Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Call for feedback: Community Board seats/Conversations/2021-02-02 - First Office Hour/First meeting
Edits to fix typos or transcripted words are welcome.
There were 39 total attendees in this meeting, including 3 Board members and 8 facilitators.
Notes[edit]
Introductions 6:07 Languages present Arabic, Catalans, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian
Basic presentation about Call for Feedback (Summary) Overview of the current situation (board expansion add 3 new community-and-affiliate seats) 2 main concerns: diversity and range of skills CfF wants to get feedback from people not present in typical Wiki conversations and hopes this will improve diversity.
Team of facilitators happy to organize meetings or conversations.
Weekly report to summarize conversations
Drafting report for the Board so they can make an informed decision
Ad Huikeshoven: Chair of Community-and-affiliate board seats selection committee, past elections run by election committee. Committee is well capable of designing and electing board members. Both committee and board are committed to diversity. This is offensive to suggest diversity is a problem. Come up with a team from past committees for the community. There is no need for this CfF - it is distracting. Both sides agree they are capable of running an election. There is no need for this CfF.
Nataliia Tymkiv: This is not a staff run project. It is not one committee of one project. This is a long overdue process to get more diversity - non-native speakers of English, people not comfortable in conversations in meta, who can bring expertise to the table. How can we be sure we are not excluding feedback? This is why staff is supporting the feedback process. This is not a staff run project, it is a staff supported project. Affiliate community members and the board are volunteers and the board believes change should happen. This is important for the strategy process. We want not only usual suspects, but people who are more comfortable with conversations that are happening elsewhere.
Quim : suggested moving forward so we do not cut the conversation short on this conversation and give opportunities to others on the call.
Ad sees the Board as already diverse. Response follows in chat.
Anass Sedrati (from Northern Africa): Acknowledges conversations are good because previously there were not conversations. Suggests there should have been a call for suggestions not the predefined ideas because that is limiting and unfairly advantage ideas that have had a long time of development.
It would be nice to have discussion about diversity in nominated board members.
It is problematic that people don’t know about elections - no outreach and no translations, so people don’t know and that’s how the Board ends up attracting only privileged people. If you want to have diversity, you have to let people know there is an opportunity. Everyone should know. Many people active in the community do not know that there is even a Board.
Shani: only a small number of groups are affiliates, but many are much smaller around the world. We can do better to communicate. Some people don’t know. The Board has already been using the existing seats to increase diversity but also to bring in skills (i.e. financial) and pull people from diverse communities where possible (person from Northern Africa with financial experience).
Yamen from Tunisia: Would other communities have a say in this nomination before this happens?
Shani: No, community members might not have the perspective to know what the Board needs. The Board needs to have some way to do the rest and compliment the skills and perspectives from the community-elected seats. The Board is now more diverse than it has ever been. The Board is making this move because the Board does not feel it is enough [diversity]. The Board doesn’t want to jump through hoops to get what they need. The Board wants the community to be part of this. The community would not be able to do this without having a discussion amongst the Board to express what is needed.
Yamen appreciated the communication Shani has with the communities.
Yamen asked if Board members have to resign from affiliates or user groups, Shani clarified that it is just official positions (affiliate or WMF) that might create a situation of conflict of interest and require people to resign. Shani mentioned the global council and how things might change in the future.
Ruby from Ghana asked about quotas. Shani answered it depends on community answers. We are discussing a new way to do all of that. How exactly can we create diversity and what is the system for that? That’s what we’re discussing in the CfF.
George Mel Georgia (political scientist from Georgia): chapters are different from each other. This might give some groups unfair influence. (i.e., one group in Georgia and many groups in Russia, so that might give Russia an advantage). Worries of ineffectiveness (example of UN). What are the safeguards to prevent the Board from turning into an advisory board?
Shani: these are the things we are discussing. The same thing is happening in other communities. The same person could be affiliated with many affiliates. The Board can decide what things are not questions. We are in a position to make decisions, like the UCoC. This is the time to discuss it now that we are discussing GC and regional hubs. Have participation and balance.
Shani: expressed appreciation for this communication work. People in this call can connect others with the conversation. Your voices matter.
Ad: recording for 5 min more OK. Wants for a larger election turns out. What is WMF? What is the Board? What is the processing for voting? Anyone can vote on all candidates. Looking to have voting and election information translated in more languages.
Ruby Damenshie-Brown: If people are more involved in communities more than other people, then it will be a popularity-type of vote. How can we prevent that?
Shani: Discusses selection and nomination committee and the form to evaluate candidates. We are trying to fix this - the board sees it as a popularity contest. This does not mean you are good for the role.
Quim: pointed out people who are saying diversity is fine are the majority
Ad: feels Shani is saying community is not capable of evaluating candidates. He is offended by this. States that diversity is at maximum because there are only 10 seats and suggests increasing the number of seats.
Shani: wants to make sure communities have weigh-in and acknowledges that diversity has gotten better than it had been.
Ad: (spoke over Shani) Telling people to nominate themselves and we should be clearer about that opportunity.
Quim moderated about participants interrupting when others are speaking.
George: depends on who nominates themselves and this system should be crafted to ensure people are not dissuaded from running because they “won’t win.”
Shani: Board is trying to make sure this is not a situation for the future. The Board wants people to be elected.
Ruby: What does Shani mean when she says community?
Shani: everything (people, affiliates, user groups, etc.). Instead of saying communities, we are one community. Despite the differences, we all work toward the same goal. We are one big community that promotes free knowledge.
Butch: Said it is like planning a boxing match but the fighters are already fighting. We need to be sure to put the right discussions and debates on the right venue. It is not best to discuss things here in a video call.
Quim clarified this is not the official venue. This is only one opportunity for discussion.
Shani: there are some people who are not comfortable on-wiki and reading long blocks of text. People might feel more comfortable conversing on a platform that is easier for them. The wiki is not always the easiest place to participate.
Quim closed call. Welcomes organizing more conversations in the communities.
Chat[edit]
Quim Gil 6:03 AM : o/
Quim Gil 6:09 AM : Krishna next, please Mehman next, please.
You 6:11 AM : Sorry I did not say - I am the conversation facilitator for English language and Meta-wiki.
