Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2017/Board of Trustees

The election ended 11 June 2017. No more votes will be accepted. The results were announced on 19 June 2017. Please consider submitting any feedback regarding the 2017 election on the election's post mortem page.

Protected edit request on 14 April 2017

Typo detected:

1. Write up two brief summaries of no more then 200 words describing your work on the Wikimedia Projects and your offline Wikimedia work.

Typo fixed:

1. Write up two brief summaries of no more than 200 words describing your work on the Wikimedia Projects and your offline Wikimedia work.

Mountebank1 (talk) 20:08, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Done Ruslik (talk) 20:27, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

A wikimedia um fundaçao com intereces da sociedade seria bom criar a wiki junior so para crianças sou um delas nos somos inteligentes tecnoligicas ,inteligentes cinceras integras e etc. Gabryell lukas (talk) 14:50, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

A wikimedia um fundaçao com intereces da sociedade seria bom criar a wiki junior so para crianças sou um delas nos somos inteligentes tecnoligicas ,inteligentes cinceras integras e etc. Gabryell lukas (talk) 14:50, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

How do candidates appear on translated pages?

I just translated the German page, and it's useless, as no candidate shows up there. Am I supposed to copy'n'paste all of them over there? Will they be translated somehow as well? When will that be? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 19:53, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

@Jalexander-WMF: Thanks for fixing this, just one Question: Why should I translate "Chris Keating" but not "Milos Rancic", "Dariusz Jemielniak" and "James Heilman"? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 09:11, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

@Sänger: It is from his image caption - not the name field. The same fields for each candidate are setup for translation. --Gregory Varnum (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 17:33, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

OK, my bad Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 10:36, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Why is the Doc not verified?

He already was a member of the board, what's there left over, that he's not verified yet? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 13:50, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

It is under discussion right now. Ruslik (talk) 16:37, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Where is the discussion taking place? Legoktm (talk) 19:18, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Why is there a discussion at all? I fail to see any reason for any discussion. He was elected last time, he illegitimately was booted from the board some 16 month ago (probably legal, but in no way legitimate), what could make him suddenly not verifiable? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 21:07, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Might be a lag. funnily enough, a current Board member (Maria Sefidari) is listed as not verified at the moment. :) aegis maelstrom δ 14:09, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Looks like all is good :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:47, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

One translation is missing

I don't think I can do anything about it, as I can't change anything on the frontside. So could someone please make the new candidates available? Bets as soon as they subscribe here, automagically? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 13:50, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

We usually wait for a few days before we mark any new submission for translation in case the candidate makes changes. Ruslik (talk) 16:36, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Question to a single candidate

Some questions are a bit more specific, often triggered by the candidate's statement or background. Where should those be asked? Effeietsanders (talk) 06:49, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

If people have specific question for me, let me know. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:32, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

When will the Q be ready for answering?

Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:01, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

@Doc James: The committee is working on collating them now and has been working hard on that since yesterday's close. I think the absolute latest for them will be Monday UTC but we're working to try and get them up as soon as possible (Today/Tomorrow) if possible to allow as much time for response as we can and more time for translation. We will send an email out to all candidates as soon as they're posted so that you can get to them as soon as you're able. Jalexander--WMF 22:13, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Perfect thanks User:Jalexander-WMF Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:43, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Anyone chance of a list- even a partial one - today? :) Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 09:26, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

en:Radio silence, seemingly.--Mautpreller (talk) 14:14, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Since it's now the working week in California - @Jalexander-WMF: - hello, just wondering if everyone is still working to having this done today? I have drafted some answers and it feels a bit odd keeping them on a scratchpad out of public view (I suspect I'm not alone here). Also I'm getting a bit concerned about the amount of time available to translate questions and answers. Thanks :) Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 15:52, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

It's fine to do the extra work to "collate" the questions, but maybe it would have been easier to simply leave them as they are. The advantages of collating might be overcompensated by the disadvantages of time loss.--Mautpreller (talk) 16:20, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Education

Why didn't you integrate my question about Education into your collated list? It ran: Do you agree that Wikimedia projects should primarily pursue educational objectives, rather than financial and technological ones? If so, what should be done to strengthen the weight of educational objectives? Specifically: There are four seats "appointed by the rest of the Board for specific expertise". How do you think they should be selected? Specifically, do you agree that members of educational institutions (universities, libraries, etc.) should be selected?

