Talk:Wikimedia meetings

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This page may be used for commenting on Wikimedia meetings, or for discussing any of the points raised in the meeting notes, which are available at Wikimedia:Meetings.

For older discussions and agenda items, including early discussions about Foundation membership, shared hosting, trademarks, grants, promotion, fundraising, developer teams, communication, private wikis and official positions, see the earlier archive of this page.

Contents 1 June 2006 : Next meeting? 2 Thoughts on committees 3 August, 2009 3.1 Week of Aug 24 4 Open meetings 4.1 September open meeting 4.1.1 captured from the IRC channel and addressed online

[edit] June 2006 : Next meeting?

On feb 12 2006, the person who posted the logs etc (anonymous) said:

The next meeting will be in 3 weeks (roughly March 4th or 5th). To be announced here.

I have not seen any announcements. Could someone maybe clarifiy whether there are just no public meetings anymore, or that the announcementspage has been moved? Effeietsanders 08:55, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

There haven't been any meetings, public or otherwise, for a long time and none are planned. However, if you think they're useful, you could always organise one yourself. Angela 00:46, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I have not very urgent things to discuss right now myself. But as I see the threads grow on foundation-l , I think it might be usefull to have again a irc-open-boardmeeting. Especially when you are seeking for interested people to join the board in time, it might be usefull to use more communication pathways as just the mailinglist and private email. I always found IRC-discussions very enlighting, not especially because they gave so much information, but you can see more clear who thinks what and why. It's easier to ask questions, the bridge to take is not that high. However I think it necessairy that at least several boardmembers can join the conversation. So maybe it's more easy if one should try to find a date and time who knows a little more about the personal agendae :) Effeietsanders 11:25, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I assumed there hasn't been any Board meeting (for the sake of newly launched Board wiki?). It will be informative why the Board meeting hasn't been held since the early of this year on Wikimedia:Meetings. You can add the most (presumably, but I don't know exactly) result of your discussions are public as "resolutions", if appropriate. --Aphaia 21:08, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

There was a long gap in Board meetings of any recorded sort in 2006, as indicated from the meeting log on the Foundation wiki. I would appreciate some help organizing the record of Board meetings here on meta, where editors can readily fix up formatting and links and leave comments directly on the meeting pages. The next Board meeting will be held at Wikimania later this month; see below. -- sj | translate | + 23:31, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Thoughts on committees

> We're currently reevaluating the ombudsman commission as part of a
> larger rethinking of the committee system that was established some
> years ago, before the foundation had much in the way of staff or
> structure. This will be a significant topic in our board meeting next
> week, and I hope we can provide more information after the meeting.
>
> In the meantime, if anyone would like to offer feedback, I would be very
> happy to hear it. In particular, ideas or suggestions on what our needs
> are and how best to satisfy them. I'm less interested in random
> complaints about this or that committee, I think we're already aware of
> most of the concerns that have been raised, although anyone who thinks
> they know of a problem nobody has ever mentioned before is welcome to
> contact me off-list. I'm more interested in analysis of how our
> committees work, what their strengths and limitations are, what can be
> reasonably expected of them, and how we should fill in the gaps.

- Michael Snow, January 2, 2009

I took a trip down memory lane, having a vague recollection that I had in fact been the first to suggest a committee structure in my candidateship platform in the very first elections to the board of trustees in 2004. I found that at least Anthere had made some mention of work groups in her candidate platform (and no, I didn't bother digging up which of us was the first to edit that into our candidate statement). I did find that the way I formulated my thoughts then, has stood the test of time remarkably well (in terms of reflecting the general manner I still think about these things).

So without further ado, this is what I said then:

If other trustees agree; appointing /working groups/ of qualified people to prepare workable choises (in consultation with both the board of trustees and the users of the various Wikimedia projects) for policies and institutions that the users may adopt through either /consensus acclamation/ or if neccessary, /qualified majority voting/. These working groups consisting of 3 to 5 /appointed members/ and 1 to 3 trustees from the board of trustees. Suggested (incomplete) list of working groups:

• /Copyright and intellectual property licencing policies./
• /Member association structures and bylaws./
• /User community institutions and policies./
• /Crossproject integration./
• /Steering committee./ (This including the whole Board of trustees and a number of appointed members determined by the Board.)

I infact have very little of consequence to add to these thoughts I then had, before there ever was a board of trustees. The starkest contrast between this and the current system is that all board members are not *inside* what is perhaps the semi-equivalent of the Steering committee in my proposal. That is to say, the advisory committee does not contain all of the board of trustees as its members.