Quim Gil 6:12 AM : Forgot to press the record button before. :(
Quim Gil 6:14 AM : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_for_feedback:_Community_Board_seats
Ad Huikeshoven 6:18 AM : o/
Nataliia Tymkiv 6:24 AM : i can try
anass sedrati 6:28 AM : o/
Krishna Chaitanya Velaga 6:28 AM : Anass, please go next, after Quim finishes.
anass sedrati 6:28 AM : Thank you :)
Nataliia Tymkiv 6:30 AM : through ASBS, but community selection process does not usually provide any diversity — Dariusz — if I am not mistaken — is the only one selected not from a huge language project
Ad Huikeshoven 6:33 AM : Maria is Spanish speaking, James English, and Dariusz Polish. Three different languages, that is the maximum for three seats. All three are top 10 Wikipedia. When you want more diversity, you need more seats. There are more seats available, so an election outcome will produce more diversity
Nataliia Tymkiv 6:34 AM : not guaranteed. and want to see if we can make sure that needed diversity and skills are there
Ad Huikeshoven 6:34 AM : The future Global Council will be much bigger, maybe 100 people, and will be much more diverse
Nataliia Tymkiv 6:35 AM : and they would make less mistakes, learning from our experience, making their own mistakes, given the size)
Paulo Perneta 6:36 AM : Pundit was selected mainly from wiki.en, no?
Nataliia Tymkiv 6:36 AM : he had an advantage of being a steward :)
Ad Huikeshoven 6:37 AM : I am extremely offendedby the idea that elections won't guarantee diversity and skill, Nat. Really, this is mistrusting the community, and mistrusting wisdom of the crowd
Nat, thank you for being here and participating in the conversation.
Nataliia Tymkiv 6:44 AM : i am sorry you are offended — not our intention! but we are not reaching people, and we need and want to change that. there is no one community, our wikiworld consists of lots of communities with different levels of problems, understanding of governance needs, understanding of diversity even. the intention is to do better, what Shani says
Ad Huikeshoven 6:44 AM : The true problem statement is voter turn out. In the past turn out was 2000 to 4000 votes. I higher turn out should be possible.
Nataliia Tymkiv 6:44 AM : that means reach
You 6:45 AM : Anass, I have written what you have said about having a discussion about the diversity of nominated board members. It is in the notes.
Butch Bustria 6:45 AM : Just wait for the process to flow
Ad Huikeshoven 6:45 AM : Working on greater reach will also mean more candidates to choose from
Butch Bustria 6:45 AM : Not much comment
anass sedrati 6:45 AM : yes jackie, thank you so much
Olla Mahadi 6:45 AM : Iam from Sudan user group but no question
AZOGBONON constant6:46 AM : OK cool
Yamen Bousrih 6:46 AM : o/
Ruby Damenshie-Brown 6:46 AM : What is the process for the board seat and what are the requirements
Quim Gil 6:46 AM : Good idea. :)
Nataliia Tymkiv 6:46 AM : to Ad: if we create more chances for smaller languages and sister projects to "win" the selection, there would be more votes from interested communities
in a nutshell)
AZOGBONON constant 6:47 AM : Yamen Bousrih :)
Ad Huikeshoven 6:48 AM : More seats will be more chance.
Ruby Damenshie-Brown 6:48 AM : And what are the role of the board members and are all community members qualified to vote. Is the voting done regional or collectively
Ad Huikeshoven 6:49 AM : And the board can use appointed seats to be filled in anyway they like, including but not limited to someone from a sister project, or a very small language community
To Ruby general rules see: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2020/Board_of_Trustees
Nataliia Tymkiv 6:51 AM : if the process does not bring us enough skills and diversity we need at the moment, we need to fill those seats with what we absolutely have to get. which is not ideal
Ad Huikeshoven 6:52 AM : There is a lot of expertise on the board, including in the community and affiliate seats
Ruby Damenshie-Brown 6:53 AM : Thank you @Ad Huilkeshoven
Ad Huikeshoven 6:53 AM : More seats is more diversity and more skills.
Nataliia Tymkiv 6:54 AM : yes, because we are lucky now :) but the process does not guarantee it, we want to make it better and less favourable to certain groups and less favourable to others
Paulo Perneta 6:54 AM : "less favourable to certain groups and less favourable to others" ? xD there's a mistake there I'm sure
Krishna Chaitanya Velaga 6:58 AM : @Ruby: The call for feedback has a specific idea about the voting process. You can give feedback on that at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_for_feedback:_Community_Board_seats/Ranked_voting_system
Ad Huikeshoven 6:58 AM : The current model is a proportional election method which maximizes diversity. Moving to a district model will most likely minimize diversity is some aspect.
Yamen Bousrih 6:59 AM : Thank you very much Shani
Ad Huikeshoven 7:00 AM : The Question by Ruby is important.Newcomers aren knowledgable about WMF, the Board, what they do. Please do reach out and communicate.
Nataliia Tymkiv 7:00 AM : oops, there is :) one "less" should be changed to "more")) thanks! (it is frustrating — not be able to edit!)
Ad Huikeshoven 7:01 AM : @Natalia the last process favored women, people from Eastern Europe, and very highly educated people
Nataliia Tymkiv 7:01 AM : you are talking about the ASBS, right?
Mohammed Bachounda 7:02 AM : Thanks Anass
Ad Huikeshoven 7:02 AM : And community: Dariusz is a professor of management, a desired skill on the board
Mohammed Bachounda 7:02 AM : Thanks Yamen
Ad Huikeshoven 7:02 AM : and also from Eastern Europe
anass sedrati 7:02 AM : Merci cher voisin Bachounda!
Mohammed Bachounda7:02 AM : :)
Yamen Bousrih 7:04 AM : Thanks Bachounda and Mahuton for this opportunity and for all the reminders to join this call.
anass sedrati 7:07 AM : شكرا جزيلا للجميع :) Thank you very much!
Mohammed Bachounda 7:07 AM : it's the link of the Cff
Butch Bustria 7:08 AM : Thanks all! You can go ahead talking
Yamen Bousrih 7:08 AM : Bearing in mind the importance of videos for reaching more people, it will be nice to have a small video animation to explain this process, the current board composition and what will be the next composition (it will be better than checking a difference between 3 texts)
Jimmy Wales 7:08 AM : Thanks everyone - gotta run but very very interesting
Donia ElDomiaty 7:09 AM : Thanks for everyone 🌸
Mohammed Bachounda 7:09 AM : feel free to particiapte in any language you're fluent
George Mel 7:09 AM : Send catering through Wolt or Glovo
Mohammed Bachounda 7:09 AM : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_for_feedback:_Community_Board_seats
Mohammed Bachounda 7:11 AM : n'hésitez pas à participer dans n'importe quelle langue que vous parlez couramment
Quim Gil 7:18 AM : George, I think you're next?
Mehman Ibragimov 7:18 AM : yes, next is George
Quim Gil 7:18 AM : Then Ruby?
Mohammed Bachounda 7:19 AM : also you can join our Telegram channel https://t.me/wmboardgovernancechat
Ad Huikeshoven 7:20 AM : so i have to go back to work
Nataliia Tymkiv 7:27 AM : have a good day at work!
