Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2015-2016 round1/Wikimedia CH/Impact report form

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Dear Ilario, Jenny and Wikimedia CH team. Thank you for your report. This is a note to confirm that it was recieved on time. Best regards, Delphine (WMF) (talk) 14:54, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Wikimedia CH Staff and board,
Delphine (WMF)
In the introduction, the need of “reinstalling a sense of trust and commitment both from staff and Board Members as well as from the Community” and for “good governance efforts and demonstrating transparency” is stated. This is effectively something important to achieve if we want more new contributors.
These questions could have been asked during the WikiMedia CH annual General Assembly on Saturday April 8 in Lucerne, but it probably is best to hold these discussions openly on Meta. I would appreciate some clarification from the board regarding certain aspects of this APG 2015-2016 Impact report form.
  1. The annual report and the accounts were given to the community members at the door of the General assembly, leaving them no time at all to study them before voting to accept them.
    • Why do you not do as all associations do, sending the reports a few weeks in advance to leave time to the members to reflect?
    • Why are the various links to the reports not communicated in advance to the members?
  2. The financial report and accounts did not show how much was spent on each project, nor did they show how in which areas 60’000 CHF (Swiss Francs) were spent on consultancy fees.
    • How was the alleged fee of 15 000 CHF used and what were the concrete results?
    • Was this used to initiate legal procedures against the writer of the wikibuster article?
  3. There is a stated need of boosting the “German speaking area”. On the other hand no actions that were taken in the German speaking part of Switzerland are mentioned. One of the German speaking board members resigned during the year.
    • Is this resignation in any way related to the lack of community oriented activities in the German speaking part of Switzerland?
  4. For the second year running, the subject of conflict of interest between board members and paid editing firms arose. As you said, there are “strong points of view within the French-speaking community and a variety of critical voices”. Two board candidates stated their opinion on this matter, and were then violently defamed during the Q & A period.
  5. A board handbook should effectively help alleviate certain problems encountered by WMCH this past year. The person in charge of governance issues and conflict of interest is the one involved in last year's the paid editing scandal.
    • Do you think that it is advisable that a board member with a declared COI in paid editing be the one drafting this document?
With my best regards, GastelEtzwane (talk) 20:25, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Notifying Ilario and Jenny about these questions in order for the board to review and address. Moumou82 (talk) 20:36, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hi all, GastelEtzwane please find below the answers:
  1. As was answered when you asked the same question during the general assembly, the tight schedule (as well as the lack of manpower) prevents us from having documents ready much before the assembly (and definitively not a few weeks in advance). Probably it's unclear that Wikimedia CH some weeks before the GA works around the impact report and reuse the same content and financial data to prepare the documents of the GA. Wikimedia CH has operated in this way since its creation, as do currently most associations (all the ones we know about and the majority of those being Wikimedia chapters) do. We understand that this may be contrary to your experience, but it is incorrect to imply that Wikimedia CH operates differently from all other associations. The big difference is that Wikimedia CH doesn't reports only to the GA but there is to report also to the FDC committee, as other entities applying for FDC and this happens in a trasparent way: publishing them on Meta in a page with an annex page of discussion. Following and paying attention to the progress report in July and to the impact report of March, which are publicly accessible in Meta, there would be sufficient time to study and to analyze our activities because the annual and the financial report of the General Assembly are basically based on those reports on Meta. It would be strange if we report in Meta some data which are different than in the General Assembly.
    Hello Ilario, I suppose you are answering for the WMCH staff and board (notif. Jenny), not just in your own name. WMCH reports to the FDC which is what it is supposed to do. But I did not ask about that. I would like to point out that we are a Swiss association, and I was of course talking about other similar Swiss associations. Besides, and back to the point you made, how can these FDC reports be used as an excuse for tardiness if you say that WMCH reuses the same material for the report to the GA?
    I do not wish to dwell on past mistakes and would like to make two suggestions to improve the way our members receive information on WMCH’s financial situation in a timely fashion. You did not answer my second question, and my suggestions aim to improve communication within our chapter:
    1. WMCH members could in the future receive a special email with links to the reports on Meta as soon as they are available. This will also encourage active online participation by our members.
