Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Board Governance Committee/Wikimania 2016 training

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Pundit, many thanks for initiating this discussion and training. I think something like this is very necessary.

However, I think training non-wiki trustees in wiki values is less pressing than various matters of basic good governance for any organization that aims to serve a variety of stakeholders. I suggest breaking this document into at least two sections, with matters of basic good governance (such as publishing substantive and timely agendas and minutes, responding to serious feedback and suggestions in a substantive, timely, and appropriate fashion, etc.) taking clear priority over those that are specific to the wiki space. I believe issues in the more general category have been far more damaging in recent years, and are far easier to address. -Pete F (talk) 22:15, 29 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Peteforsyth Thanks for this comment. As I'm spearheading an initiative to address some of these issues (e.g. publishing the agenda draft ahead of time, publishing minutes timely), and as I'm concerned that dividing the page into sub-topic of various inter-connection may jeopardize the idea (that was widely supported at the conference in Berlin), I think I'll let it stay as it is now. This is by no means to diminish the importance of the issues you're raising (in fact, I agree they are very important, to the extent that they don't really require community feedback that much, these are the things that the Board should and hopefully will do). Pundit (talk) 22:49, 29 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I tend to agree with Pete F. Board members need explicit, formal training in how to be a board member of an American non-profit. I think that this is particularly critical for members with a lot of movement experience.
I also agree with Pundit's assessment that input from community members isn't critical for this. There are plenty of professional resources such as https://boardsource.org/ that could be used for those non-movement-specific parts of board training instead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:00, 14 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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