Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/Archives/2012

Discussion on WMF governance and Board process

There's a discussion on making WMF governance (at least at the Board level) more transparent and participatory here, stemming from a discussion on wikimedia-l. –SJ talk  19:53, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Advocacy Committee request

How to respond to or evaluate this concern broadcast from It:WP? it.wiki in trouble once again this time worse than last year. It would be something for the advocacy committee to deal with if we had one (as discussed last winter). –SJ talk  00:34, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Why can't these board committees be opened up to volunteers along with the board? it seems logical that this would bring in an outside perspective and generate the impetus towards getting them functional. Theo10011 (talk) 14:27, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Most committees have community members, some are community run. Only the HR and Board Governance committees do not. Many proposed committees (like Events) are proposed to be community run, and active community interest would make them happen quickly. I think the bottleneck here i's uncertainty about whether an advocacy Committee should exist, and what work it would do. (PS: Trustees are volunteers as well; so almost all WMF committee members are volunteers... :) –SJ talk  01:38, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I would view this as an issue that Wikimedia Italia should be responsible for looking after, rather than it becoming a WMF board issue. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 01:41, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

There was an explicit request from the it:wp community for attention from communities outside of Italy. So the question is: how should the global community respond in such cases? There are arguments that the WMF should not get involved in any sort of global advocacy. But if it did, I expect this is a topic such a committee would be aware of. I'm taking the opportunity to nudge that tabled discussion, which has been on the Board agenda to revisit sometime this year. –SJ talk  01:49, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I was referring to these committees [1], along with the election committee, and a possible future advocacy committee. I can see both arguments but is there any harm in opening up the board committees? The audit committee already has volunteer who oversee finances to a degree. I don't understand the practice of picking 3 board member from 10 each year from the same group, to present to the other 8. There is little outside perspective in that. It could be argued that all 3 board committees would be served better if the entire board followed those issues instead of just 3 members. Adding in experts and other volunteer to the group is something I think might be beneficial and worth considering. But then again, it might be too much access and there are privacy concerns. BTW has the it.wp issue been brought up on the new advocacy list or to the recently created advocacy department? Theo10011 (talk)

OTRS address

On Democratizing the Wikimedia Foundation it's been said that the OTRS address is functional again. If true, please add this method of contact, at a minimum, on this page, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, the navigational template and wmf:Board of Trustees. Thanks, Nemo 12:46, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Since experience is that the general address is mostly used by spam and most personal mails are not best addressed to the board (mainly better to staff or even community) we've discussed to add the information (individual mail addresses and general address) to the foundation's page and it should be done in a few days. --Alice Wiegand (talk) 13:07, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer, it's definitely a (simple and small) improvement. I hope that the process to ask a topic to be discussed by the board will also be set up in the coming months as suggested by Sj.

In my opinion a reliable private way to contact board members is still needed and would be worth a try given that the times are so different now (as Delphine noted). I had an example email with which I intended to inaugurate the OTRS queue; I've forwarded it to you with a mild disappointment. ;-) Thanks, Nemo 15:41, 26 November 2012 (UTC)