Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/Archives/2016

Mailing list discussion about Facebook's "Free Basics" and net neutrality

Happy New Year to all!

See mailing list thread. Your thoughts and input would be appreciated. Andreas JN466 14:33, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Move for closure of a proposal

Proposals_for_closing_projects/Move_Beta_Wikiversity_to_Incubator#Move for closure I believe that this conversation has gone on for plenty of time to assess the feasibility, community consensus, relative strengths of discussions, etc. regarding closing beta.wv and incorporating its content into Meta and Incubator as appropriate. I hope that someone here can put to rest the conversation there and either a.) have us move on and let beta.wv be or b.) let us get started with winding down beta.wv. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:15, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

@Justin, let me check how to close this issue best. Will come back to you soon. Alice Wiegand (talk) 20:36, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

We should have a community process for closing proposals for new projects & for closing projects. And a dev contact who can carry out the details required to flip the relevant switches. It's not a board task. But if that doesn't exist, perhaps we can help create one. –SJ talk  23:22, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

There is a process, it seems that there is no member of WMF staff responsible for monitoring those discussions and implementing them, and there is no way that the volunteer community can find out who is responsible for doing what. Perhaps the Board might want to look into that. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 16:20, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

@Justin, the Community Engagement team, in this case Philippe is figuring out details, in general my understanding is that it's in the scope of Language committee to deal with closure proposals. As I see on the proposal's talk page, it might bot be as clear as I thought. I propose to follow the discussion there. Alice Wiegand (talk) 15:06, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

It's still on.....--John123521 (talk) 06:46, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Let's wind it down, on that page. –SJ talk  05:44, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Non-Discriminatory Policy

The current wording of the non discriminatory policy implies that I can be as racist as I want towards former employees, users, etc. This should not be so. SpinkZeroZero (talk) 20:19, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Will there be any answers in regard of the discredited new member?

The board has just appointed a new member, that is completely unsuited for such a seat due to his illegal actions in one of his former jobs. Up to now nothing serious in this regard has been said by the board, the discredited member is officially still not removed from the board, no explanation about how this error of judgement by the board could happen was given, just loud silence.

It could as well be, that some kind of Saul/Paul event took place in the life of this member, and that he has changed completely, so that he is fit for a seat despite his illegal actions, but this event has to be made public as well, as long as no such event seems to come to the surface, I regard it as has not happened.

When will the board make an official statement in regard of this discredited member? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 12:43, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

This public statement of support for Geshuri is probably the only statement that will be made. Future statements about trustee self-governance, vetting or transparency are highly likely to remain general. --Fæ (talk) 16:20, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

No, I really don't expect any meaningful answer, neither here, nor in regard of Doc James, where the only "reason" given is still We didn't like him, so bugger those communities. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 18:04, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Advisory Board membership

Please clarify the status of the wmf:Advisory Board. It seems that members are appointed annually and there is no record of reappointments since 2014. It appears that the Advisory Board is currently empty. Is this correct and if so is it desirable? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:49, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree this needs clarification. In the meantime, I have created (and at least partially populated) on the WMF Wiki: wmf:Category:Advisory Board I also added a message about the apparent hiatus to the Meta Wiki page Advisory Board. I am not comfortable adding such a note to the WMF Wiki without some kind of guidance. Hope this is some help in the meantime. -Pete F (talk) 21:35, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

(Side note, in the process of doing this I discovered an entire wiki I was never aware of. Its main page says it is closed, but incoming links to specific, outdated pages still exist, and the reader would not be aware. This should be addressed more comprehensively than I'm able to.) See, for instance: https://advisory.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meeting_August_2007/Notes and wmf:Special:Diff/104869 -Pete F (talk) 21:39, 31 January 2016 (UTC))

That wiki was used by Anthere when the WMF board actually cared about its advisory board; it's listed at private wikis and is occasionally useful. As for the advisory board, rumors are that at the last Wikimania the board decided to disband it, but of course they never bothered announcing it and perhaps by now they changed their mind. Nemo 22:03, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Such rumors are notoriously unreliable. There was no such decision; the minutes of the meeting accurately describe the discussion about the advisory board; and there was a meeting of advisors at Wikimania to discuss how they could be more helpful and more actively engaged by the WMF. [short summary: more engagement to help with searches & especially diversity of nominees, more regular requests for connections with partners tackling similar tactical issues, earlier and more specific engagement to contribute to strategy, targeted at the advisors with interest in each area] –SJ talk  22:45, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

That is noted in passing here: wmf:Minutes/2015-07-15#Advisory Board (but I agree, this is no way to go about making or communicating decisions). -Pete F (talk) 22:15, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Also, as for the utility of the wiki: Is it truly useful? Since special:import was used, the edit history of that page exists here on Meta Wiki. Wouldn't it be better, in instances like your example, to link to the Meta Wiki version of the page? (See also: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T21855 where I have just left a new comment) -Pete F (talk) 22:20, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Do let me know if you see a problem with changes like this, Nemo_bis. -Pete F (talk) 22:26, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

• The resolution of 15 July 2015 referred the question of the Advisory Board to the Board governance committee. The latter committee was re-appointed in August and has published nothing since then, so we may presume that it has not met. It has certainly done nothing to engage with the community on this or indeed any other matter. In passing it appears that by this complete failure to act inaction the Governance Committee is in breach of the Wikimedia Foundation Board Governance Committee Charter. We conclude that it has made no recommendations and that the Advisory Board has been allowed to lapse. It is regrettable that the Board has allowed this to happen, and has failed to keep the community informed. It is particularly regrettable that the Board does not wish to make use of the experience and expertise of the wider community in this respect, and in particular that it abandoned a consultation on this subject last year. I would suggest that in this as in certan other matters the Board is approaching the point of being in violation of the Guiding Principles on Transparency and Accountability. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:44, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Accountability to the community (finances)

Following an exchange with the Foundation Treasurer, he has made it clear [1] that he does not regard himself as required to respond to questions from the community regarding the financial and business operations of the WMF, but rather sees his accountability as being restricted to the Board. This raises questions for governance which I think it is for the Board to address. There seem to be three main lines that the Board might wish to take.