I deem this an important question and I cannot understand why the candidates should not answer it.--Mautpreller (talk) 08:23, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Mautpreller, I was actually delighted to see this question! As a matter of fact, within my work in the Board Governance Committee I’ve proposed a competence matrix that specifies experience from academia as not even one, but two key areas that we should cover. I strongly believe that we need people with strong academic, educational or librarian credentials and reach. I probably am a little biased here, as I’m a full tenured professor and I believe that the next leap in Wikipedia’s credibility will be done at the university’s level. I even published an academic paper about bridging the gap between Wikipedia and Academia. Anyhow, my understanding is that the Election Committee wanted to limit the strain on the translators... Pundit (talk) 08:59, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to see the answers of all candidates. The question is short and specific, why should it strain the translators unduely?--Mautpreller (talk) 09:59, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@Mautpreller: Actually, I wrote an answer to this in advance, so I might as well share it Here goes :-

Yes, the WMF’s objectives are all about making the sum of human knowledge available to all. That’s not “education” in its conventional sense of programmes of study and examinations, but it clearly is educational in a broader sense. Fundraising and technology are means to that end. They’re clearly both very important to what we do as a movement, but we work in these areas to support that end goal, not just “because we can”.

Should there be professors and librarians on the WMF board? I think that’s a helpful perspective to have. However it also seems to be one that is provided quite well from the community and affiliate selection processes. I can think of 4 individual board members who have been professors or librarians in the last 5 years, all community or affiliate selected, and I think there has always been at least one on the Board. So I wouldn’t make this a priority in itself.

What should be priorities be for the appointed seats? The board should continually review its own strengths and weaknesses and seek to balance them out with appointments. The things that tend to be in short supply from community and affiliate-selected members are (speaking very roughly): professional expertise in technology, law or finance; experience with big non-Wikimedia volunteer movements; and perspectives from Africa, Asia and South America. So these are the things we need to particularly look for in filling appointed seats. I could mention gender balance as well, though currently the two board members in appointed seats are both women so that isn't the most important thing for the next appointment. (Also, I feel we shouldn’t be afraid to appoint people from Wikimedia backgrounds to these seats when they fill the right profile.)

I hope this is a useful answer! Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 14:14, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Thx to both of you.--Mautpreller (talk) 14:31, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Up to now, I thought that collate means "to assemble something in a logical sequence" (Wiktionary) or "to collect, compare carefully in order to verify, and often to integrate or arrange in order" (Merriam-Webster). Is it possible that there is an alternative meaning that I don't know as a non-native speaker of the English language? --Mautpreller (talk) 14:08, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

User:Mautpreller Agree that we are a educational organization first and foremost and a tech organization secondarily. Those from the tech world are often more interested in the new and willing to take greater risk than those of us from academia. Wikipedia is no longer new and unproven. And we need to be working on the long term. While one or two individuals with such a background is useful on the board, four or five constitutes a risk. I am supportive of increasing the number of elected seats by one or two or at least appointing more board members with an educational background. Excellent options would include deans / former deans of prestigious universities or people from major educational organizations. While we have made strides with respect to improving our reputation among academia further involvement of academia would further this goal. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:14, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Thx to you, too.--Mautpreller (talk) 18:37, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Collate

I was glad about the answers to the "collated" question about community influence, most particularly Milos's. It's somwehat disturbing to see that not only my education question was skipped by the Election Committee but also the community influence question (supported by eight users) was deprived of its essential idea, that is, if and how community influence within the board could be strengthened. What is this collation process supposed to be? Is it an expression of fear that the questions in their pure form could poison the sensitive candidates' mind? I could understand if similar questions were arranged together to avoid repetitions but I am at a loss why the contents of these questions should be altered, diluted, bowdlerized or altogether skipped. Maybe the Election Committee could comment on that.--Mautpreller (talk) 18:51, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

I hope my answers to a number of the Qs[1][2] gives you a good idea of my position on this point. Let me know if you want me to expand on any aspects. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:10, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Hello Mautpreller, I will try to share with you the reasoning behind the collation, and than i hope it will be clear to you what are our intentions. Last elections the community as a whole had a large period to ask the candidate questions, this led to dozens of questions coming in until the very last moment of the elections. This was not so useful to three stakeholders on this processes:

1. The candidtes, as they did not have a way to respond to all questions, and they did keep coming in the, so no point in time was set as a date to stop with questioning.
2. the translators, which could not stand the in the pace and rate of incoming questions and responses, mostly in English, so we basically did not serve them well, and over all:
3. the voters, that had to read walls of texts, in order to understand what was going on, but due to the fact translators did not stand the rate and pace, it was mostly in English, so we lost our ability to have a more diverse community voice.