Transcript[edit]
This is an automatic transcript. The team has edited it only slightly and many mistakes still remain. We welcome corrections.
[00:08:52] Hello, my name's Ad Huikeshoven I'm from the Netherlands.
[00:09:01] I'm a long time volunteer and I happen to be chair of the so-called Affiliate Selected Board Seats election team who selected two board members in 2019. Nataliia and Shani who are the board members now. And they were selected by the over 140 affiliates. And.
[00:09:33] Did the community seat are still active in the past two elections that were run by the community election committee, the community is well capable of organizing and designing elections for community and affiliate seats. Both committees are capable of designing a nice process and.
[00:10:07] Both committees are committed to diversity and both committees have designed in the past processes in which review of skills has been done so both problems do not exist. I find it actually extremely offensive and including the idea that the staff shouldn't run it, the community should do it, and to trust the community to come up with a joint committee of the past committees or new facilitators to run this election. Actually there is no need for this round of calling for feedback. It is distracting.
[00:11:01] I've sent this in an email to the Wikimedia mailing list last night and got approval from my ASBS team who functioned two years ago, and I also contacted the standing Election Committee and so far from both sides, they agree we as a community are capable of running an election.
[00:11:31] We don't need this round of call for feedback.
[00:11:43] Ok, well, thanks, Ad. So there's. First I’ll wait, if anyone from the board wants to address this directly, although I'm not sure if they had time to discuss.
[00:12:15] Please Nataliia.
[00:12:18] Hello, everyone, I am Natalia Tymkiv, and I am a board member, current board member, and I was actually a product of a selection organized in 2019 through affiliate selection.
[00:12:33] So it was difficult for me to hear you. But I am assuming that you are mostly repeating what you wrote in the letter, which I had just a few minutes to read before the call. So this is not a staff run project. This is not one committee or one group run project. This is a long overdue process of how to get more diversity and how to make sure that people who are not privileged enough to be native English speakers or comfortable to get into discussions and answering some really, really complicated questions on Meta but who are actually people who can bring to the table some of their expertise, can join and can join for now. Actually, in the discussion, in the feedback, how can you make sure that we are not excluding people from their feedback? That's why the staff is actually involved in the process of helping to harvest that feedback. How we did the movement strategy process with facilitators is trying to get more people being able to give their feedback in their native language and then getting that feedback together, even to the English language. For now, this is the main language still. So this is, at least from what I understood from your letter and maybe from what you are saying now, this is not a staff-run project.
[00:14:24] This is a staff-supported. And actually, community members, volunteers are in the Board and long-term volunteers. Yes. I have not been around for like 20 years in Wikipedia, but 10 years I'm going to mark this year, so long term and also affiliate community members and the board is a volunteer. Everybody is volunteers on some level more. So the board believes that the change should happen and the change is really important for the whole movement strategy process. And the staff is supporting. This is like one of the arguments I wanted to set at the beginning of the meeting. This is not Quim telling us what to do. This is us telling that we want not only the usual suspects, joining the discussions, join the call of feedback on Meta, but people who are more comfortable in Telegram or, I don't know, Facebook or on their own village pumps, not only going to some to another site and posting something in English.
[00:15:38] Any specific points I should address now, because this was the main one on my agenda? Or if you are taking up too much space time, we can start discussing or talking more about this after the call. Give somebody else to have a chance to also ask questions.
[00:16:00] Yes, I have one suggestion. So this is a very important conversation. Of course, I think it's great that we have enough people to that can actually discuss about it. I just see other hands raised and other questions that might come.
[00:16:16] So what I suggest is the point that's been made and an initial response has been made to let us have all the let's see what the other people are willing to participate, want to ask or want to share. And then at the latest at the end of the meeting before, if there's no more questions, we can come back to this, because I think that this is a very important conversation to have.
[00:16:43] Is this OK, Ad?
[00:16:47] Yes, go ahead, but first, the increase in the number of seats where the supply and already the diversity on the board is maximized, given that there are only 10 seats, the only glance at the pictures of if you see on the board that are is already in diversity. Two years ago, you wrote that there was a tendency to elect American and Western European board members. This is not a case. Two years ago, no American no Western European person was elected.
[00:17:26] Ok, I said it is I think it is this is a deep conversation, and this is why I'd rather let actually in this call at this time. We have plenty of people who are not from Western Europe, not from America. So actually, let's give them the voice as much as possible, please.
[00:17:43] Well, Anass, let's go. Yes, thank you very much. Can you hear me?
[00:17:50] Yes, yes, so hello, everyone, my name is Anass, and I am a Wikimedian from Morocco, although I am based in Sweden and I have been participating in different Wikimedia projects for a long time, and I'm co-founder of Wikimedia Morocco usergroup. I have also participated a lot in the strategy process. So, uh, first of all, I would like to thank the board and the team who is working on this, because honestly, and to be honest with you, it could have been that there was no contact and this has been happening maybe before. So at least I want to acknowledge that there is a discussion and this is something good that we have a start somewhere. This said, I would like to point out some things that I really think are important to discuss from my opinion. As someone who has been following this for for a bit of time, I don't want to get into the detail of each idea because I think we have a lot of time. There is one month and a half to discuss in detail these ideas. But I have some points that I want to talk about just as a first observation during this first meeting. So the first thing, as I mentioned, it's good that the board or some board members are present in these meetings. And I think this should continue for all the other meetings, if possible, because ultimately we're talking about a discussion between the board and the community. It's very good that there are a lot of our dear friends and colleagues who are facilitators, but ultimately it's the board who makes the decision.
[00:19:18] And this is why it's good to have the decision makers also on board with the community. So I really appreciate this and I want it to continue. And then I have a point that I have also written in Meta about the choices of the ideas. I understand that we have to start somewhere. There were some ideas that were put, that were discussed by the board. But but I think it's a bit sad that we were not advised that there was kind of a suggestion of some ideas that would have been done, because maybe the community could have come up with ideas that would be also put at the same level there in the start. I mean, this is this is a has already happened, so we cannot change it. But in the future, I would say that it's better to to say we want to discuss some ideas. Do you have suggestions? And then we put everything on the same level because now we have already set of predefined ideas and then we have to brainstorm ourselves to find another idea that can be better or that will challenge what has already been discussed for a long time in, let's call it behind closed door, even if I don't like these words. So this is one thing. The second thing or third thing I want to mention is this full discussion is about the choice of board members that are going to come from the community.