Does the Board believe that members of the community have the right to raise a question of this nature directly with WMF staff? Does the Board believe that common courtesy imposes a requirement that such questions be properly acknowledged and managed by a nominated staff member, even if it not possible or desirable to answer them in detail? Will the Board mandate a clear coherent effective process with known lines of responsibility and accountability for such questions to be raised and answered?

If the Board does not believe that individual community members should raise such questions directly with WMF staff, will the Board institute a process for taking such questions themselves for subsequent discussion with staff? Will the Board commit to acknowledging such questions and, in the interests of transparency, publishing as much of the answer they receive as possible?

If the Board believe that community members should not involve themselves in these issues either directly or indirectly, will the Board make a clear public statement of their position on this issue?

Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:03, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

A correction to the statement from Rogol, I have never stated that I do not need to respond to questions to the community. Over my nearly four years with the Foundation, I have a record of responding to inquires from the community. What I was responding to was the request for a detailed listing of purchases of furniture and equipment. I have provided information on the percentage allocation of spending to furniture and computer equipment (servers) and I believe this is sufficient given my review of the records.GByrd (WMF) (talk) 16:56, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

This "correction" is not quite correct. The link I gave makes it plain that my question was specifically about the procedural issues and not about furniture, as members of the Board can readily verify for themselves. GByrd avoided answering it by diverting back to the furniture issue, just as he has done again here -- that evasion leads me to believe that he does not accept the requirement to answer questions from the volunteer community (although in the interests of fairness I suppose it is possible he simply assumed he knew what the question was without actually reading it). It is noteworthy that in this comment he does not actually go so far as accepting that the WMF has this respnsibility to the community, he merely denies having denied it. Let me ask again for the sake of clarity -- does he positively accept this responsibility? If so, perhaps he might like to inform the Board, and the community at large, what arrangements the WMF has made to discharge this responsibility -- what is the venue for posing such questions, what process is employed for answering them, and who is responsbile for delivering those answers. In the absence of a satisfactory process, then no real acceptance of that responsibility can be said to exist, and my questions for the Board stand unaltered. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:04, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Financial questions can be and have been sent to my talk page, my WMF email address or when we have a comment period on a financial report, on the Talk page of that document. I will respond to questions via those forums.GByrd (WMF) (talk) 22:15, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for that commitment, which I think resolves the issue as far as Board intervention is concerned. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 06:14, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

We appear to have wildly different views about the meaning of the word "resolve". See User talk:GByrd (WMF)#Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard#Accountability to the community. Promising to answer questions and then letting an unanswered question sit for a month is simply one more example of WMF stonewalling. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:13, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

• Rogol, I generally have received prompt responses to occasional questions that I've emailed to Garfield. I did have a little difficulty getting precise answers in response to some of my questions about last year's annual plan, though I believe that was because of concern about the sensitivity of some information that I think should be public and transparent but which WMF so far generally has been reluctant to make public. In general I don't think this line of questioning about the office furniture is a high-value interest for any of us when we have next year's Annual Plan to think about; that plan is supposed to be implemented starting on July 1st and I am quite perplexed about the delays associated with that plan. In general I don't feel that Garfield's integrity or communicativeness are in question. My present concerns about WMF financial matters are much more focused on the Annual Plan for the next fiscal year. --Pine^✉ 23:27, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

As I stated above, the principle is now clear. I think that direct email with senior WMF officials is sub-optimal for most issues, as it may consume time responding to repetitions if answers are not made public. It is also a weaker form of transparency than the community is accustomed to. However, having established the principle, the implementation issues will no doubt resolve themselves over time. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 06:14, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Echoing Pine's viewpoint, based on several meetings about various serious community issues, Garfield is a very genuine and skilled chap. I have never known him to spin facts or avoid a difficult question. I hope the WMF can retain his services for a long time ahead, as he is a great asset to our projects and community. Keep on asking high level governance questions, but there is no evidence that the community needs to be concerned about Garfield's personal commitment to our shared goals of transparency and accountability. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 07:37, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately personal commitment is only a part of the story -- it needs to be accompanied by effective communications and processes. Effective engagement between the WMF and the community is still poor and this is one example of it. Lila made various commitments to improve matters last August, but it is clear that they have not yet worked through into practice, and it may be that the Board will need to examine whether more could and should be done. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 06:40, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

• I invite anyone reading this to look at Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2015-16/draft#Computer equipment and office furniture. and tell me whether my question was answered. Now tell me whether I was told that my question would not be answered or that I needed to ask my question in a different place.