As a result, we decided as the first standing committee to experiment with better ways to overcome the issues mentioned above, we might not fixed the issue entirely, or at all (which i hope we did fix at least a bit) but we did our best, and I will be the first to admit it is far from perfect. We will learn from it, and do better next time. I hope you do see the value it does bring in the current setting. Does this answer your question? Matanya (talk) 20:29, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

• Mautpreller, I was trying to follow the rules, because of fairness to other candidates - I will be most grateful if you let me know if you think that my answers satisfy your curiosity anyhow. I hope it is clear from my actual proposal made in Berlin, that I advocated for more community influence. Pundit (talk) 07:45, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, Pundit, I understand that. My idea was not so much to urge any candidate to answer my questions but to object to the "collating" procedure. You see that I didn't comment on your or other candidates' answers but simply thanked you. I am not interested to open up a new place for questions and "candidates' answers". The place for questions and answers should be Wikimedia Foundation elections/2017/Board of Trustees/Questions. The problem is that the Election Committee prevented that. I agree that following the rules is important for an election process but I do not think that the Election Committee followed their own rules.--Mautpreller (talk) 08:06, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

@Matanya: I see the problem that many questions came in until the last moment and there was no time to translate them (and, for the candidates, to reply to them). However, this problem could have been solved by setting a fixed date, early enough, for questions to be submitted. But it is definitely no solution to select and change the questions according to criteria that nobody knows. The problem is now that the questions are not "community questions." The questions asked by community members were skipped and replaced by a set of other questions authored by the Election Committee. There is a vague relationship between the original questions and the new questions but only vague. Essentially they are very different. So, eight people wanted to know if the candidates agreed that community influence should be strengthened and if so, what they wanted to do for this goal. In the "collated" question this has simply disappeared. Concerning the education question, it was skipped altogether for reasons I can't even imagine.--Mautpreller (talk) 08:48, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

To put it more precisely: 43 questions were submitted. Some were later than 20 April, some were obviously beside the point, etc. Let's say 30 different questions could be identified. By "collating" I understood that you arrange them in groups (content), deleting repetitions, so you could perhaps arrive at 15 different subjects, some with more than one question. This would have been possible, though not easy because it is difficult to keep the intention of the question intact in such a process. But you didn't do that! You chose to select some questions and to rephrase others so that they lost their original meaning, in an intransparent process. The result is that the set of questions doesn't represent what the voters wanted to know. This is a problem for the voters and also for the candidates, as you can easily see in some of their answers. As to the translators, they got additional time pressure by the time the collating process consumed.--Mautpreller (talk) 15:52, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

I truly see your point and feel your disappointment. I think we should leave the case as it is now, and think very well what we can do better next year. Matanya (talk) 18:49, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

I think we should continue to discuss this point after the election.--Mautpreller (talk) 08:23, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

I think, last time it was a bit too laizzes faire, this time it was far too strict and censoring. The very idea of structuring the answers, reducing doubles, and have a deadline for submission is fine, the implementation this year was far from this. I hope the lessons learned will result in a better process next time, i.e. the FDC and ombudsman elections. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 08:42, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to go on with translations of the answers....

...but no new answer is yet in the tool. Worse still, in the German version it looks like there are just a few answers at all, while there are considerably more on the original English page. That doesn't look so good. Could someone it the WMF (or whoever else is able to do it) please kick the translator tool into high gear? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 07:58, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

@Ajraddatz, Atropine, KTC, Mardetanha, and Philippe: Anyone home? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 14:06, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

@Ruslik0, Masssly, Matanya, and NTymkiv (WMF): at all? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 14:08, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

@JSutherland (WMF) and Jalexander-WMF: and to those, who did it the last times. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 17:18, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

We are on it Sänger, Sorry for the delays, this election is very tight in its timelines. Matanya (talk) 18:51, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

One more thing that wasn't good planned. Like the non-translated, and thus leaving a rather arrogant impression on the non-english, i.e. the majority, communities, election invitation letter. If you have strict timelines, I expect the paid staff to organise shifts to prevent delays in such extremely important things like the most important for the WMF at all, the election of the board. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 21:05, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

BTW: Now I've gotm to go to bed, and won't be able to do much until tomorrow afternoon, and some wee stuff in breaks during my working hours. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 21:09, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

You may also review candidates' answers for the Board election

What does this mean? Commenting upon them? If so, where should one do this?--Mautpreller (talk) 08:39, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Error in a <tvar link

In Raystorms statement #1 was a syntax error in the link variable (a missing "<") it was [[tvar|affcomlink>Affiliations Committee</>|Affiliations Committee]] and not working, I changed it to Affiliations Committee, and that does it. Unfortunately it didn’t propagate to the German translation, there is now a red-link to something wrong. Can someone please get this straight? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 16:21, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Good spot. Also I noticed a similar kind of problem in my answer to q2 which displays as this: ([[<tvr|thelandwhywronglink>User:The_Land/Why_do_They_always_do_It_wrong</>|that I set out in my essay on community-WMF relations]]) - I'm not familiar enough with the syntax so know how to fix it. Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 16:28, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

That one is fine in both languages with me, is it still wrong with you? Curently it reads have written on how these dynamics work Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 16:34, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Where to vote?

