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Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Call for feedback: Community Board seats/Reports/2021-02-09 Notes from a talk with Alice Wiegand

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2021-02-09 Notes from a talk with Alice Wiegand

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Alice Wiegand is a former member of the WMF board, currently a member of the board at Wikimedia Deutschland. (This is not an official statement of WMDE)

  • Hints that currently many participative processes are running in parallel, even for an organisational experienced person it is too much.
  • Alice praised the Call for Feedback process as such.
  • Alice showed disappointment by the board's delayed communication of the decision to enlarge (decision happened in February 2020, published in April, and participational process at the end of the year).
  • Alice criticized the bad timing of the decision, missing a closer embedding of decision and process within the Movement Strategy context.
  • Though Alice supports the analysis of the board as it concerns diversity and expertise, she disagrees with the approach to solve the problem. She argues that upsizing the board might not make it stronger, but weaker as dynamics will result in a “parliament-shaped” board. Due to the large number of seats, the former creative energy of a team of individual persons will decrease and the character of a board signing prepared drafts will gain more weight. This will needlessly result in a power shift from board to staff and in a loss of power in general.
  • Due to this, Alice does not intend to take part in the actual Call for feedback.