Specifically, is

"I have responded to the question with information that most of the money listed in "Purchase of computer equipment and office furniture" is for servers."

a reasonable answer to the question

"I would really like to see an itemized list of exactly what computer equipment and office furniture was purchased with the $2,690,659 spent in 2012 and the $2,475,158 spent in 2013. Verifying that those purchases were reasonable and fiscally prudent would go a long way towards giving me confidence that the rest of the money was also spent wisely. As a non-profit that accepts donations and is committed to openness, the WMF should have no problem with telling me exactly what was bought, the price paid, and in general where it went No specific names, of course, just a general description of which department got what."

?

I don't believe that my question was answered in the thread where I asked it (I have seen no itemized list) and I don't believe that my request was denied (I see nothing from GByrd (WMF) saying that they will not provide an itemized list. much less a reason why they decided not to do so)

Now, on this new page (which I was not have known about if Rogol Domedonfors had not posted a link on my talk page) I see a new "answer":

"I have provided information on the percentage allocation of spending to furniture and computer equipment (servers) and I believe this is sufficient given my review of the records"

In other words, "trust me". There are several areas where I am willing to trust. I trust that GByrd (WMF) and all others on the WMF staff are honest and trustworthy and would have reported anything fraudulent long before I started asking questions. I trust that GByrd (WMF) was aware of and approved all furniture purchases, believed them to be reasonable then, and believed them to be reasonable when he reviewed them. And most of all I trust the independent auditors who wrote "In our opinion, the financial statements referred to above present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. as of June 30, 2013 and 2012, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for the years then ended, in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles."

I do not trust that the WMF always made wise decisions in this area (they are fallible and may have overspent on furniture when faced with a big budget surplus -- it is a natural thing to do) and the steadfast refusal to simply reveal what furniture was bought and how much it cost (and the gymnastics while denying that they refuse to reveal what furniture was bought and how much it cost instead of simply telling me no) gives me zero trust that the WMF is committed to financial transparency.

I don't expect that I will ever get an accounting of the 2012-2013 furniture purchases, especially on this page. Because this is to Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard, let me ask some new questions that members of the board should be able to answer:

In the following document...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/b/bf/Audit_Report_-_FY_13-14_-_Final_v2.pdf

...on page 10 it says "Furniture: 2013=$439,562, 2012=$277,312"

Would the board be willing to ask for a detailed accounting of how that $439,562 and $277,312 was spent, as a spot check on the theory that if the furniture purchases were reasonable, the rest of the finances probably are as well?

I am not at this time asking that this information be made public. I just want to see if the board is able to get an accounting.

If you get the information and the the decision is made to not reveal it, I would really prefer a straight answer telling me so. And if you decide to not ask for the information I would really prefer a straight answer telling me so. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:59, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

( ...sound of crickets...) --Guy Macon (talk) 07:55, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

(...chirp...) --Guy Macon (talk) 15:13, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: I think there is an echo in here... Green Giant (talk) 14:55, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

I think your question is clearly within the scope of the Audit Committee, although I am not certain if it will look specifically into furniture (although I understand that you're specifically concerned with the increase - possibly related to office restructuring?). Please, note, that it is not common to provide an itemized list of all furniture purchases for organizations of this size. Do you know some? We should match the high standards, but within reason. Pundit (talk) 15:33, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

At this point I am just hoping for an answer -- any answer -- from the WMF. If they tell me that my asking what furniture was bought in 2012 and 2013 and how much it cost is unreasonable, fine. I will then ask what they are willing to reveal. Right now I am only getting silence. As I have said before, I simply can not automatically assume that the WMF has always made wise decisions in this area, and their steadfast refusal to even discuss what furniture was bought and how much it cost gives me zero trust that the WMF is committed to financial transparency. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:25, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Guy, the figures you quoted actually seem to be coming from this document: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/6/6e/FINAL_12_13From_KPMG.pdf The figures in the 2013/2014 document you linked above are higher (684,024 for furniture in 2014, with the 2013 figure unchanged). Note, however, that as far as I can tell, these are not cash expenses for furniture purchases, but the value of the furniture the WMF owns. Thus the increases represent not increased spending, but accrual of furniture, which might be in line with staff increases (more people needing more desks etc.).

If you look again at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/b/bf/Audit_Report_-_FY_13-14_-_Final_v2.pdf you can find on page 4 an item called "Cash flows from investing activities: Purchase of computer equipment and office furniture", with approx. $1.6 million spent in 2014, and $2.5 million in 2013. I think this is closer to the figure you are looking for, although it does not distinguish between furniture and computer equipment. Maybe it would be useful to break this down into its components.

Sad to see that you did not get any more useful responses. Best, --Andreas JN466 14:47, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

User talk:GByrd (WMF)#Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard.23Accountability to the community --Guy Macon (talk) 18:30, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

This seems a strange point to harp on, since the furniture expenses are fairly low. But I'll answer in the section below. –SJ talk  05:44, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Frequently Unanswered Questions

I have been waiting for an answer -- any answe -- since July 7th, 2015

(SHOUTING) WILL SOMEONE AT THE WMF PLEASE ANSWER MY QUESTION, EVEN IF THE ANSWER IS "GO AWAY"???

For convenience, here is that question once again:

In the following document...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/b/bf/Audit_Report_-_FY_13-14_-_Final_v2.pdf

...on page 10 it says "Furniture: 2013=$439,562, 2012=$277,312"

Would the board be willing to ask accounting/finance for a detailed accounting of how that $439,562 and $277,312 was spent, as a spot check on the theory that if the furniture purchases were reasonable, the rest of the finances probably are as well?