I can't see any voting possibility, although it#s now far too late for a start, it's already 3 minutes past 00:00 UTC. Where can I cast my vote? Will the tiome, that's lost now, be added at the end? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 00:05, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

@Ajraddatz, Atropine, KTC, Mardetanha, and Philippe: @Ruslik0, Masssly, Matanya, and NTymkiv (WMF): @JSutherland (WMF) and Jalexander-WMF: It's now on the english pages, but still not on the translated ones. Why is there such a huge delay? Why isn't it prepared in an appropriate manner? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 00:17, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Should be there now. Joe Sutherland (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 00:21, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

There are a lot of things that happen when the election starts and they can't happen instantly (and never have in the past either). The election starts automatically and we work to make sure that things get rolled out as quickly as possible and will continue to work to adjust them as needed. It will never be perfect because of technical and resource limitations but we'll always strive to do as much as possible. Re: Time added, the committee will discuss if they think any of that's necessary given all circumstances (for example there is at least some time later in the election where the database will be locked for maintenance and votes won't be able to be cast). We appreciate you pointing out where holes are however so that we can fill them as quickly as possible, there will obviously also be a period after the election where you can provide your public feedback about how the election went for the committee to review next year (an off year without an election) for improvement. Jalexander--WMF 00:46, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

User:JSutherland (WMF) The link on this page is for the 2015 election[3]? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:36, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

@Doc James: Where are you seeing this? Joe Sutherland (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 00:38, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

If you go [[4]] and click on "2. Go to the SecurePoll voting page" it brings me here [5] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:41, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

@Doc James: This should do it. I'd already made the change in a different template, this one I forgot existed :) Joe Sutherland (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 00:42, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Yup thanks Joe :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:42, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

It's minutes at the start of a 2 weeks voting period! Seriously? Things are being turned on and updated. No, the extra few minutes will not be added. -- KTC (talk) 00:50, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Incorrect link to candidate presentations

Under "Information for voters", the "candidate presentations" link currently goes to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/Board_elections/2015/Candidates - for 2015, not 2017. There may be a problem with one of the templates that it draws from. Dreamyshade (talk) 01:28, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

It should be fixed now, thanks. -- KTC (talk) 01:38, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Wrong link

The link to the candidate presentations in the main page is to 2015... Ijon (talk) 01:29, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

If this is the same as above, then it's fixed now. Thanks -- KTC (talk) 01:38, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Vote page does not include User ID

In the wiki world, people often do not know the real names, but always know the user ID. Please include User ID in the voting page to make the list easier for most users. Thanks! --Yurik (talk) 04:03, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi @Yurik:! Traditionally it hasn't been included since the meta talk page link was there but happy to do so :). I added it into the template (using the username that already 'existed' so that it didn't screw with any translations) and it should be showing up now for anyone. Jalexander--WMF 04:36, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Sorting by factual criteria

Account	Edit count	Bot edit count	Years in movement	FAs/GAs	Doctoral degree	Years on Supervisory Boards of Orgs with Budgets >5M$
The Land	9,543	n/a	13	4: [6], [7], [8], [9]	-	-
Millosh, Милош	29,791 (12,907 + 16,884)	2,941,423 / 3,293,354 = 20,621 (Millbot, general purpose bot) + 2,841,744 (Millbot-Weather, Wikinews bot) + 66,958 (Millbot-Beta, Wikinews bot, blocked because of technical reasons) + 12,100 (Millbot-Belgrade, Wikinews bot) + 351,931 (Iglbot, Wiktionary bot, collaboratively)	13.5 (globally active since 2007, Language committee member, was steward etc.)	Numerous on Serbian Wikipedia, but criteria was much lower than on English Wikipedia at that time.	-	-
Pundit	14,595		11 years		management	7
Doc James	220,004	In collaboration[10][11][12]	10 years	Dengue (formally published) / 24 GAs	medicine	1
عباد ديرانية	29,991				-	-
Raystorm	25,910			[13]	-	3
Pgallert	17,183				-	-
Yurik	31,945	2,637,189 (YurikBot)	13 years 2013-2016 at WMF		-	-
BamLifa	806				-	-

JackPotte (talk) 13:01, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

JackPotte my personal view, of a person with just a mere 14k of edits, but a lot of organizational experience, is that just editing may not necessarily be the best proxy for being a good board member. Nevertheless, more data is more data, which is good. I'd love to see a table with the total number of years served on boards, in a leadership position, degrees, etc - for the future elections the EC could even consider a tmplate that'd adjust to the user preferences (so that the voters could sort according to their preferences). Pundit (talk) 13:09, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree, this is just a criterion among some others. Please feel free to add more columns. JackPotte (talk) 13:14, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

JackPotte: As a running candidate, I'd feel awkward adding years of experience from other boards, degrees, exposure to different cultures/hardship/censorship/diversity, matching the needed skills' matrix etc. to the table, as it would've appear that I'm trying to emphasize the areas where I may have some advantages. It'd surely be cool to review the candidates against the call, or the needed skills matrix, though. Pundit (talk) 13:23, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

