User talk:Mike Linksvayer/Community-led board diversity quotas

Sky Harbor, CristianCantoro, Nemo_bis I quote you and would love to read your harsh criticism. Mike Linksvayer (talk) 21:57, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, Mike. This is an interesting essay, though at this point allow me to explain why I am opposed to diversity quotas as a matter of principle, especially when it comes to geographic diversity—an issue that, if you ask me, is far more pressing now given the significant headway we've made in addressing the gender gap.

What concerns me about diversity quotas is that they're inherently tokenistic. While it is fair that we should have minority voices on the Board, we need to understand why they're there to begin with. If, let's say, I were to fill a diversity quota seat on the Board, was it because of my track record as a Wikimedia volunteer over the last ten years and my ability to contribute to the movement? Or is it because the Board feels that they're filling the seat with "some minority person" in order to create the impression of diversity, my competence notwithstanding?

I don't want to create the impression that I'm serving on the Board just because I happen to be from a minority demographic, and that I should be grateful to them for giving me the chance to sit there. Rather, I want to be given the chance to serve the movement as a whole without being burdened by the fact that I am from a minority. Diversity quotas, well-intentioned as they may be, only create the impression that we are doing something (oh, look, we have a non-white person on the Board, so we must be doing something right!) when in fact they don't, especially when considering how the movement as a whole is still shaped by the dominance of our supposed "core" editing communities in the Anglosphere and Western Europe, and when considering gender diversity, by white men. At best, it comes off as pandering; at worst, it comes off as charity that can be as easily taken away from us as it was given to us. After all, quotas exist because the Board said so; in effect, we're there because of the Board's good graces, not the community's self-determination, so when the Board decides that quotas are no longer necessary, even when they are, we still get the short end of the stick. And even if the community was to will quotas rather than the Board, the argument still stands.

That said, I think that there are better ways to address this issue than through quotas. One way is to provide more meaningful avenues for minority populations in the movement to actually get involved, since for the most part these demographics are also some of the least politically-inclined in the movement. In the wake of the ArbCom election on the English Wikipedia (to which I also complained about the lack of diversity in that election's results), a mentorship program for bringing in more non-white admins was floated—we could do something similar here. Another is more targeted engagement of our large-but-still-largely-underrepresented Wikimedia projects (e.g. the Vietnamese, Indonesian and Chinese Wikipedias) through ambassador programs, where community members can select people to serve as liaisons between them and the Foundation. Finally, and I think this is poignant to raise, we are likely to consider organizing an Asian bloc for the upcoming affiliate-selected Board seat selection process (this was raised during Wikimania 2015), and while that may or may not lead to a non-Global North person other than Patricio sitting on the Board, it's worth it for us to try nonetheless.

(I should probably point out though that should we stick with quotas, they should only be a temporary solution; ultimately, they should exist hand-in-hand with initiatives that help build political awareness in the developing world so that we can make our movement's politics more representative of our diversity.) --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 16:37, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Sky Harbor for your feedback. Brief comment-questions back:

1. Tokenism has two sides; quotas can be seen as mandates of token participation by quota'd group, but can also be seen as means to "to recruit women into political positions and to ensure that women are not only a few tokens in political life"; http://www.quotaproject.org/aboutQuotas.cfm calls this the "core idea" behind quota systems (that site tracks quotas for women in legislatures, but we can replace or expand women to Global South and legislature with boards). There are many women in legislatures and corporate boards in part due to explicit quota systems. I admit I haven't looked for research on whether they feel and are effective, or whether they feel like...tokens. Your comment puts this on my queue. I suspect they don't feel like tokens in a successful quota system, precisely because the "few" side of tokenism is overturned; lots of women in power is then normal (of course arguably European descent males benefit from an invisible 'quota' system which excludes all others; we don't feel like tokens at all).
2. If you have time I'd love to hear more on "even if the community was to will quotas rather than the Board, the argument [pandering at best, easily withdrawn charity at worst] still stands" as this is really at the core of the proposal for what I 'm calling "community-led" quotas. Community-selected trustees always are selected at the will of the community; how is this a problem? A substantial part of the community expressing what it wills at a given time in a coordinated fashion (again as I propose through a pledge) is just means of increasing the collective power of the community's will. Of course the community's will will change :) and quotas should as you say probably be temporary. But this seems to contradict your concern that they could be withdrawn at any time.
3. Glad to hear of the potential organization of an Asian block for upcoming affiliate-selected trustee. Why are you not concerned that if successful this person would be a token?