I am not at this time asking that this information be made public. I just want to see if the Wikimedia Foundation Board is able to get an accounting.

If you get the information and the the decision is made to not reveal it, I would really prefer a straight answer telling me so. And if you decide to not ask for the information I would really prefer a straight answer telling me so. So far I have been stonewalled. -- Guy Macon (talk) 00:02, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

From my reading of [2] page 11 the $439,562 is how much the furniture was worth rather than how much was spent that year on it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:51, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

(For those following along, see item (4) on page 11.)

That could be. I certainly am no expert on reading accounting documents! So, if we don't have any numbers on how much was spent on furniture, I would have to assume that it is part of the $10 million and $12 million listed as "Other operating expenses" on page 3.

Is the board allowed to ask accounting/finance for a detailed accounting of furniture expenses? If not, who has the authority to ask? --Guy Macon (talk) 10:30, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

I am not sure what form the books are in / how they are organized. I am happy to ask when in San Fran in two weeks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:38, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

I'd say that this is definitely not an issue the whole Board should address, but the Audit Committee can. Pundit (talk) 13:36, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

So that would be Stu West, Alice, and Denny. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:12, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Not sure who the new audit committee is going to be. While I mentioned it in passing likely all involved were distracted by other issues. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:27, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Guy, the board is certainly allowed to ask such questions. The only constraint is self-imposed, to avoid micromanaging staff. Detailed financial questions are raised by the audit committee, as Pundit mentioned. And furnishings & physical plant are currently touched on each year when the financial report is reviewed. Without even looking at details, this is a moderate amount of furniture to own — $1-2k spent in total, over the course of occupying 3 floors of the building, per staff member. Much much less than the amount spent on the real estate square footage per person.

Here's how you read that section of the report:

• the 'Furniture' number is the total value of furniture the foundation owns as of that year. so new spending on furniture is the difference b/t the two years.
• having a line for 'Less accumulated depreciation' tells you that depreciation is calculated separately: the Furniture number is how much everything cost when it was purchased, even though much of it is many years old.

Much of the furniture costs in recent years has been for renovation of an old floor and expansion into an additional floor. –SJ talk  05:44, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

• Re: your comment in the section above ("This seems a strange point to harp on, since the furniture expenses are fairly low. But I'll answer in the section below.") It's a diagnostic question. When I see multiple people asking the board questions and not getting answers, two possible explanations come to mind:

Possibility [A] is that there are good reasons for the board not to answer those particular questions (which makes sense, seeing as how so many questions are about controversial / contentious topics or about things like pending litigation or personal issues where legal is likely to have ordered -- with good reasons -- everyone at the WMF to stay silent).

Possibility [B] is that the WMF as an institution has gotten into the habit of not answering any questions (or providing non-answers, answering other, somewhat related questions, etc.).

So, how do I determine whether [A] or [B] is more accurate? well, one way would be to ask a question like "Would the board be willing to ask accounting/finance for a detailed accounting of how that $439,562 and $277,312 was spent, as a spot check on the theory that if the furniture purchases were reasonable, the rest of the finances probably are as well?" and to make it clear that I will accept "No, the board is not willing to ask accounting/finance for that" as an answer. If I cannot get an actual answer to the question asked, then [B] is almost certainly true. If i can, then [A] is more likely to be true.

So, if I am interpreting the above answer correctly, (please correct me if I am wrong) the answers are: The board is allowed to ask accounting/finance for a detailed accounting of how that $439,562 and $277,312 was spent. The board probably won't ask for that, because that's the job of the Audit Committee per Audit Committee and wmf:Audit Committee charter. As an ordinary Wikipedia user and donor there is no way for me to find out, in detail, how that $439,562 and $277,312 was spent.

So, as far as my diagnostic question goes, it looks like [A] is the answer. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:34, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Would anyone from WMF be willing to at least state that the WMF legal department has not ordered them to stay silent on this topic? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:19, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Community Broker

A modest proposal to help bridge the gap that has unfortunately opened up between the Board and the volunteer community -- a Community Broker. A member of the community, elected by the community, attending in a speaking but non-voting capacity at all Board meetings and business. The Broker would be charged with gathering concerns from the community, raising them in a frank and constructive way at the Board, and reporting back to the community on the results, and the other Board business, within the obvious limits of confidentiality. The Broker should be supported by the secretariat and have travel expenses defrayed on the same basis as the full members.

This is an arrangement that I have seen work well in some of the charities and other leadership boards I have been on. There seems no reason to believe that it would not work here. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:19, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

You realize that in practice this would mean reducing the number of voting members from within the community, right? :) The community currently elects 3 members, and they do exactly what you describe, but they are also allowed to vote. Pundit (talk) 17:17, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

No, at present the community elects precisely zero members of the Board. It selects candidates whom the Board may or may not appoint, and if the Board does appoint them, which it is not bound to do, it may, as we have seen, remove them and appoint another for any reason or none. The Board membership may include more members of the community than three if it wishes, or fewer. Board members once appointed are all collectively responsible to the Foundation, they are not there to represent the community, they are not specifically answerable to it, and they have tasks and responsibilities other than communication with the community -- as we have seen that communication is not as effective as it could and should be. This proposal is in addition to the current arrangements. The Community Broker, as a non-voting observer, would prioritise communication, in both directions: they would be answerable to the community for the effectiveness with which they carried out that function. There would be no need to change the number of voting members of the Board as a result of this proposal, as their duties would not be affected by the election of the Broker -- although some people may believe that a change in the composition of the Board is desirable for other reasons, this proposal is independent of that discussion. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 17:54, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