As Yurik added bot edits, I took the liberty of adding Featured Articles (of which the candidate is the main author). I did a quick check on peoples' en.wp user pages for any to add but doubtless I missed a number of these. Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 17:47, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't think it makes any sense for us (the candidates) to be adding more. I've added two criteria to show simply that choosing the fact points relevant for the board work can take different paths - we can keep adding rows, but eventually it should be the users or the media who make such calls, not us. Pundit (talk) 18:06, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, indeed! : ) Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 18:51, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

With respect to calculating "years on a board", I would imagine many of us are on multiple boards concurrently. I sit on a number of boards related to medical administration at both the local, regional, and provincial levels for example. Degrees would be fairly easy to do but determining their equivalence between countries can be more challenging. With respect to the first criteria mentioned in the call for candidates "the ability to stand up for a point, to resist pressure" I could not agree more. This was critical. Hopefully a little less so now. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:55, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Doc JamesI did not mean any boards/committees (it is often too many to list indeed, I've been on a number of ministry of science boards, for instance), but boards of trustees/supervisory boards of organizations of similar size/budget (which, essentially, is much more related to the needed experience). Still, I agree that in essence, obviously, they should cumulate (each year on one board of this sort should count, even if parallel with others). I think that degrees are quite regulated (although some countries just don't have e.g. a habilitation - but at least in academia it is very clear what corresponds with what since mobility is quite high: at the very base level, you have a Bachelor, Master, and Doctoral degrees. You also have different academic positions - both categories can have different names in other languages, but they are translated into English without much ambiguity. In principle you start as a teaching assistant/research assistant/doctoral student, after your Ph.D. you go on a postdoc or immediately to a "tenure-track" lecturer/assistant professor position, then senior lecturer/associate professor, then sometimes to a position of reader/associate professor with tenure, and finally after about 15-20 years in academia to the position of a professor, sometimes also called full professor. There are also other non-tenure track positions with relatively easily placeable status, and sometimes a "lecturer" can be anyone who teaches at university. In many countries there is no "tenure" per se, but because of the high mobility it is still understandable what is needed for what position, and very rarely there would be any confusion if some degree should be recognized as a Bachelor- or rather Master's).

Regarding the ability to stand up for a point, I think it is ALWAYS critical. Trustees are needed for tough decisions. If everything goes well, they can sit down and relax. When, however, tougher times come, we need people with the ability to go against the others, if it is the right thing to do. Such times come regularly - even the SuperProtect simply would not have been blown out of proportion if 1-2 Trustees realized it was a bad idea and stood up. Pundit (talk) 15:59, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

User:JackPotte another useful breakdown would be the number of edits in the last year. Some people were previously active on the wikis but are less so now.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:31, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

I know that my activity dropped as a result of being on the Board. It was time-consuming, energy-sucking, and quite tough - in the crisis. It also gave me a lot of priceless experience very relevant to the Board work that editing wouldn't. Pundit (talk) 15:59, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

+1 to Dariusz - my editing rate has never recovered from getting onto the Board of Wikimedia UK. I'd also concur with the "time-consuming and energy-sucking" judgement description, at least for parts of it. I think the same is true of almost anyone who's served on a Wikimedia organisation board will feel the same way. Equally, "time served on a board" is a poor proxy for "what have you accomplished on a board". Some people really drive things forward on a Board, others don't. Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 17:56, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

• One more important criterion would be experience from different roles on wiki. I know that I learned a lot from being a steward, an ombudsman, a checkuser, a bureaucrat, or an admin. Different tasks, different insight into how our communities work. Pundit (talk) 15:59, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree involvement in different aspects of the movement and on different projects is also critical. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:25, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

• I think it is silly. Adding criteria is not so useful if we do it ourselves. It should be the media or interested users who choose the useful criteria, imho... Pundit (talk) 18:01, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Agree. Would be most useful for people to add what criteria they are interested in and than we simply fill them in.
  • With respect to other board experience, I am the current head of an ER department with a budget for physician services of around 5 million and as such have a fair bit of experience with contract negotiations. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:15, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
    • Well, that's not been my intention for this column - I'm a head of department, too and deal with contracts, labor etc. but would not consider this to be exactly a "board experience". Being a board member is something quite specific - but I do agree that general experience in management and leadership positions is vital, too! Pundit (talk) 18:23, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

May you add, also my "Serbian" username: sr:User:Милош? :) --Millosh (talk) 09:22, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

OK, added it by myself :) Thought it was curated. --Millosh (talk) 09:44, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Engineering over community

Dear Doc James, Pundit and Yurik,

You have said that "increasing editor retention" and "increasing participation in the emerging communities" is less prioritary than "providing more engineering resources". Doc James also said that those are more prioritary than doing the Wikimedia movement strategy.

