Talk:Wikimedia CH/Conflict of interest policy

The members of wikimedia ch were invited to particpate to an ide workshop in june 2016 which led to the following conclusion concerning the matter of conflict of interest: we need ombudspersons chosen by community to adress and assess the potential conflict of interests that could arrise. As such this statement: "Should a conflict of interest arise, the member of the Board or Executive Management concerned should inform the President of the Board. The President, or Vice-President, should request a decision by the Board which reflects the seriousness of the conflict of interest. The Board shall decide without participation of the person concerned, and the conflict of interest and the board decision will be recorded in the minutes." Only means that the conflict of interest within the board will be adressed by the board in a recursive loop: this paves the way for the non resolution on conflicts of interest. I invite User:Moumou82 User:LaMèreVeilleUser:GastelEtzwane User:Aneses User:Otarie69 to form an independant group, with any other member wishing to do so to work on the projetc and deliver a proposition to the board, as this obviously is not being dealt with currently. --Nattes à chat (talk) 10:02, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Nattes à chat, I agree that this is becomming urgent.

The WMCH board is still deeply mired in conflicts of interest with paid editing activities. The new kiwix.org group that is soon to become a separate Wikimedia entity is also riddled with conflicts of interest. For the moment, they are still part of Wikimedia CH, and later on I suppose Wikimedia CH will continue to provide support.

These issues have to be dealt with by an independent body that has no connection with any one of these firms. GastelEtzwane (talk) 11:46, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Nattes à chat, hello and thank you for your message. As you rightly pointed out, the July 9th, 2016 idea workshop covered the topic of governance on my proposal, considering the agitated discussions that occurred at the April 2nd general assembly, and you have been part of it. Right after the workshop, I have informed the board of its outcome and they told me they were going to have their own workshop on this particular topic. Out of courtesy, I have waited for it to occur and it effectively took place on July 14th with the support of an independent expert.

As an outcome of both the idea and board workshops, a governance review page was opened on the members wiki to initiate a community process. I immediately expressed my interest to participate and documented in the talk page a summary of the idea workshop to already put some ideas on the table, with the target to come to the 2017 general assembly with one or several motions to be discussed and voted. In order to gather more people from the community who would be interested to participate to this process, an invitation and multiple reminders have been shared through our newsletters. On top of this, a banner was put on the members wiki's home page and is still there as of today.

I was assuming at least you and User:GastelEtzwane would be interested since you brought up this topic at the general assembly. Well, it is a reality that no one posted any message on the dedicated talk page over the last 6 months, even to say you were interested but possibly busy with other activities.

In this context, I beg you to admit I am a bit skeptical to see this topic only coming out at the time of general assemblies. I thought last year and still think conflict of interest and governance in general is a legitimate topic to work on but I have an unpleasant impression it is only a pretext to target people or make some noise during assemblies and, when it is time to concretely build solutions, there is no one left. I recognize this is a subjective point of view but based on what I have noted over the last months. Indeed, unless I have missed it, I saw no other initiative from anyone in this talk trend to bring concrete solutions in this area.

This being said, I am still interested to work on this topic with anyone but only if two conditions are met:

1. This process is transparent and participative, meaning all discussions and proposals are documented on the members wiki and we regularly communicate on the ML with the broader community about our ideas and progress. I do not want such process to happen behind closed doors, between people you have invited in your message.
2. The objective of all those participating to this process is to build solutions for the future of WMCH, not to target, harm or square up with anyone.

If this is the purpose of everyone here, then you can count on me to participate. Moumou82 (talk) 11:56, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for all of our inputs, any comment is relevant and accepted but I suppose that all comments should be done in the right place and in a right moment. As Moumou82 said there are several pages, mostly inactive, about these topics, and there was also the possibility to discuss it during the general assembly presenting a motion 4 weeks before the General Assembly (as defined in the bylaws of Wikimedia CH that any "good" member should read) and you should have also received this indication in the invitation to the General Assembly. In the last newsletter we invited 3 times (February 2017, January 2017 and September 2016 [1]) the members to participate to the governance review and we linked to a page where it was clearly stated that "In recent years, the board has worked with Dominique Freymond, a well-known Swiss governance expert who has helped us on many topics, including preparing our current conflict of interest policy and suggesting changes for our bylaws... In parallel, some members of the community have indicated an interest in participating in a review of different governance topics within our association. We are thus starting the process by looking for 1) members interesting in participating, 2) topics that you think should be reviewed. Please add your name below if you are interested in participating, and write a message on the discussion page if you want to suggest a topic. We expect all interactions to be constructive; trolling and witch-hunting will not be tolerated", so... September, October, November, December, January, February, March... 7 months have been lost. I would add to the comment of Moumou82 that any additional comment should continue only if it assured a safety space where members must not be afraid to participate because sometimes people don't take a breath before commenting. --Ilario (talk) 22:14, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I am still interested in participating, as long as the discussions are held in an adult and civilized manner. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by GastelEtzwane (talk) 22:59, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