[00:20:30] This is something that is good. Again, I appreciate. But in the board, there are also members that are nominated. And I am just thinking, is there no discussion about people who are nominated, especially, for example, in terms of diversity? I know that this is not the place to discuss it because this is about the community. But I just take the opportunity to mention that maybe a discussion should be also about the nominated number of members and the diversity aspects there and maybe other aspects, because at the end, the board is here to serve the community. So the community should have a say not only on the community-chosen or directly elected members, but also all those on those that are nominated. Of course, they should have the required skills, but it's very important also to think about diversity and other things. Finally, a final point that I want to mention, and I'm so sorry if I took too much time, but there is one thing that is important in my in my vision, which is that me, as a long term community member, I have very, very seen very few things about board elections. And for me, this is problematic. If someone who is very active in the community, who goes to conferences, doesn't even know that there is a board election ongoing. For example, two years ago, three years ago, I think it's problematic. And this is also one of the factors where why there is no diversity.
[00:21:53] So the reason why there is no diversity is not always because we have to make a quota or because people are not privileged in terms of resources, but also in terms of information. There is almost no outreach when the elections of the board are there. There is no translation of material on the board, is there? The local communities don't know that there is a something like this. So it's only like biggest chapters are aware on some privileged people are aware about the full process. So so I encourage not only to talk about these governance models, but also to to think about the outreach that should be done, because if you want to have diversity, you have to let everyone know that they have the chance to be in the board. You have to discuss with them in their languages, not not not in this specific meeting. But I mean, when the elections will come for the board or when there is an opportunity to come to the board, everyone should know about it. This should be disseminated to everyone so that everyone. And actually understand this and work on it, that is even worse, I mean, a lot of people are very active in the community. They don't know that there is a board of trustees. So we have to do this outreach first, then we can talk about diversity or governance models. And so sorry, again, I took so much time.
[00:23:09] There were several points here.
[00:23:14] Can can someone summarize I think there were three questions.
[00:23:20] The growing is typing, just trying to capture everyone's everyone's essence here, so first and acknowledged that conversations are good because they were previously had and US feels that ideas would have been good gathered from the community before there were ideas put forth from the board, because in our schools, this is limiting. And do you want me to stop there and just.
[00:23:52] Yes, this is the first question about about let's let's let's see if I can paraphrase this. So why there wasn't an opportunity for the committee to propose ideas before and I guess what can be done now? This would be part of the question.
[00:24:19] Do you want to go forward or do you want to have a conversation?
[00:24:23] Yeah, I don't I don't want to put in that every time on the spot, but I have to just wait and be sure if her or any other trustee can want to respond, because these are questions mainly for them. What what I can say, because we are now organizing the call for feedback, we, these facilitator team, is that these ideas from the board, they have been the result of.
[00:25:00] Many and long discussions, so and there were many more that didn't even make it here. I don't know all the details. I was I mean, all these conversations about at least a while while working on this plan for the scope of it, that it is something that I saw.
[00:25:14] So there's been already a big field out there. And these are points where there's different opinions or there's not clear opinions, and this is why they are being presented to the committee. So these are true it's a true exhibition of different ideas for truly listen what the different communities have to say. So I think there's a lot of value in this in these ideas presented. There's also there's also an invitation to propose other ideas. Yes, it is starting just now, but well, the discussion already was starting before. I'm not going to just try to fix anything, but there is an opportunity to to present ideas. And as we have been discussing in the top page, it's not that it's very super clear how we are going to proceed, but we want to proceed in the right way. We want to offer this platform that this feedback is right now for good ideas to also be exposed to the rest of the community so people can weigh in. That's that's our willingness. And we hope to to to attract. So, Jacqui, there was anything else?
[00:26:31] Yes, the second point was about diversity, so in order to engage in a full discussion about board members and diversity, we have to ensure that we are reaching out because it is problematic for other people in communities that might be smaller or doing other work, and that necessarily looking in certain places to not know about these board elections. Otherwise they would participate.
[00:26:59] Yes, I think I can address this point because there's a lot to do with communications, which is the the work I'm doing in this in this movement. Actually, I would say that even the problem is deeper. The problem is deeper in the sense that and everybody in this thing might be aware and have their own experiences, the facilitators are finding this on a daily basis. A lot of people don't even know that there's a board, don't even know that there's a process. Never actually thought about the seriously about the governance of all this movement. They come here to edit and they edit. And if anything, they discuss how whether you can report me or I can declare this page non relevant. And this is the usual area of of of work. So for many, you know, the door. And it's the first time ever that actually anyone went to them and say, hey, what do you think about the board is having these ideas? And it's clear that that we have to explain even a lot more information. So to put a comparison with, I don't know, democracy, even if people know because they are seeing the you know, the propaganda everywhere, they know that on Sunday there's an election and there's some faces that people can vote if they don't even know that they can vote or what is the point of voting, then? The whole thing is it's the whole thing is already like a bit broken.
[00:28:27] So I also want to I want to say that when we hired these facilitators who all of them come from different places in the community, all of them are volunteers with good experience of their contexts, I was very explicitly saying that, look, we are going to run this call for feedback, which should be more or less wrapped up by the end of March, beginning of April. But actually, we are contacting you for three extra months because, well, whatever is decided, the next step is just to implement that and that this is these people will be available not just to communicate, but I'm trusting them, not pressure to help improving the communication channels. Communicating anything in this movement is very complicated, making it available immediately. Translating is not even enough to be sure that because I translate something to to Bengali that now everyone in the English speaking regions are aware of it, but also to mobilize communities because we can discuss governance, diversity and skills all day long. But if at the end of the day we don't have.
[00:29:43] New people, different people deciding to run for this place, for police positions, and we don't have new people, different people. Willing to weigh in with whatever action they have to take feedback, vote, whatever is the process, then yeah, we would have another great discussion in the movement, but not much will have changed.
[00:30:09] Kim, can I ask two things? Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you for your words. I completely agree. And I would just add that I think affiliates have a lot of power to kind of you can introduce yourself because maybe not everyone in the room knows we are sorry for one. Evangeline Segal of I'm part of the board of trustees and I joined just 20 minutes before this meeting is is done. So sorry for not being here from the beginning. I just wanted to add that I think different affiliates around the movement, we already have over a hundred and fifty affiliates. Many of them are user groups. So only 40 are like bigger chapters or Saud's, but the rest is user groups in different parts of the world, in different languages from different communities. And I think, you know, working with local affiliates can really help to do that type of work that Quim was was talking about and just making people aware. And I think as a movement, we can do better in terms of how we communicate between our affiliates. But that's a different it's a different topic. But but you're absolutely right. Q Many people just don't know. They come to edit the articles that they love and they don't they're not aware of the whole movement of the whole structures. So it's up to us to kind of, you know, bring them in. And I think doing it locally with our small communities, whether it's the Wikipedia language or its wiki source or whatever, it doesn't matter. What's your favorite project? You can always use your own community to kind of spread the word and bring more people in because it does matter.