Why do you think that community issues should be less prioritary than technological issues for the Wikimedia Foundation? --NaBUru38 (talk) 18:35, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Per the Q "Increasing editor retention" I replied "This is sort of the holy grail. While we should dedicate some resources to the problem, we are really not sure how to achieve this goal which makes it tough. Many of us have tried many things."

We need to study how to grow the communities. I believe that "Providing more engineering resources to improve editors' experience" will actually accomplish this better than most of the other options.

For example the visual editor has helped with recruitment and many new editors preferring it. Does VE lead to long term editors? I do know if we know this yet.

We have heard many raise concerns about incivility within our communities. One of the issues we face with respect to incivility is the inability to actually remove peoples ability to edit Wikipedia (they just come back as socks and continue).

Does meet up / editor training help? Some data indicates they do not result in long term editor retention, though I will likely continue running them myself. Increasing editor numbers and retention needs to be a collaboration process between the communities and WMF. It is a nebulous problem in needs of experimentation to figure out what works.

Issues with technology (especially the technology that editors use to write and discussing improving WP) IS a community issue.

With respect to directly "increasing editors" such as doing editor outreach IMO the WMF is not the best positions for this. Wikimedia Germany can better recruit German editors. Wiki Project Med Foundation can better recruit medical editors. Etc. And we have excellent funding processes in place for those who need it for such work. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:45, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Given that "we are really not sure how to achieve this goal" of increasing editor retention, is that a reason to put it lower in the priority list? --NaBUru38 (talk) 21:28, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

NaBUru38, I actually placed retention and more (focused) engineering efforts on the same line, as I think they are simply two ways to describe the same goal - how likely an editor will edit initially, continue editing, and become an active community member. Increasing participation by emerging communities is a subset of that. A lot of my recent work was actually targeting multilingual support, which would especially benefit emerging communities that do not have as much human resources to recreate all the required templates/modules. --Yurik (talk) 18:53, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

"I actually placed retention and more (focused) engineering efforts on the same line" - Correct, my question was not precise enough. --NaBUru38 (talk) 21:30, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the question. First of all, a lot of community issues (including the editor retention and increasing participation) have to have technological components. Therefore I'd have to rank the increase of engineering resources in remaining issues somehow. Increasing editor retention WITHOUT any engineering component (ranked 2 and 3) will be difficult (but surely there are many important social elements, as an organizational scholar I definitely agree there is a social element to it, too). Btw, we already have a pretty strong engineering team. The Visual Editor, "thank you" notifications, better communication system - are all good examples of how engineering has helped in our community, editor acquisition and retention problems. We also have a really good research team that does amazing things we should more and more translate into actual applications. Pundit (talk) 19:39, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

"surely there are many important social elements"

My concern is that the three of you think that the solutions to community issues can be solved mainly with technology, which I disagree. I like new interface elements like notifications, visual editors and threaded discussions. But issues like persistent conflicts and harassment cannot be solved with some nice interface. --NaBUru38 (talk) 21:35, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Some of the persistent harassment issues can be solved with better mechanisms to restrict access to WP though. Do we want the WMF wading in an enforcing "civility"? I think it is important to mostly have self governing communities.

A lot of community issues simply are not the WMF's to solve as they play more of a supportive role in many of these issues. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:25, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

NaBUru38 Your follow up made me smile, as this is the line of argument I often make, too :) yes, tech does not solve problems that are fundamentally social. Moreover, these social problems pertain to the communities, which need self-governing to address them - and even for practical, if not ethical reasons the WMF cannot impose wide norms on the communities (take image filtering as an example: some cultures will perceive some images as offensive). It is the WMF role however to make tools available. For instance, it is the community decision if they want flagged revisions or not. It has ramifications for retention, new editors etc - but the tool has to be available. Similarly, tools for quicker combating harassment, obscenity filters etc - are all technical, but their usage becomes social (through and by the community decision). I agree with you that some people are overcharmed with tech and think it can solve everything. It can't. It is only useful as an extension of social decisions and processes. And yet, the WMF can develop tech, and should not impose too much of the social rules. Pundit (talk) 06:00, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Agree with User:Pundit we are a social movement supported by tech. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:20, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

• Couldn't help but link this xkcd here. Pundit (talk) 11:16, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Why adding a photo of the candidate on the description page

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2017/Board_of_Trustees/Candidates

Appearance is to often one of the main criteria to vote for someone. Of course people can look up and find candidate picture, but putting them directly in the description is certainly not a good idea. Some countries has banned picture on CV... --Gagarine (talk) 20:46, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Removing Board Members (part 2)

Hi all, there was a bit of discussion about removing Board members in the Wikipedia Weekly Facebook group, which I thought was an important enough subject to mention here. @Doc James: referred to his answer to that question, which reads:

"While removal of a board member should be possible this action should not be taken lightly. It also should not be done without including the electorate when a community elected board member is involved.