Thanks again for your feedback and all your tremendous movement efforts. I am a mere dilettante and cannot thank people like yourself enough! Mike Linksvayer (talk) 17:06, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Allow me to respond point by point:

1. To follow the "few" argument, I'd argue that it would be difficult to set aside a large enough number of seats for minorities either without enlarging the Board or taking seats away from somewhere, which of course no one wants. While it is true that elected minorities in quota-ed legislative bodies are more effective in sufficient numbers (e.g. Afghanistan requires that 1/4 of all parliamentary seats go to women, which is a significant number), what would that number be for the WMF Board? I also look forward to hearing what you find on the effectiveness of minority board members in majority-white (or majority-male) boards.
2. On "willing" quotas: you have to consider the demographic makeup of the Wikimedia movement, and even more so the electorate who votes in these elections. If the community were to will quotas for minorities, is it because they're genuinely concerned that minorities aren't represented? Or is it because diversity is a nice-to-have thing? My concern is that quotas don't do much for onboarding people from the developing world so that they can participate in our movement's politics. If the electorate is still predominantly white. what sort of political will is there to want to have non-white people on the Board if they can't possibly relate to them? I actually saw this in the ArbCom elections—we have Wikipedians on the English Wikipedia from non-Anglosphere Anglophone countries, and yet having them adequately represented has apparently raised eyebrows among some people because their participation supposedly isn't needed because this is an English-language project. I'm not as optimistic as you are that the community's will will change when it comes to an issue like this.
3. On the temporality of quotas: I agree that quotas should be temporary, should the community will them. My worry there though is that should we pursue that course of action, the community will either withdraw the quotas before minorities are empowered enough to be able to participate fully in our movement's politics on our own, or that the community will find a way to undermine the quota in order to ensure that the majority demographic gets most of the seats. Basically for me, if we agree to a course of action, we ought to stick to it, full stop.
4. On the Asian bloc: on the contrary, I am concerned that this person might become a token, but unlike through quotas, at least we got someone there out of our own collective efforts instead of relying on the goodwill of the governing body to send someone there. Nonetheless, the bigger concern is that in a Board with nine people from the developed world, and which could be ten if Patricio doesn't keep his seat, what's the guarantee that we'll even get a seat in the first place? Affiliate seat selection has traditionally been dominated by the European and Latin American blocs; this would be the first time the Asian affiliates have gotten together to support a candidate, in large part because of our frustration in getting adequate representation.

I hope this has answered your questions, and I'll look forward to what else you have to say. :) --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 16:52, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Point by point: :)

1. I'm fine with taking seats from elsewhere. I'm agnostic concerning how large the board ought be, but sure more members makes diverse representation easier. As to what the numbers should be for WMF, I'd say 50% for both south and female. Pledgers could restrict their votes so long as/whenever either group fell under 50%. But I'm not particularly attached to that percentage. Reading up on impact of legislative/board quotas in the wild is on my todo list...
2. Good point, I hadn't thought of, to rephrase: might be more difficult for quotas to work when electorate itself is not diverse in ways quotas aim to reflect, cf. government elections, where the electorate ought be very close to 50/50, at least for gender. OTOH maybe non-diversity of electorate makes quotas at top level of governance an even more necessary intervention. Presumably there's some evidence to be gleaned from corporate board quotas, where there isn't really an electorate, but the management and investor insiders who control appointments I'd guess have demographics no less imbalanced than those of the Wikimedia movement.
3. One way to have quotas be temporary but also stick to them as a course of action if indeed that strategy is taken is to have some criteria for when they are in force and if they ever expire completely.
4. Thanks for insight re affiliate blocs. I'm almost totally ignorant of how affiliate seat selection works, and of chapter politics in general! Just to repeat my overall contention, I see community-led quotas (perhaps I should not have used that word) as utilizing "our own collective efforts instead of relying on the goodwill of the governing body", where the collective is the movement (well, in the form of qualifying voters).

Mike Linksvayer (talk) 20:05, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Rather than "quotas" why not have "community selected representatives for the (various) demographics"? · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:39, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Peter, and you'd have women elected only by women? Doesn't seem respectful to me; a woman can certainly represent me better than a man in many cases.

Mike, pledges would currently be completely useless, because we have no idea what the effects are when a block of voters votes in a certain matter. First we have to re-establish some mathematical certainty that the elections match the voters' common sense, then we can see if there is space for such voting tactics. We need voting ballots dumps to be released for all past elections (after 2008 or so, when transparency died) and more work like User:Adamw/Draft/Board_Election_analysis.

However, I'm not convinced a voter pledge is an adequate solution. First, a lot of effort would be needed to coordinate such a tactic in any circumstance. Second, there are other pressing matters in an election that can "disturb" such a pledge or easily make it unworkable (e.g. pledging to elect at least 1 woman is useless if pledgers can't agree on a single one, with the support/oppose system). Third, because the effects are unpredictable there can't be a strong effect where it's most needed, i.e. in encouraging more "minority people" to stand as candidates.

In conclusion: with the current broken system a pledge could only work in negative, e.g. if 300 editors promise to vote against any candidate matching characteristic X (e.g. "silicon valley person"); the board should instead set some basic mandatory quotas, and it's really not that hard for them to justify something simple like "elect at least 1 woman out of 3 seats" given all the gender gap chatter of all these years. Nemo 15:37, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

2017

I supported only female and/or Global South candidates. Mike Linksvayer (talk) 03:23, 11 May 2017 (UTC)