[00:32:09] And let me go back to NASA's last point in the conversation, it would be nice to have a discussion about actually what I suggest is it's it's been four or five minutes of meeting and we still haven't heard, I think, except for Christina, who is here working. We haven't heard anyone from Asia. I think we haven't heard anyone from East Southeast Asian Pacific. And that is from North Africa. That's good. But I wonder also if there's other people from Africa or also from all the Central Eastern Europe region, which actually, by definition goes, as far as I know, up to Vladivostok, which is a big stretch.
[00:32:54] Anyone from these regions willing to ask or comment on anything.
[00:33:13] Ok, I don't want to try I don't want to put too much pressure on you, please, at any point, feel free to just raise your hand. So yes, then all the questions in the queue. Is this correctly, Kershner? There is a discussion at this point, but there are no political questions and OK, then what I suggest is let's go for this last point from a nice jacket and let's see if there's other questions. If by then there's no other questions, we will go back to that point from the beginning.
[00:33:49] Yes, I just wanted to acknowledge that Anass had said it would be nice to have a discussion about diversity in nominated board members as well.
[00:34:05] So this is a question for the board members in the room, because we don't know anything about that. So the question can you can you know, because Cheney was also later. Can you repeat the question, Jackie?
[00:34:19] Maybe Anass can just ask..
[00:34:22] Absolutely. So I will try to be brief. So my question was, it's very good that we have a discussion about the diversity and finding new ways of governance when we choose community members that are going to be in the board. But the board is also having other members that are nominated. And as you know, the board is mostly here to serve the community. So is there a plan to have a discussion about these nominated members? And if there is going to be a plan for having more diversity or if there is a plan to go in to change anything in their governance? For example, now we're talking about having a quota and community members for gender or something else. So is there going to be also discussion about this for the nominated members, maybe quota about geographic representation of nominated members, et cetera? But what at least is there somewhere where this discussion will happen?
[00:35:13] I can take it unless Jimmy or not want to. OK, so announce that the board has already been using the nominated seats in order to create more diversity in a sense, but also to bring into the board specific roles that we're missing and need. For example, for for a few years now, we've been nominating a specific board member who has a financial background. So that person is always these days, it's Tanya. And what she does is really bring that professional experience that she has in the finance world into the board and into the audit committee specifically. So it really depends what the board needs at any specific given time. We're trying to bring in diversity there as well. But sometimes but it really depends on the board structure and what the board needs at a given moment. So it's not an easy. There is no easy. Fix or something that is right in every situation, right in general. These are principles that we are always trying to implement. So we're always trying to to bring diversity in. But we also are trying to bring in specific expertise that the board is missing. I'm hoping that I answered you, but let me know if something is missing.
[00:36:59] Yemen has raised his hand on the.
[00:37:07] So Yemen from Tunisia.
[00:37:10] So first of all, it's really great to have this discussion about these topics, and I hope that more people will join in other meetings and maybe have other meetings, too, to follow the discussion. Actually, I was I was going to ask a question, but I think Shanu was clarifying. It's about also the naked from the board, whether it's the nomination will be I mean, in take it or leave it. I mean, we will the community will have work on this nomination. Or, for example, will the board before before confirming receipt will say we we we are going to for example, we would like to nominate these people. What what do you think?
[00:37:55] No, it doesn't it doesn't work like that, that the nominated seats are saved for the board, because with all due respect to the community and there's a lot of respect, regardless of how it may seem, sometimes we're very committed to serving the community. And but but still, as board members, there are things and perspectives that community members might not have in a given time. And so the board is really the best to to be to judge what it needs. This is why we are reserving an amount of seats that the board can nominate because we know what what needs are not answered yet. Right, with the community seats that come in. And when I say community, I talk in general about the affiliates, the community, the individuals, everything. Right. That the the seats that we do not control but are elected by the community, at least traditionally. We never know what we will get or what type of specific expertise will be there. So the board needs to have some way to to. To do the rest to to compliment whatever is, there is no doubt that people even from the community, come with excellent expertise sometimes, right? These people could be professionals in their own right. And that's amazing. But sometimes the board needs other expertise that are in a given moment at the board considering who was elected from the community. We still don't have. So the external seats or the appointed seats are used for that purpose to to help bring in more experts that the board needs. And not only, I would say expertise, but also perspectives maybe that are still missing from from the table. Right. Because we do need different opinions, different voices. And it is important to us.
[00:40:05] I would also say that the board I think the board right now is as diverse as it's ever been right where more diverse now than we've ever been. But it's still not enough. We still are missing some voices. And this is part of and I'm sure you've talked about it in the time that I was away from the call. But I'm sure it's been stressed that the board is making this move because we still feel that it's not enough, because we still are missing some voices and we want to make sure that it's systematic, that we don't end up having to kind of do to go through to jump through hoops and and to do all kinds of mental manipulations, to have what we need. We want the community to be part of this and kind of understand that this is not a joke. Right. We are basically running together one of the 10th biggest websites in the world. It's very serious. We're a global community. It takes specific skills and expertise to be on the board. And so we want the community to be part of that. That's why we're doing this move. And to the question before we wouldn't be able to do this before discussing it internally, because we have to to be able to explain what it is that we need. What's the problem? What is the purpose of this experiment to the community properly before we engage people in the waste or engage with volunteers and ask them to to invest time in something like that. So this is why and again, I'm hoping that I answer to you. And if not, let me know and I'll answer the rest.
[00:41:46] Thank you. And by the way.
[00:41:52] And.
[00:41:57] Oh, yeah, mean we can hear you, you always lost.
[00:42:00] Yeah, I would think that yes, I'm thinking and thinking, but as a member of the board for being very close to the community, she's always, I mean, connecting with us on telegram and which is very unthinkable. Just kind of question. Maybe in Africa, for example, we have a lot of active members of the community and very skilled, but at the same time to have contact with the foundation. Are they able to be part of the boat or they have to leave, I mean, to resign from the city to be able to be part of the.
[00:42:35] Yeah, thank you for that question. It's something that not everyone knows. But in order to be on the board of trustees as of as of now, the bylaws state very clearly that you cannot be in the management of of affiliates. So you can be a member. Right. I'm still a member of Wikipedia and Education and Wikimedia Medicine and the Wikimedia Israel where I come from. But I cannot be the chair like I was before I entered the board. I had to resign being the chair of these two groups in order to be on the board of trustees. And it has to be like that because otherwise you would be in a position where there's conflict of interest and stuff like that where we just don't want that. So today you have to resign from any any official position, either in an affiliate or a WCF in order to be on the board. It might change one day. Who knows? We're in them. We're in the middle of a strategic process and we're rethinking many of our givens over the years. And that's OK. We we we're in the process of discussing the global council, and that might change the way we think of boards and these types of roles. But as of today, we can't be paid. We can't be on the on the board of any other affiliate. And it makes sense for now.
