Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Call for feedback: Community Board seats/Reports/2021-03-03 Wikipedians of Goa

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Conversational Report
Wikipedians of Goa - 3 March 2021

Attendees[edit]

Objective[edit]

This is the second round of discussions with the Wikipedia of Goa. Some of the volunteers wanted clarify their doubts on a few things, to discuss further on the ideas that came up during the first round of discussions and also the new idea, candidate resources.

Feedback on specific ideas[edit]

Board-delegated selection committee
  • A board-delegated selection committee to shortlist candidates, followed by community voting sounds good. The selection committee should also be tasked with creating standardized summary profiles of each candidate and also their evaluations of each candidate, which will help the votes to make a better decision.
Candidate resources
  • This is a good idea! However, if there is an idea to support candidates having less time during the election, it should be made sure that the candidate has enough time to fulfill their board duties later on. For example, if the Board requires each member to spend about five hours a week for board duties, it should also be applied during the elections. But as elections can take more, support should only be given to mitigate that extra time.
  • During elections, people ask a lot of questions! Instantly responding to all the questions can be very time consuming and mentally tiring. The staff can provide support to candidates by giving them updates on questions being asked and also drafting responses based on candidates’ thoughts. Talking to someone over a call is better than writing a lengthy response, and it is often a struggle for the right choice of words in such situations. The Foundation can also think of providing resources in more practical ways such as the internet and babysitting expenses support.