SF-centrism

There seems to be a degree of Silicon Valley focus in recent Board appointments. In the Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia grant application, one of the two key risks is Sophisticated role hiring and team attrition. In the San Francisco Bay Area, ... Why assume that the work has to be done by WMF staff and in SF? Under Innovation#Possible partners, I listed a dozen organisation, all of them in the UK, which have expertise or interest in data science. I was at a workshop recently in one of those institutions and there were thirty world-leading researchers and practioners there. The community of 100,000 volunteers is sure to contain people who know more about any given subject than anyone in WMF (to my personal knowledge there is a Nobel laureate and a Fields Medallist, for example). Why are these world-wide possibilities not being taken up? Has the Board considered the merits of locating WMF research, develop and operations away from SF? Specifically, have they considered the London Knowledge Quarter as a possible base? Does the Board have a policy on location, and will they publish it? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 12:09, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

+1 From an outside perspective, much of the top level "recruiting" is based on who is a friend of a friend on your personal network. This limits the field of view that always results in bias, and bias at the top level will trickle to all levels. The good news is that the board can easily act to correct its own failed self-governance and make decisions that visibly shift away from Silicon Valley/Americanocentric bias, and this can be done now rather than in some vague "moving-forward" thoughtful future world. --Fæ (talk) 12:41, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Moving away from a SF-centrism to a London-centrism? The problem is not physical location but appointment. The cheapest location works and currently it's SF, at WMF's. Dealing with appointment a two step process would do the trick: for example WMF proposes ten candidates and the community selects three of them. --Vituzzu (talk) 13:14, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

To be clear, I mentioned the possibility of London as a base, not the base. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:24, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

If we are focussing on the board of trustees, then certainly a community input to the governance process would be helpful. In fact, this as an open process, hand-in-hand with proper declarations of any existing or perceived potential conflict of loyalties would make for a highly robust and unusually transparent board of trustees. By "declarations" I would be hoping for frank and complete statements of any relationship or potential loyalty, such as "[person] is the ex-president of the yacht club I support, and we often meet at events and talk about working together on projects", "[person] was my manager in 2001 and we stayed in touch", or "I know [person] as they approached me with an investment offer in 2014 and I had a holiday in their villa last year". --Fæ (talk) 13:28, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

In general, I think it would be nice to have a somewhat dispersed model, it worked great with wiki-data, for example. However, there is a cost of coordination that has to be taken into account. I could imagine e.g. some mature chapters offering such coordination of tasks to some extent (WMDE at least has been clearly mature enough). Pundit (talk) 19:46, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

None of this is a new challenge. When I consulted at JPMorgan in the 1990s, the development team was split over London, Paris and New York and there was no difficulty in having agile teams working on the same projects even when this meant real-time operational changes. We didn't even bother with video conferencing, picking up the telephone and simply talking with each other worked. Most of the staff knew each other personally as the longer you worked on the projects, the more often you would have a chance to visit one of the other centres for a bit of hands-on experience in the other teams. It's not rocket-science. --Fæ (talk) 20:00, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, and it's a question of weighing the advantages against the disadvantages. This is why I am asking the Board whether they have considered these questions, or will do so, and to consult and publish as widely as they can. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:24, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Thinking about the WMF Board composition

The consultation at Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Thinking about the WMF Board composition has closed, without any published conclusions. Will the Board re-open that discussion and publish the lessons learned from it, especially in the light of subsequent events? One useful component of a renewed consultation on this topicwould be to publish the criteria used to sift the names suggested in the consultation which are mentioned here. I myself suggested some names but received no indication that they had been considered further, so presumably they were sifted out by one of those criteria, which were not made public. If the Board governance committee could be persuaded to publish the selection criteria (or indeed, anything else about their activities) they propose to apply, then it would help those of us with names in mind not to waste their time by proposing names that are certain to be rejected. So, will the Board and its Governance Committee please help us to help them in this -- rather important -- issue. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:40, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Knowledge Engine funding

Does the Board accept the accuracy of the article in the Wikipedia Signpost for 10 February 2016 en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-02-10/Special report? On reflection, does the Board believe that this has been well handled, and will they undertake a lessons learnt review and publish the results? Among other questions on the subject, will the Board indicate what amount of Knight Foundation funding and what amount of other donor funding has been allocated for this project? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 07:42, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee allegations not notified to the party

It has come to my notice that one of the arbitrators, Opabinia Regalis, has made allegations to you about an editor on en:wp, Vote (X) for Change. She did not have the courtesy to notify her she was doing this, nor did she supply a copy of the allegations. Perhaps you could post a copy on her talk page, en:User talk:Vote (X) for Change so she can see what is being alleged and respond as appropriate.