[00:44:07] Thanks. Well, we had a question about the board and procedures, but I think at Link has answered the question. Ruby, do you have anything else to ask?
[00:44:19] No, I think I'm OK. Thank you so much.
[00:44:23] Ok, thank you. Um, George has just just one thing.
[00:44:27] Just a minute. Just a moment. Sorry. I wanted to understand the process of voting for the board seat as it's going to be based on. Is it going to be regional or it's going to be like everybody voting together because I'm just thinking that, OK, maybe the that would help me understand better or my next question.
[00:44:59] So so, Ruby, this is exactly what the board of trustees requests, feedback from the committee, from the community of exactly how we want it to work right now. It's not regional, right? It's did the elections. We had two types of elections. One was the community seats, and it was a wide anyone on which he could vote. That was one part. And any one comedian could nominate themselves. And people all across different projects would vote for them. And the other type was affiliated. So you have to be part of an affiliate user group or a chapter or sematic organization. And then there was that type of seats. And you can nominate yourself through the affiliates and the affiliates vote. We are now trying to discuss a new way of doing all of that. And and this is exactly the the way that this is exactly what we want feedback from the community on how exactly to do it, in what way, how we will create diversity, what would be the system of how that works. This is this is exactly what we're discussing or are going to be discussing right now. I hope I answered.
[00:46:26] You're welcome and thank you.
[00:46:32] Ok. You were saying something.
[00:46:35] Well, there's two minutes left, so I think we can take one question more in the official part of the of this hour. And then as we said on the wiki page, some of us, we are going to stick around if anyone wants to keep the conversation.
[00:46:53] So I was a hand raised here by George Halloo.
[00:46:59] Well, you can hear me.
[00:47:02] Yes, yes, please go ahead.
[00:47:04] So my name is George Miller, really, I represent the chapter in Georgia. So my background is in political sciences. And you know that we political scientists usually have a tendency to see lots of problems and lots of risks and so on. So there are one or two risks that I would like to raise. And maybe you thought how to challenge them? I have to address them. But first of all, we have different types of organizations. We have organizations based on geographic principle like Wikimedia, Georgia, which will be in one day. I hope we also have Wikimedia Medicine and so on. And so these chapters seem to be different from each other. And also interests of the chapters are also different. Do you plan to have a mecum? Maybe we are planning to have kind of a mechanism to weigh the influences of all these groups and also to maybe somehow have separate slates for affiliations based on profession like medicine and the different ones for geographic locations. That's one thing. Second thing, some countries have different groups within their geographic scope, so it might be giving some of the groups more influence in general or the process, which also does not seem entirely fair because, for example, the user group in Georgia is there one group and at the same time in Russia, for example, there are quite many groups, including language groups, including regional groups and so on.
[00:48:39] So Russian Russian groups have slightly more influence than the Georgian one will have simply because there was only one group in the country. So are you planning to address this issue as well? And also the idea of the Global Council, which I understand that is not yet fully designed. So we're sort of in design process. I'm a little bit afraid that it will become a little bit inefficient and ineffective, like the United Nations General Assembly, where everybody can vote, can raise their concerns. But actually it's only the Security Council that has any actual power or in decision making. So maybe you have some safeguards that will protect us from from this from from becoming this General Assembly of the United Nations was only advisory vote. So these are the three issues I would like to thank you.
[00:49:38] So, George, first of all, thank you for making excellent points, I think you're describing some of the key issues that we as a community need to need to deal with. And I'll start by saying that first, I don't have the answers to your question. I think it's a decision that the community at large needs to a discussion the community needs to have. And this is part of what is being planned for the coming months. I'll also say that as far as I know, there is no one perfect system to elect people to any to any type of role. And I'll grant you that because we have one hundred and fifty affiliates from different types, some from the same region. And Russia is just one example, but they're the same thing is happening in other in the Spanish community. There are lots of different groups, sometimes even with the same people, you know, the same person could be affiliated with many with many affiliates, not just one. I, for example, belong to Wikimedia Israel, to Wikimedia Medicine, to Wikipedia and education, to the libraries group, to you know, there is a bunch of them where I'm involved. So how does that come to how does that does that being weighed and how do we create balance? It's not an easy question. And but again, I think the important thing here is it's not the board's decision in this case.
[00:51:16] It's something that the community needs to think about and decide what type of process it wants. And the board can help direct the board can help guide the board can say, you know what, we believe strongly like we did with the Universal Code of conduct. Right. We said this is not a question. This needs to happen because we as a community need it, need it, and that the community at large said that it wants to be more safe in the as part of the strategic process. So we are in a position to make some decisions, but the rest of it, how exactly needs to be decided by the community? I think some of the questions about affiliates will and should be discussed as we discussed the global council and as we discussed the different dynamics that will be created when we suddenly have regional hubs, when we suddenly have. So, you know, it's all connected in a sense. And my answer is simply, it's this is exactly the time to discuss it. Right now that we are discussing the general counsel and the regional hubs, we will have to part of it will be will have to be how do we weigh in these different groups? How do we make sure that we not only have participation, but it's balanced. Right. So thank you for that.
[00:52:45] And I again, I'm sorry that I cannot give you a more accurate answer, but I think it's not my place as a board member to do to do that.
[00:52:57] We are five minutes past what we can do now, as promised. So let's say that the official meeting is over.
[00:53:08] I'm not even sure whether you prefer me to keep recording for whoever is interested in these conversations. I can also stop the recording. Maybe this is the first conversation we can have after the meeting. But in any case, it's been one hour and five minutes. I think it was at times thirty eight, thirty nine people, which I think it's very good. And the conversation definitely has been very interesting and there was no conclusion about anything which was expected for these. First of this hour, that's going to be more office hours organized, of course, more today, but also in a few weeks in the middle of the call for feedback, we are planning to have another general run just to do a check in. But in the meantime, we are proactively reaching out to wiki projects, languages, affiliates to help them organize meetings like this or encourage them to have their own meetings with us, with us, without us. That's up to them. Yeah. So this was just the first one. There's going to be many more and we hope to keep having very interesting conversations.
[00:54:17] Can I can I take one one minute to say something, I just want to say a big thank you to actually to Quim and to Krishna and Jackie and all the rest of the volunteers who are facilitating these talks. I hope that you all appreciate that this is not an easy job. We are not an easy community. We're very big. We will spread all over the world. And it's very difficult to to be in a place, I think, where we actually reach out to everyone and bring them into the conversation. So I thank you all for for doing this. And each and every one person here in this call is basically an agent now. Right. You can go back to your communities and you can talk about what you've heard today and you can bring people into the conversation, invite them to the next office hours. Maybe someone can put the link in the chat to the next ones. And so just a big thank you for for being here to all of you and for engaging your voices matter to us.