I am also interested in the subject --Nattes à chat (talk) 14:41, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Interest in the COI Issues is legitimate even if expressed once per year during the General Assembly

I do not follow the subject intensively as I have many other ongoing projects and activities taking my time as a volunteer. I think I would have appreciated being notified if such subjects were being reviewed. User:GastelEtzwane and User:LaMèreVeille surely would have appreciated too. I have taken part in the June workshop and addressing transparency and COI was also one of my propositions. I came all the way from Geneva and took one whole day for this: one cannot decently write I am not interested in the subject. the problem is that the issue is not being advertized and is being shifted on the side with the end effect that nothing revolutionary is happening. So please keep me posted next time, then I will not have the upsetting feeling that I am out of this conversation, which is one of the most important for our movement, along with fake news and strong elitism pushing newbies away (especially women). Same for general assemblies: they are the correct and rightful place to address the issue, by law. We are volunteers, we do not have to deal with this problematic part of the movement everyday, otherwise we would loose interest and stop contributing to wikimedia projects. One thing I would appreciate is to have the right to express an opinion without being personally attacked: one cannot be in favor of the freedom of knowledge if one tries to avoid people from communicating their ideas. Probably if we had the written piece of the independent expert who explored the COI aspects, if this was in open access, it would calm down a lot of people out here. The problem is we do not know, so we can have the impression that some hidden facts are kept under the carpet. Probably if we had not been attacked personally in very rude terms during the General Assembly and elsewhere, this conversation would not even happen, because we were left out of it in its most recent internal developments. So please, as a member of your association keep me posted every time the subject is discussed, help me as as member and contributor to get the information needed on the subject. I find it extremely problematic that the direction keeps insisting that being a couple on the board is a COI (when it was totally transparent) when one is obviously not encouraged to voice opinion on the Raccosch affair.. Concerning trolling and witchunting (really funny: dont ever whistle blow you wiki chick, you will be accused of witch hunting), I have personally been attacked and chaticized many times since I started managing wikipedian projects related to the gender gap: it is time you guys set up a friendly space policy to protect your most engaged contributors. --Nattes à chat (Nice witch chat over here) 14:29, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Nattes à chat: As Ilario and I pointed out above, several WMCH newsletters were sent by email to all members indicating this topic of COI was open for discussion on the members wiki. Either the three of you do not receive these newsletters and I think that would be great if you do, in order to know what is going on in the association, or you do not read them, which is fine but you cannot refer to an absence of advertisement in such case. This being said, there is a page to try and build solutions as a community, so if you are interested your contribution is welcome. Moumou82 (talk) 20:33, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Nattes à chat, the General Assembly is the place to discuss such issues. The newsletters are nice, but I fail to see where it was clearly indicated that the topic of COI was open for discussion.

• April 2016 : nothing.
• May 2016 : nothing.
• June 2016 : nothing.
• July 2016 : nothing.
• September 2016 : nothing. There is talk about WMCH Governance review, but no mention of COI. And people interested in discussion the subject were to contact Frédéric who is part of the COI issue.
• October 2016 : nothing.
• November 2016 : nothing.
• January 2017 : nothing. There is a 2nd call for those those wanting to talk about WMCH Governance review, but no mention of COI. And people interested in discussion the subject were to contact Frédéric who is part of the COI issue.
• Febuary 2017 : nothing. There is a 3rd call for those those wanting to talk about WMCH Governance review, but no mention of COI. And people interested in discussion the subject were to contact Frédéric who is part of the COI issue.
• March 2017 :nothing.

So we have a problem. The issue here is COI. The issue is not Governance. So the reminders posted in the newsletters were a bit misleading. Then there is the problem of having these discussion being led by a person deeply involved in COI. To top it all off, the board knew very well who the members were who wanted to discuss this issue. They were not contacted. It all looks like everything was done to side-line the issue. So we need to start discussing this or else the whole thing will just explode in our face. GastelEtzwane (talk) 14:22, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

GastelEtzwane: I agree the General Assembly is the best place to discuss this. However, unless I missed it, no one has requested to dedicate time to discuss the topic during the 2017 General Assembly and no motion related to COI was submitted. I would expect such move from anyone who declares an interest in a topic and wants it to be discussed but it looks like I am wrong here.

Regarding newsletters, I disagree with you. First, COI is part of governance so there is no disconnect. Second, there were other questions brought up in relation with governance, such as conflicts between members, thus the idea of an ombudsman that Nattes à chat proposed during the workshop and who would handle other areas in the association than just COI. Third, COI was explicitly mentioned in the governance review page.

This being said, even if we presuppose communication was not the best, nothing prevented or prevents anyone to take the initiative on COI at any time (especially if thinking the board is not doing enough on this) and lead community efforts to build a solution. I am sure you will agree with me that, if those who think this topic needs to be dealt with do not want to do anything about it, nothing will ever change.

To summarize, there is an open forum on the members wiki to discuss COI and you are aware about it so I look forward for you, Nattes à chat or anyone else to bring constructive feedback there. Moumou82 (talk) 20:09, 27 April 2017 (UTC)