- Cimon Avaro

[edit] August, 2009

The next Board meeting will be held at Wikimania in Buenos Aires, at the end of August. This page will be updated once details are set. I don't know yet if there will be an associated public discussion, but I will try to hold at least an informal open chat with the community elected Board members - I certainly appreciated those when in the early days of the Board even when I could not make the scheduled times in person. -- sj | translate | + 23:31, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

According to the schedule, there's a one-hour Q&A session with the Board on day 3.--Eloquence 01:29, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

True. I was thinking of an online IRC meeting, and wouldn't consider past wikimania's board panels 'meetings'. I am usually frustrated by how slowly those sessions go, how few questions are answered (especially with 5-8 people) and how few people get to respond to each question. And there is little chance for collaboratively working towards a solution among audience and Board. -- sj | translate | + 02:31, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

A well-edited summary of a longer online Q&A session, stretched out over a few days would be interesting. And live Q&A is always interesting in its own right. But we need a better mechanism for town hall equivalents - if IRC isn't sufficient, let's work towards something that is. -- sj | translate | + 03:21, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Week of Aug 24

Suggestions for topics to address? Leave them here.

• Each board is different than the last. What does consensus mean to this board? What is the community? Is the Board's relationship with the community the same as was originally envisioned, or has it diverged from that vision? Has it changed in a reasonable way, or have mistakes been made? Do the benefits of seeking out broader community input outweigh the costs (signal/noise)? Who does the Board represent? Does the Board represent more than just the people who are currently eligible to vote? Why should any vote be turned away when technological solutions that can amplify signal and reduce noise exist, or could conceivably exist? Is it reasonable for the Foundation to accept money from anyone but then turn them away when its time to vote? Does money buy a vote? Does editing buy a vote? How is donating a less useful contribution to the Foundation than editing? What is it about people who have edited that makes them more likely to select the correct candidate out of an international pool of candidates, many of which most votors may not of heard of, and for whom all voters are expected to read some kind of dossier to famliarize themselves? Are people who haven't edited somehow less capable of making an informed judgement based on reading personal statements of board candidates alone? Really? Is the original spirit of the WMF as a membership organization, where all project contributors are members, an idealistic and useless goal? Would the projects benefit from greater community participation? Why should the board intentionally limit such participation, then? --Alterego 19:59, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Open meetings

We didn't have time to address questions such as the ones Alterego raised at the brief Board panel in Wikimania - that format isn't great for many people sharing their ideas in a short period of time. The three newest Board members are holding an open meeting Friday, September 11 at 1800 UTC on IRC channel #wikimedia, located on the freenode network (irc.freenode.net). If this is popular, we can organize more regular open meetings to discuss Wikimedia issues.

[edit] September open meeting

Please suggest topics and specific questions here, and attend if you can. These are all questions that have been raised by discussions above from editors on meta and from foundation mailing list threads over the past months. You can see the first set of 5 points below discussed in the logs.

1. Board decision making
   • What does consensus mean to the board (internally for decision making, externally as reflective of community will)
   • What is the Board's relationship with the community / what should it be?
2. Representation and voting
   • Who does the Board represent? (is it always the same constituency? is it the same for all Trustees?)
   • How does this relate to who is able to vote for elected Trustees?
   • Is wider participation in voting good? If so, how can we expand the circle of trusted voters?
3. Omidyar Network grant
   • What are the specific targets required for full grant funding for global reach, global participation rate, and percent of funding from individual donors?
   • Is the measurement of participation as 'number of users making 5+ edits per month' consonant with the kinds of participation growth Wikimedia will prioritize? (Erik Moeller's talk about how to reach 300 million active participants focused on types of participation many of which would not be included in the 5+ edits per month measure.)
4. Transparency
   • How could the Board improve communication about its activities (and those of the WMF staff)?
   • What happened to Episode #45 of Wikivoices, where the Board candidates were interviewed?

     good question... -- sj · translate · +

     Was this addressed during the IRC chat, or not? -- Thekohser 04:03, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

     There's a log linked above, CTRL+F + Wikivoices should help. Cbrown1023 talk 16:22, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

     Ah, yes... thank you. I see that I was defamed by Gerard M -- "given the trolling habits of that gentlemen". How quaint. -- Thekohser 13:38, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

5. What information do you need? Are there ways in which community members can help out the board, or give helpful input?
   • What areas of Wikimedia projects would you like to know more about?
   • Is there meta/fondationwiki documentation that can be improved, cleaned up, etc?
   • How can community members best participate in governance? -- phoebe 21:49, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
   • How can the community contact the Board?