[00:55:22] And we look forward to see what the community comes up with. So thank you all.
[00:55:30] Good. Well, it's a pleasure and I think the facilitator's share, this pleasure I'm taking with them. They are super excited. So I said, let's finish this meeting at. Can you stay? Do you want to stay?
[00:55:45] So I was there for five or 10 minutes more and then I'm past my lunch break.
[00:55:51] Ok, so you get to decide, do I keep this record button or would you rather not? I mean, just just to set the.
[00:56:02] You can keep a record button for me for four or five minutes, but that's the next day I'm not.
[00:56:08] But there are more people on the call about, you know, I have to start asking someone. So thank you, everyone. This is the end of the meeting. And now we just start. If there would be catering and drinks, they would be coming now and we would just be talking in the corridor. Imagine imagine this. OK, so we are in the corridor. Hi. Hello. So I also feel that because you have been very active in the second half by the first point that I broad at the beginning was related to the email sent to yesterday. Well, yesterday, today, the paying where you live on Wikimedia. And because there was not enough not initially to address that. And she actually said, should I continue? Should I stop? I don't know if not is staying around, but in any case, I think it's a good conversation and we can maybe just continue while I'll offer you some imaginary drinks of your preference.
[00:57:06] So, Nat, do you want to.
[00:57:10] Well, I don't even know where you want to continue. I'll just shut up because there was also some side conversation on that. I just shut up and I'll let you I'll just go have my own drink up.
[00:57:22] And if you look to the past, we have elections with have turnout out for the community seats for two thousand to four thousand people if you stayed a problem, OK, but we eighty thousand a month and then turnout of two thousand or four thousand voters is way too small. And we want to have more voters then. I agree. And we should extend that as a problem and do reach out and and do here Ruby, who was on the call and had a great question, and that will be the question of Opal fuel. We have not focused in the past before. What is the big media foundation? What is the board? What did what do they do? And.
[00:58:10] What is the process for an election and voting with the right to vote? OK, if you've got, what is it, fifty or three hundred addicts, you can vote for anyone who can vote.
[00:58:24] And it was what always did everyone vote on a candidate that was in the fall. So so. So we can reach out and do it in many languages and try to start with election. Looking to have it in. More languages translator than it was in the past, and we've done a good job in the past with elections with at least 20 languages, but we serve over 300 language communities. So we. Should try to have it translated to more languages and to provide more basic information about what is the organization that. The documentation is to serve the communities and the local projects and and the foundation has an important role in it.
[00:59:20] Ruby, you raise your hand.
[00:59:23] Yeah, thank you.
[00:59:26] I was just thinking about the whole thing, if you look at the community that we have, we have some communities that are highly represented from particular regions or country, and then others are very few.
[00:59:44] And so if the community if people nominate themselves for the board seats or want to be part of this community and it's still left for the community to vote, definitely there's going to be a buyout. That is my concern, because and the same kind of people who are represented will still be the same kind of people. Like the tin can of coke and then that diversity that we're looking for will not be achieved. So my question now is, how do we.
[01:00:19] Bridge the gap.
[01:00:20] How do we correct that, because if we still left for the same community to vote, they'll still be a diversity.
[01:00:29] Ruby, one of them, if I can jump in, one of the options that the board basically shared with the community is to have a council or a selection and nomination committee of sorts. And the idea is, I don't know if the community is going to accept it, but that certainly was one of the ideas that there will be a committee of people from the community and that when you let's say that you want to nominate yourself, you will be nominated to the committee. The committee will have some kind of evaluation form that they will weigh in different candidates. So it's less of a popularity contest and more what are the skills of this person? Is do they come from a diverse background? What type of management experience do they have? How can they contribute to the board? And and so that committee would rank candidates and then the board. And then there are two options. Right. One is that these candidates now ranked by this committee would then the community votes for them. Or another option is that directly the board selects from that list, from that ranked list. So one of the things that we're trying to fix in this whole process is exactly the fact that right now it's a popularity contest. Right now it's about how many people do you know from the broad community? And I see people raising heads because it's contrary.
[01:02:18] It's it's a bit controversial. But this is how the board sees it. It's a bit of a popularity contest. It's about how many do you come from a big community, yes or no, because then you'll have numbers of people voting for you and it doesn't necessarily mean that you're the best person for the role. So we want you to find a new system to to get away exactly from that. This is why we were thinking for so long how exactly to do this.
[01:02:47] And so, yeah, Ed and Quim and I see some moorhens, but I would like before I go, I would like to share something that I think it's not controversial because I think it is a fact. I, I work is to talk with many people in the communities and I said I work with all these facilitators who talk to even more and then report back. So personally I do hear and I just see what I do read to be more specific.
[01:03:14] I do read many people that think that, you know, that diversity is OK. But when I look at who are saying that, I see people in short like me, men, white, Western, a certain age and so forth.
[01:03:32] And personally, this is my personal experience. There's not a foundation of anything. Personally, I've learned years ago that I shut up in personal. You know, when there's arguments over diversity, I shut up because then in the meantime, there's other people coming from other regions or their gender, sex, gender options, other generations, how long they have been in the movement, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And very easily they have different opinions. So who's right? Yeah, I just wanted to share this because this is objective in the sense that it's based on a lot of.
[01:04:11] Many times in many places, many conversations happen, yeah, before and answers, I'll just answer what Quim is saying. I was using the word controversial specifically because, you know, it's a wiki. We will have always a multitude of voices. We can never. And that's another given. Right. We will never be able to please everyone. There will, even if we have numbers showing that most of the candidates come from Western Europe or indeed the or North America, which they have originally in the past, then still there will be people in the community to claim that that's OK. That's as it should be. Right. And these are some of the voices. But thankfully, we have other voices, too. So we're trying to be more inclusive as we do this process in the process itself and also into the final results. We want the final results to also reflect that diversity and this multitude of voices.
[01:05:21] So, yeah, that's why I said it's controversial just because there are different people thinking different.
[01:05:27] I'm really, really extremely offended by the question. The point is that you say that the community is not capable of the skills of candidates. They are.
[01:05:39] They did not say that. They did not know.
[01:05:43] And the board said we are considering perhaps a selection committee.
[01:05:50] We will evaluate candidates. The community community is very capable of evaluating candidates they have done in the past. We have a long list of candidates also of candidates. With very little experience, little experience in the movement, the experience outside the movement, and they were not elected.
[01:06:13] I know just where we're at, the outcome of the evaluation, the community prefer people with a bit more experience. And as you have said before, the diversity on the board is maximized, given there are only 10 seats. If you're moving to recover more seats, that will be more diversity.