One option could be that, for a community elected board members, the board could trigger a by-election with a majority of support within the board. That board member could still run in the by-election if eligible. If issues of fraud were present they of course would be ineligible to run." My response was:

"Sounds like a nice idea, but I have reservations about how this would work in practice. In a situation where the Board is voting to remove someone, they probably won't be able to share all of the details, so the community wouldn't have all of the information they need to decide on how to vote in a by-election. Say, very hypothetically, a Board member was accused of sexual harassment of a staff member. I'm not sure the Board would be able to say anything about that in public at all, let alone in the level of detail that they'd need to persuade a sceptical electorate that their actions were justified. To my mind, your proposal creates the risk of us having outright bad actors on the Board and not being able to do anything about it. (Obviously, we haven't come close to that situation yet, but with this kind of policy change it's worth thinking through the edge cases...)"

I won't try to post the rest of the discussion from the Wikipedia Weekly group, but maybe we could continue talking about the subject here in broader view? Regards, Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 07:44, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

As stated "Would need to bring legal in on this aswell." In a case such as you have mentioned I imagine disclosure that misconduct has occurred could be made. But regardless that would make the person ineligible to run in the next round of the election per "You must not have been removed from a position at a non-profit organization or other company because of mismanagement or misconduct" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:00, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

I suppose if any significant breach of the Trustee Code of Conduct would count as "misconduct" then the problem solves itself. But if that's not the case, then it's unlikely that the Board will be able to communicate all of the reasons in public. (I have a vague memory that "misconduct" has a specific meaning in US law, with possibly serious consequences for someone's off-Wikimedia life and career, but I'm no expert here) Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 14:24, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

What we cannot have is board members simply being removed over a difference of opinion on a policy questions. With respect to the specific meaning of "misconduct" in US law, would need to check with a lawyer. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:37, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

I'd certainly agree with that: disagreement on policy and direction is a vital part of the role of a trustee, not grounds for sacking someone. Out of interest, is that how you would characterise your own removal from the Board? Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 17:39, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

There was a fair bit of coverage of the issues in the Signpost. I provided some details at the time in this op-ed.[14] These peices by others provide an additional overview[15][16]. An overview of statements from various parties can be found here with a broader timeline by Molly here.

The TL:DR in my opinion, we (1) disagreed on transparency around strategy (we IMO cannot be pitching a strategy to a third party that we are not willing to disclose to the movement), (2) disagreed on the prior ED, (3) and disagreed how strategy should be created. My positions was, our strategy must be transparent, we need an ED who is a good fit with our culture, and the strategy should be created by the movement as a whole rather than a small group of executives / board members.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:16, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

James, if these were the reasons, I'm afraid I'd be the first to go. Pundit (talk) 05:37, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi James - all very sensible positions. But it doesn't seem consistent to me that the Board would remove you for speaking out on those issues - and then go on shortly afterwards to sack Lila (and the Knowledge Engine with her) and then end up launching a big movement-wide strategy process, which were among the things you were advocating for. So I am still confused about what was actually going on. (That's not to say I agree with the Board's action in removing you, but I think it does highlight my point about the lack of information people would have in a by-election if your proposal succeeded...) Regards, Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 07:08, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

After I was removed, our wider movement became acutely aware of the issues. Also remember that both Jan Bart and Stu West also left the board a couple of days after I did. A lot more than staff than left aswell.

Statements from staff upon leaving included comments such as this from Siko Bouterse Transparency, integrity, community and free knowledge remain deeply important to me, and I believe I will be better placed to represent those values in a volunteer capacity at this time.

We have a more recent comments from User:LuisVilla such as "the ED discouraged communication between execs and board, and the board did not regularly seek out feedback from execs) was unhealthy for everyone, and heavily contributed to the board's inability to grasp the situation over the past year."

And another from Luis from May 2016 "[tl;dr: the board did not effectively perform one of their most important roles (managing the ED); the board (and board candidates) should be talking about how they will fix that... Last fall, there was no way for staff to even know who was on the HRcommittee until my repeated questions to *four separate board members *led to this edit[17]" Please also note that I was not even on the HR Committe yet was the one who took care of updating its membership.

And one from Ariel Glenn "Make no mistake, this is not just about an ED. It's also about failure of oversight, powerlessness of staff, and a culture of exclusion, among other things. If, as I hope, the Board acts decisively to remove the current ED, that will only be the first step in a mountain of work ahead of us."

So yes the majority of the board at the time I left had decided to continue to drag everyone through the mud for longer. I opposed that option. As the severity of the issues became more and more clear and the members of the board changed the majority of the board eventually came around to the position I had supported in November of 2015. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:53, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Where is the discussion about the voting method?

