be public).

   I think it would be more effective to re-evaluate our consulting and decision processes as a movement (how is the community involved in decision making processes in general in an effective and efficient way; should it have a veto, soft or hard?) rather than turning the board structure upside down.