     Public contacts are often sent to foundation-l. But this is viewed as inefficient; see m:Improving Foundation-l

[edit] captured from the IRC channel and addressed online

1. Publicity of this meeting: was it sufficient? Why wasn't this meeting better advertised?
   • consensus: No!! More advanced notice next time; and more notice the day of.
   • poor advertising: this was the first time we've held an open meeting in a while; we wanted to do it as soon as possible after wikimania but weren't able to finalize a time when Arne, Matt, and Samuel could all make it until a week ago; it was announced on all project mailing lists and on this page, but not elsewhere.

     This was partly a response to concerns by people at/around Wikimania that they didn't have much real interaction with the Board. I wanted to hold this one soon afterwards to address some of the questions that had been building since then. Despite the short notice, we got a fair number of questions (all from community members responding to the call for topics) and participants. Assuming we do this again, I will publicize it more widely, on-wiki and off, and in more languages. -- sj · translate · +

2. captured from the IRC channel: Board resolutions: can they be posted more quickly?
   • discussion there: yes; they are usually posted when done within a few days or a week; Kat, the new secretary will be careful about this.

     aside from Sj: some decisions aren't clearly labelled as resolutions; including some routine topics that are resolutions one year and not the next (like the reappointment of existing board members). Some work needs to be done to figure out how to approve a statement about them for publication.

3. What are the advantages to IRC over using wiki posts?

   It provides a sense of community and engagement and immediacy sometimes lacking; and people who feel paticularly strongly, or feel as though they are being ignored, can push for attention to the details of something they think has been overlooked. Conversely, for Board members who don't have much time to spare, it provides a way for them to be available to a large group of people for a fixed period of time.

   Some people suggested that a phone call might work better for some of these reasons if doable for the # of people who would be interested.

4. Why does it take so long for Board votes and resolutions to be posted publicly and what can be done to hasten it?

   This is a misunderstanding. Board resolutions and votes are posted rather promptly on the foundation wiki. It is meeting minutes and other descriptions of the discussions behind resolutions that are not. The votes of late have generally been consensus approvals, so there is little to be read in the vote data per se. -- sj · translate · +

   Aside: Failed resolutions are often not published. Should they be?

5. What's being done regarding Flagged Revisions on the English Wikipedia? What's the hold-up? Why hasn't the Board put more pressure to get things moving?

   The former two are questions for Brion and the tech staff, and you can read about the latest progress on the appropriate lists. As to the last: the Board is generally not involved in the level of detail implied by 'putting pressure on' the Foundation to prioritize or speed up one project or another. -- sj · translate · +

6. Why isn't Wikimedia's public relations better? (Flagged revisions articles everywhere misreporting, inaccurate blog posts that later need to be corrected, Board announcements that hit the wires before hitting internal-l, etc.)

   Help is always welcome. This is a tough question; there are lots of different stories about WP that come up, and Wikimedia produces a good bit of material (in announcements, posts, and q&a) -- it is natural, if not the wiki way, to publish early and often and correct subtle inaccuracies. I agree, however, that announcements should never hit the wires before they hit a public list (internal-l is not the best example, as it is not a public list). -- sj · translate · + 16:57, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

7. Does the board thinks that it should be possible for mission related projects to be able to use and reuse wikimedia logos and trademarks?

   This hasn't been explicitly addressed since I joined the Board. Historically: some projects have been able to use the logos and trademarks, so the question should be about how, not if, it should be possible. 'Reuse' is a hard thing to define for trademarks, which are defined in part by ways in which they do not change, and 'Mission related' needs clarification.

8. Why are the voter requirements in Board elections so high and what can be done to reduce them?

   Nominally to avoid fraud, and to guarantee that people voting have some understanding of the shared goals of the projects. Also thanks to historical precedent -- suffrage has long been determined solely by edit count across major events/votes on all projects. -- sj · translate · +

   1. What can be done to reform the Election Committee? Should it be abolished? Can we prevent future serious errors like those that happened in the July 2009 Board elections?

      That's a complex question, and deserves its own section and discussion on the election committee's page. Perhaps veterans of past Election Committees can weigh in on this topic. -- sj · translate · +