I know something of this case, and two discussions I have located would appear to be worthy of your attention. The first is on the talk page of one of the administrators, Zzuuzz, who said that the ban had been "superseded", extract below:

I followed the links and I reached this: User talk:DoRD/Archive 2#Showing you something I just wanted to be certain to make sure you saw. 86.149.12.63 (talk) 14:42, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

I saw that temporary conditional unblock half an hour ago. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:45, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Have you seen the discussion which immediately followed it? 86.149.12.63 (talk) 14:47, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Is that the community unban discussion? I saw the re-block two days later. I think we're done here. Would you like me to block you again? -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:51, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Did Fram see the discussion? 86.149.12.63 (talk) 14:54, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Template:Facepalm. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 15:01, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi. The above discussion concluded that the OP was not banned and you did not block him/her. At the administrators' noticeboard you have blocked an OP claiming (s)he is "banned" without linking to any discussion. Are the two matters related? 188.220.41.218 (talk) 14:17, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
So,

• This user's account is blocked[3] and there has been no successful appeal against the block,
• This user is community banned[4] and there has been no successful appeal against the ban,
• This user continues to violate Wikipedia policy, and refer to themselves in the third person

I conclude that there is no doubt that this user (User:Vote (X) for Change) is banned. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 08:01, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

I just happened to come upon this discussion by chance. Zzuuzz did not have the courtesy to notify the participants that he was reopening it.

So

• Fram blocked per incuriam, i.e. at the time he placed the block he didn't know the editor had been unbanned.
• When he discovered his mistake he didn't extend the block but let it run off.
• End of story. 86.149.14.193 (talk) 18:44, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

The second discussion is on the talk page of the reference desks, most of which have been protected, against consensus, for up to three months:

A wise admin once told me that it's easiest to think of these characters as being actually all the same guy. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:01, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Not so wise, Bugs. When the CU results come through that administrator is going to be in trouble (think Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry). Two more administrators are also in trouble - Elockid and Sunshine. The editor was unbanned years ago and they both know it. That's why no "abuse" report was filed for six years (check the date of creation on the "history" tab). All the best, 92.27.34.20 (talk) 17:22, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Honestly this is only the most recent in a long string of incidents by the English Wikipedia Arbitration committee or its members. They have no respect for the Arbcom's rules, site policy, WMF policy or the limits of their authority.

• Recently that disbanded both the Audit subcommittee and the Block appeal subcommittee without so much as a whisper to the community even though the community had non Arb members on the AUSC. Those community members didn't even know until someone else outside the Arbcom mentioned it too them.
• Then, in a case to ban The Devils Advocate the outgoing arbitration committee didn't have enough votes to ban him so they extended the case and let the new group vote on it as well and then they were able to achieve the ban some wanted.
• There was recently even a community discussion about disbanding the arbcom for its problematic behavior. As of yet it hasn't gone anywhere but its unlikely it would because if it did start to gain momentum, the arbs would close it as a disruption and probably block some of the participants to quell the mutiny.

These are just a couple of examples in a long list of problematic behavior. The people on the Arbcom, regardless of who they are at the time, know that they have absolute power and can do anything they want. There is no checks and balances, no auditing, nothing to prevent abuse and its harming the project and driving editors out so that the only the most abusive admins are left. There are still a lot of good admins and editors left from which to build on but the WMF needs to do something about the ENWP arbcom. It's no secret I haven't had any respect for the Arbcom in a long time. They have shown time and time again they cannot be trusted and have no respect for their own policies and procedures its also clear that the community is losing patience with their behavior as well. I highly recommend that the foundation take action immediately to either eliminate the ENWP arbcom or force them to start following their own policy and show that the WMF will not allow them to do as they wish regardless of policy. Reguyla (talk) 14:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Reguyla. Can't the enwiki community remove its own Arbcom if the situation demands it? Spanish Wikipedia did so years ago. Raystorm (talk) 20:09, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

In theory, yes, but its almost impossible to come to an agreement about in anything in that community and even if they did, I am not convinced the Arbcom would listen. They would likely just say that the community cannot remove them or that it didn't constitute a true consensus or they would argue that it didn't meet some rule of policy the feel is needed, etc.. They have already, routinely, redefined the rules to suit them. I just think and have for some time now that the Foundation should review their actions and procedures because there is currently no auditing done on them and no checks and balances so they are, in essence, allowed to do whatever they want. Reguyla (talk) 20:15, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I see. But can't the (very vibrant) community of enwiki set up some checks and balances? Without going into the specific case of en:arbcom, can't the community set up an ombuds figure, specific policies or the like? In Spanish Wikipedia we spend a lot of time discussing checks and balances for eg admins, and some policies are approved and some aren't. Can't the en:community come up with something that is able to address concerns? Raystorm (talk) 20:34, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

No, not without the person starting the process being accused and possible blocked for disruption or some other fallacy by the members of the arbcom to prevent such a thing. On ENWP there is also a lot of discussion about checks and balances for admins, changing RFA, etc. and in all the years there has been talk, not one has been adopted. They are always shot down regardless of how much or little support they receive, no matter what the idea is or how well thought out, they are always shot down. Because in the end, the admins on the site have to close the discussion and the ones who are willing to do that type of close are usually not the ones who want such a change. At this point the only way that change is going to happen with regard to the Arbcom is if it comes from the foundation itself. Frankly, if they are unwilling or unable to do so then they don't really care about the success of Wikipedia because the Arbcom and a couple of the more aggressive admins are driving the site down and running all the editors out. Reguyla (talk) 21:47, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