[01:06:38] And I want to be very accurate in asking you not to put words into my mouth. I'm not saying that the community is incapable of choosing. I want that to be very clear. I am saying that historically, because of the way the elections were constructed for it's granted that some communities had more. It's not only that more coastal communities had more weigh in, but also that from the get go, the threshold was such that some very good candidates wouldn't even offer themselves because they knew they will not have a chance in the current system. This is what we're trying to fix. It's not that we think that the community is not intelligent on the on the contrary, right. The community is very intelligent, but the community is also the community.
[01:07:36] At the end of the day, you're more likely to be. Let me just finish my sentence.
[01:07:44] If I want to have candidates stop for OK, tell people if everybody is good enough, if you think you're good enough for the board. Make yourself nominate yourself as a candidate.
[01:08:00] What do you think? Well, one thing I have to intervene while you are now discussing with each other and been interrupting each other or, well, maybe not symmetrically. Those are the people that politely raise their hands. So, George, please.
[01:08:17] Thank you. Well, first of all, I would like to kind of jump into the previous conversation, because we do know that systems of elections do determine the way how how people are elected. And also it creates lots of different motivation and motivation for people to run for elections or to even consider. So the system is also dependent on the elections that causes in some countries. It causes bi partisan models. In some countries it causes multi-party system. So it's not that elections are ideal and that elections are a neutral way to elect people. It's not that way. Elections do determine who is elected and how is elected. That's why I'm raising so much concern about the ways that the system should be crafted with extreme care to ensure that people are not motivated to run because they just know that they will never be selected. And that's that's why I'm suggesting that we should maybe spend even more time while considering how to create safeguards to ensure that different groups do not gain too much weight, which might be natural because there are more people or whatever, but it should not become a demotivate, which should not become kind of some kind of kind of a glass ceiling for other groups.
[01:09:43] George, I can say is that the board is worried about exactly that. This is exactly what we want to try to fix. Right. Because right now we don't have these safeguards. And right now it is despite what Ed said. Right, it is going to a specific place on the wiki map to two specific places. And we need to balance it in in in a way, and also to make sure that people who in the past would have not have a chance because they might they might not have enough people that they know, but they have excellent skills and can be really beneficial to the board that these people have a chance that they can get elected. And so this is why we are raising all these issues of maybe having quotas, maybe having. Right. And these are all different ways. They're not perfect. None of them is perfect, as I said before. But this is exactly why we want we want that. And we say that the current system is is not enough because it did yield a specific type of candidates in the past.
[01:10:59] Let's do something, Ruby, I think your hand is raised and spent seven minutes in my time that would have passed, and I think that extra hour, an extra half hour, I think it's good enough. There's more there will be more senators to discuss. So, Ruby, they're going to say something.
[01:11:21] Yeah, suddenly when Shani was addressing one question, she didn't mention our communities and you speak to the mic, please.
[01:11:33] It's OK. I wanted to understand when she sees Konieczny, what exactly she referring to is referring to a user group or an app.
[01:11:45] A regional community. All of them all just wanted to understand all of them.
[01:11:54] There is no one community. I mean, when I when I see community, I usually mean everything, the affiliates, the individuals contributing all the different moving parts that the wiki, the wiki verse, what it is. Some people use communities in plural. Just because they feel it better represents the fact that we are different parts, different smaller communities, that that is one. I usually like to use community because I still want to think or because I truly believe actually that despite the differences, despite the fact that we come from different parts of the world and speak maybe different languages and have different opinions like me and and we agree on some things, we can disagree on others, but we all have something in common. We all work towards the same goal. And so I want to think of us as one big community that promotes free knowledge. So that's that's the way that I see it. Even even if the reality is that we we have many, many, many smaller ones.
[01:13:05] In. Good.
[01:13:12] So this is an invitation, five minutes at most. This is an invitation for anyone who hasn't said anything in this meeting. I hope the drinks are starting to work.
[01:13:35] Ok, just a quick, quick pick for me, I reserve my opinion on on this process, on the actual feedback process, actually what I'm observing right now is or it's like we're planning a boxing match, but the fighters are already fighting. So I think it's best if we put it on the right venue and this is not the right venue where just laying out the the road to that to that path. So if if the discussion starts on the right venue, like through your coordinator or through metal, that will be the best venue. It is not best if we discuss everything here because it would consume time and it will not gain any decision or consensus.
[01:14:31] It's a question about process. I just want to clarify, totally agreed. I mean, this is not their official venue. This is not the right time nor the right place. And actually, for a conversation like this, there's no single right time, place, channel. What we are doing is just offering and proposing people to organize as many different venues as they see fit. We especially one that people feel comfortable talking for some people coming to a session like this, it's a chance for them to comment. Maybe the same people wouldn't then go to a meetup page or two. They don't even have a telegram or, I don't know, whatever you whatever you call it. So, yes, there was not if there was if there was an impression that here we were discussing something to decide anything. No, we were discussing something. But we are not deciding anything. And actually nothing, absolutely nothing is being the site decided during this call for what we are doing is having many conversations in different places, different topics, different languages, different people, different groups. And we as the facilitator team, we are trying to compile all these information sorted out in a report that we are going to be drafting publicly so everybody can review that if they feel well represented there. And we will bring this to officially then to the board at the end of the papers. So I just wanted to explain that there's nothing being decided to be sure about that. And I hope the conversation was, after all, enjoyable. I think imagine all these emails or even a talk page put it will be just a very long.
[01:16:15] Yeah, just to strengthen what Quim was saying, there are some people, yes, everything will also be on Wiki, but there are some people from the world and we know it after doing the strategy process that don't feel comfortable reading these long, very long, sometimes masses of texts in English, some people find it easier to speak to a person. And what we're trying to do in these talks, in these office hours is offer another option to participate afterwards. Hopefully people will be will feel more comfortable going to the right wiki page to actually vote on what they want. But at least they had a chance before to discuss it and to talk to human beings and to hear different opinions and to do it in a platform that is easier for them. So I just want to, in the sake of diversity, just acknowledge that for some people, the wiki is not always the easiest place to communicate.
[01:17:26] Bless you, Francisco, with this note.
[01:17:31] So for the transcript, so it was sneezing and that's why she wasn't sending a blast to all of us just because. So, yes, also, I don't know about you personally, especially in these times of lockdown, not travel, no conferences, etc. I do enjoy seeing different faces, hearing different voices, different accents and so forth. So I think that I can say in the name of the facilitator team and also probably in the name of the trustees attending this meeting on their own initiative. Thank you very much for this first conversation in an office hour. I said there's going to be many more, and if you want still more, just contact us. A facilitator will be assigned to you to help you organize more conversations. Thank you, everyone.
[01:18:19] Thank you very much. Bye bye. Well, goodbye.