The question have arisen why WMF have chosen the specific voting method we're using, and what were the considerations to pick that one, and what were the reasons not to use something else? --grin ✎ 06:34, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't think the WMF made this decision - it was the community-run Election Committee (which was also operating under certain time pressure, it is the first year of its operating as a standing committee - a solution I've been recommending for a while, since it then a more systematic change can be introduced). Pundit (talk) 07:07, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Hopefully the Committee can look at this as part of the election wash-up and invite input. I've long thought a preference voting system would work better for us. Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 09:13, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Many people have expresed that they prefer this current system over Schulze or other preferential vote system. I prefer this voting method, certainly. —MarcoAurelio 09:39, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Staying with the current system after careful consideration and deliberation is surely a valid outcome, too! Pundit (talk) 09:42, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

I've not seen "many" people supporting the continuation of the experimentation, nor I see any consideration or deliberation at all, and in any case it is not a valid outcome to make irrational decisions. The status quo (transferable vote) should be restored unless and until some document is produced explaining how and why the experimentation worked and was proven to be sound (ideally with mathematical proofs of the method's ability to produce a result whatever the ballots). Nemo 09:49, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Nemo I was replying to Marco that IF and WHEN the Election Committee has this discussion, accepting the current system is also a valid outcome. I'm not saying that in my view the current system actually is the one that I believe will be the winner and a result of such careful deliberation. Probably not, and maybe the single transferable vote will - but many factors should be considered, transparency of the system, too. Pundit (talk) 13:13, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Electoral system

It's depressing to see that, despite the past failures, we're still using an electoral non-system, rather than an actual electoral system (mathematically proven to be sound etc.). I would know how to vote if I had to rank the candidates, but with such an unpredictable non-system I'm forced to think what the others would vote, how the votes are going to be tallied and what meaning my vote will actually get. --Nemo 09:44, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

We should use a voting system that works for all, not only for math people. —MarcoAurelio 09:46, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

That's the problem, the current "system" is not proven to work. So only maths people can try and predict what could happen, while with preferences one just have to tell what their preferences are. Nemo 09:50, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure why it does not work. The current system is transparent and easier to use for many of us, included me. I am not opposing any investigation on bettering the system, but switching to a vote system where only very few people is able to understand how it works (and hence manipulate it) it's not something I will support. —MarcoAurelio 09:54, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I also have a problem with the non-transparency of some other systems. Ideally, we should have a system in which:

1. people do not just vote for faces (as such a pageant privileges certain people, who do not have to have skills) or geography (people should not be elected because of being born in a country with a popular language),
2. people can be voted for, but also opposed (to eliminate the problem of highly popular people who make disastrous decisions, and later are not punished for them in the elections),
3. negative votes have some weight, but it is reasonable (not to promote tactical voting, also - negativity should not run the elections),
4. there is an actual debate of ideas,
5. candidates have to show their skills and expertise (also outside of the wiki world, as editing does not really help much in board governance, although it does give an insight into how our community works - but I'd dare say that 10k edits is usually enough for that),
6. candidates have to compete basing on the skills needed in the Board work (argumentation, often oral).

We need to have a wider discussion about the objectives, and choosing a system that is clear but also fair is important. The current one has some flaws, but at least it is understandable by everyone and is not surprising in its mechanics Pundit (talk) 10:01, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Indeed - we need to think about the design of the whole electoral process - the voting system is only one part of that, though an obvious and important part of it. Being a bit of an election system geek I could go on at length on this subject but I'll save it for after the election (regardless of outcome :) ) Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 10:29, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that's definitely a better idea. Never Change a voting System while a current vote is on its way. If there is something unclear, it's better to get it straight before the actual election is running (we had some problem last time we elected OS in the deWP, because the system was completely unclear in the situation, and no admin/burocrat wanted to do anything about it), but if it's clear, and just not the best possible solution, don't change it while voting. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 11:55, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Obviously, no changes can be made after the elections have started. Pundit (talk) 14:38, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

I oppose using any electoral system where most voters don't understand the results. The current system is easy to understand and fair. --NaBUru38 (talk) 15:28, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

There are many other simple systems: e.g. just deducting negative votes from the total of positive votes (no, I don't think it is necessarily better than what we have, just giving an example). I think that before the next elections a larger reflection and discussion are needed. Pundit (talk) 15:33, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

This voting system (unlike just removing negative votes from the total of positive votes) is very bad because -- unless if all voters do vote tactically -- one negative vote is worth a lot of positive votes. During the last elections, one negative vote was worth 4-5 positive votes and the voting system heavily influenced the outcome of elections. Something similar will happen this time, as well.

This type of the voting system is in favor of the new candidates (thus, in theory to me, among others; but that's just theory :) ). The present Board members (both Dariusz and Maria) will get the standard share of negative votes, which would be much heavier than the positive votes they get. During the last elections, all three Board members have got approximately the same amount of negative votes and, unlike Sj, who got smaller amount of positive votes, both Maria and Phoebe would have been reelected in the most of the similar voting systems, while Denny have passed just because he had a lot of neutral votes. --Millosh (talk) 15:59, 3 May 2017 (UTC)