For arguments' sake, what would you have the WMF do, exactly? Raystorm (talk) 22:23, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Make sure that the Arbcom is following policy and their own procedures and hold them accountable if they do not. If the WMF reviews some of the efforts of the Arbcom over even the last year they are going to see a horrible track record and a complete disregard for policy. The community can't do anything about it but the foundation certainly can if they want to improve the culture of the projects and reduce harassment. Reguyla (talk) 01:09, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Well I guess that pretty much answers my questions and comments. No one at the WMF even cares enough to leave a comment saying they care, which is frankly exactly what the English Wikipedia Arbcom counts on. Complacency at the WMF and a complete lack of checks and balances to prevent the widespread abusiveness of editors and site policy and the ongoing corruption, abuse and POV pushing that happens on Wiki nearly everyday. As long as the money keeps flowing in and people keep donating, then the Arbcom can do whatever they want. Reguyla (talk) 03:59, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Deep strategy

It may well be that the WMF is at a crossroads and that decisions need to be taken now that will determine the direction of the projects on a five-ten year timescale or even further out. Has the Board been discussing these issues? Do the individual Board members have views about the direction that should be taken and where they want the projects to be in 2025? Will they share those views and discussions with the community? How does the Board wish the community to play its part in those decisions? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 07:31, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. The site's are just running on autopilot with no oversight and the WMF has no vision, no mission and a non functional leadership team that is only interested in building empires and taking in as many donation dollars as she can. No wonder so many people at the WMF have resigned lately. I think its up to about 4 in 5 days now. Reguyla (talk) 04:04, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Innovation

The lack of activity by WMF at the Innovation page, even though it is one of the three components of the 2015 Call to Action suggests that it is not as active as that Call would imply. Unfortunately the ED has been too busy to respond to me personally on the matter since last June, but no doubt she was busy with her own innovation project among other things. Does the Board believe that Innovation is in a healthy state in the WMF? Does the Board feel that the WMF has appropriate resources and partnerships in place to undertake innovation on the scale it needs? Will the Board ask for a report from the strategic lead for innovation and publish it? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 12:14, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

The WMF is not in the innovation business Rogol, they are in the donation business. They don't care about improving the projects or accumulating knowledge, they care about making money. What started as a great concept has turned into nothing but a greed machine to line the pockets of the exec's at the WMF at the expense of the editors doing the work for free. What a shame. Reguyla (talk) 04:01, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

They claim to be in the Innovation business, and so I am asking the Board to develop their plan of action to substantiate that. Failure to do so would be evidence for your analysis, but at present I have not yet been driven to that conclusion. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:25, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Inaction speaks louder

The Board really needs to consider becoming more active in its communication, and urgently too. Some of its members have been somewhat active here, but there's a gap widening between the Board and the community over such issues as Board membership -- the recent removal of a member for reasons that remain unclear, and the withdrawal of an appointee in the face of strong community resistance -- and strategic planning. There are points raised here that have been waiting for an answer for months and while they are not all of the highest importance, the failure to even acknowledge most of them sends out a clear signal: that the Board holds the community in general, and those members who attempt to engage on strategic and governance issues in particular, in contempt. Please do not let that be your message to the community. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:11, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree it would be helpful for the board to be more active here. However, they are all volunteers, and it's reasonable that they might not have the time to respond to everything. You've created 11 new threads here in just the past week. You might want to consider slowing down on that a bit... --Yair rand (talk) 00:07, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

The Board members are indeed volunteers, who presumably knew what they were taking on. If they find themselves unable to deal with the workload then it would be better for them to stand down than to do the job badly. This page is hardly the most active channel of communication, but in any case I hope it is clear that it is the general lack of communication, of which the inactivity at this page is a small part, that is so damaging. Better communication at the start would diminish the rate of questioning here. If the Board need secretarial assistance, by my estimate about one thousandth of the workforce available to the WMF would be sufficient to triage the major communication channels, acknowledge the comments with holding reply and summarise the main points for the Board members to look at. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:25, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Due to the current issues the workload was indeed larger than I imagined. It is hard to say though how much the board is doing behind the scenes currently. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:46, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Well if they are, we aren't seeing it in the communities and given that at least 2 of them were incapable of even signing their posts here on Wiki I don't have a very high opinion that the current group of board members has the community or the projects in mind. It sure does look good on a resume to say you are on the board of a top ten website though I'm sure. Even if they aren't effective. Reguyla (talk) 19:26, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Build or rebuild

A common thread underlying the disquiet caused to the volunteer community in some of the more unsatisfactory initiatives over the last few years has been a failure of the WMF to distinguish between building on existing projects and rebuilding them. For example, it's clear that there is an appetite for attracting new volunteers by setting up some kind of social medium aspect to the projects. The Gather proposal was to insert a social media sharing application into an encyclopaedia, and expect the volunteers writing the encyclopaedia to take on the task of curating the social medium, an activity quite at odds with their other activities (and without adequate tools, to boot). The more grandiose aspects of the Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia appear to have been to turn an encyclopaedia into a curated search engine, and would have met with similar dismay. What should have been done with both these proposals is to identify them as building layers on top of the encyclopaedia, not as rebuilding the underlying project. Positioning them as new projects, with clear new objectives and new tools would have gone a long way to reassuring the existing contributors that the encyclopaedia project continued to be a valued channel for the dissemination of information, and that the layered projects could then develop their own communities of practice (or not, as the case may be). Perhaps the Board would like to make this distinction explicit in their thinking about #Deep strategy which I hope they are shortly going to be sharing with the rest of the community. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:21, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