    2. A separate email should be sent out to all WMCH members containing links to the material being presented at the GA - both the financial report and the other reports. Even if this email is received two or three days before the GA, members will be able to discuss and study them. We may even be able to generate more interest and greater participation in what ought to be our main annual event!
    I will continue commenting over the weekend. Best regards, GastelEtzwane (talk) 22:06, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  2. We are not sure which 60'000 CHF you are talking about (the only 60'000 CHF we can see are part of the 2017 budget). In 2016, consultancy fees were budgeted separately (while you were on the board) for communication and offline development. We are not sure what you mean by "alleged". With regards to legal expenses, most of them are related to legal advice related to contracts (you can find more details in the impact report online in the operations section of the budget). This money was not used against the writer of the wikibuster article.
  3. No. This board member asked for support for a new project that was particularly close to his heart, but which was not part of WM CH's budget and plan for 2017 (which was already approved by the board and by the FDC and closed to be submitted to the General Assembly). He resigned after the association (deciding without him being present) indicated that it was not able to support it at the moment (without reviewing deeply the annual plan and the budget) and suggested to submit this project for 2018 with a more detailed project plan.
  4. We only know of one board candidate who was criticized using words that were probably inadequate. The two board candidates stated their opinion of COI referering to some specific real cases but it was done as part of their presentation of their candidature to the General Assembly. We reprobate this behavior because there are points of the agenda which are dedicated to discuss about these topics because these points are moderated and because there is the possibility for any member of the association to participate to the discussion. Unfortunately no one submitted any motion to be discussed in the General Assembly about the COI, it means in the right manner and in the right moment. If someone would force a discussion of a specific point using his/her allocated time and not respecting the agreed agenda and timing, the risk is to have an unmanageable discussion. In order to protect the staff, the members and the board, we would like to stress that a draft of the "safe space policy" has been brought to more public attention and amended according to Swiss necessities after the General Assembly. But this safe space policy includes more types of behaviour than the specific personal attack, also the deliberate disruption of talks, programs, or events and the continued one-on-one communications after being asked to cease are included on this policy. This policy is inspired by some similar policies and mainly by that of Wikimedia Foundation which cannot be directly applied to Wikimedia CH because Wikimedia CH is an indipendent association.
    This kind of discussion is very time consuming. I am surprised to read that you feel that "one board candidate who was criticized using words that were probably inadequate" (I emphasize the word "probably" because there should not really be any doubt). That means that you condone what was said during the Q&A period by a non-board member who claimed to be speaking for the board and staff. Who is this "we" you are talking about, and why did this "we" not intervene when insults started flying? You refer to a "safe space policy" that was put in place by WMCH after this GA that almost went out of control. Two board candidates made COI and paid editing part of their platform, it is their right. As for not respecting the agenda and timing, are refering to my finishing a sentence beyond the 1 minute allocated for answering the insults, allegations as well as the question during the Q&A period?
    Just to make things clear, I was that board candidate who was "probably" insulted, and I decided that the best way to deal with the insults was to use them as an official moniker. One of my official sock-puppet accounts is now fr:utilisateur:Lazy Incompetent Fool. GastelEtzwane (talk) 06:06, 10 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  5. There is no single board member in charge of governance and conflicts of interest, although people who are more interested in these topics spend more time working on them. Most importantly, contrary to what has been written elsewhere, board members are not involved in the management of their own conflicts of interest. With regards to the draft board handbook, it is available on a wiki, an editing tool that allows any member to edit it. The whole board has been invited to participate in its redaction (which was discussed during a board meeting), even if in the end not all of them actually edit the document. If you have any comment or suggestion about the actual content of the document, we encourage you to voice them (we have also encouraged, members to participate in discussion about governance within the association, without much success). We believe this to be more constructive than discussing who actually edited the document. --Ilario (talk) 20:03, 14 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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