On the notion you mention about attracting volunteers. It doesn't matter how many fancy tools they make or how many initiatives or surveys they do to study attrition, no one is going to stay for long if something isn't done about the hostile environment. If the WMF wants to retain editors, then they need to address the admins and functionaries who are out of control and enjoying an environment where they have no oversight and can do whatever they want. They do it on Wiki, they do it on IRC, they do it in OTRS and they do it in email's. If the WMF is even remotely serious about improving the editing environment and keeping new editors, then they will start doing what I have been saying for years and why some admins work so hard to convince people to keep me out of the English Wikipedia. They need to deal with the double standard and unethical behavior of the admin culture. No one wants to edit in a hostile environment and even less so as volunteers. They also do not want to be constantly harassed and threatened with being blocked because the admins do not want to collaborate with anyone who does not share their POV and are allowed to do whatever they want. It's amazing to me how glaringly obvious the problem is and that no one at the WMF wants to do anything about it.Reguyla (talk) 19:33, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Governance of the English Wikipedia

Here is a comment for the WMF, that is a component of other issues that I will identify shortly. It is my understanding that the WMF Board is currently preparing its strategy for 2016, and I would like this taken into account.

The basic problem has to do with the governance of the English Wikipedia. I am aware that the WMF Board takes the position that each language Wikipedia, and each WMF Wiki in general, is self-governing. That is a valid general principle, but common sense is needed. Because the English Wikipedia is said to be self-governing, it is ungoverned. It has an unworkable governance model, and, because it is self-governing, it is not capable of its own governance reform. The English Wikipedia is said to be governed by consensus, but consensus is often not feasible for a group as large and diverse and fractious as the English Wikipedia. Consensus governance doesn’t work in the English Wikipedia, at least not with regard to policies or conduct. It works reasonably well for content in the form of Requests for Comments. However, the idea that the English Wikipedia can, on its own, change its governance to something other than consensus is just unrealistic. We don’t have a consensus as to what form of governance we want. From time to time, editors have said that they would like a constitutional convention. There is usually agreement that a constitutional convention would be good. However, consensus, in the sense of supermajority, is elusive. Any constitutional convention for the English Wikipedia will anyway require some sort of support from the WMF Board. Does the WMF Board think that its responsibilities include helping the Wiki communities achieve effective governance?

To be more specific as to my assessment of the self-governance of the English Wikipedia, we do a good job on Requests for Comments. In my opinion, we are essentially always stalemated on any policy matter, because we are deeply divided, and the consensus model of governance does not work for a large, diverse, fractious community. (We have had a few policies enacted for us by the one body that we have that is exempt from consensus, which is the ArbCom, which was created by Jimbo Wales (not by the community), is elected by majority, not by supermajority, and acts by majority, not by supermajority.

In short, is the WMF Board sufficiently satisfied with its own perception that each of its communities can self-govern (that they will ignore evidence to the contrary), or are they willing to work with a very large, nominally very successful community (but never successful at governance) to achieve practical governance?

Can the WMF Board help the English Wikipedia, which is very large, very diverse, and very fractious, achieve more or less effective governance, or do you have a principle that you can’t get involved in communities, or something else?

Thank you.

Robert McClenon (talk) 17:09, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Personally, I have no faith at all in the communities ability to govern itself at this point and much of that concern is based off the leadership of the project (The Arbcom, admins and functionaries) and their conduct on the site both towards each other and its users. The English Wikipedia is the core of the WMF projects. It gets the most edits, has the largest editor base and its the flagship for the WMF as much as some projects hate to admit that. What happens on ENWP affects all the other projects, often in a negative way. Its time for the WMF to address the problem of ENWP's governance failures and start to actively participate in turning the project around before its declining activity and failure is no longer preventable. Recruitment on the project is failing; RFA is failing; more editors are leaving than oining, less people are doing less edits (although more is being done by bots); Arbcom has become a joke and has been failing to function for several years, etc. Its time to act. Reguyla (talk) 19:55, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

If you didn't yet, please participate to the community consultation about strategy, since one (out of three) of the feedback requested is on community and your inputs are more than welcome. Thank you, 87.241.53.226 11:26, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Where would the WMF get the authority/legal right to impose governance on the community of English Wikipedia? · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:09, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

It's their website; therefore, they can legally choose to operate it however they want.

The more important question is whether the existing communities (in the instant case, the core community at the English Wikipedia) would accept that they have a moral right to do so. You know the line about a boss telling an employee, "Do this, or I'll fire you and hire someone who will?" That approach can become self-defeating. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:42, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing I don't really agree. Yes its a website by definition that's true and technically the WMF can pull the plug and walk away if they wanted too but I don't really agree its "their's". The site belongs as much to the editors who maintain it as anyone and it's my opinion that the WMF as an organization and its leadership doesn't really care about the projects success as long as the edits keep coming in. Its just a paycheck to them. I also don't think that telling them to do this or I'll hire someone who will is the only way to get the project under control. The main problem with ENWP is that there are no checks and balances and too much power rests in the hands of too few who actively take advantage of it. If the WMF implemented some minor quality controls to limit the power of the Arbcom and bring a stop to some of the abusive and corrupt conduct of some of the Arbcom members and admins on the site then in short order things would turn around. They should not be rewarding admins who frequently threaten others to win arguments, tell editors to Fuck off, call the community a bunch of morons, etc. Reguyla (talk) 12:25, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Peter asked about the "legal right", not about whether editors believe that it would be fair for the WMF to impose a different governance model. As you have agreed, it's true that the WMF has the legal right do whatever they want with the websites, from pulling the plug to randomly merging articles to blocking all accounts with usernames that end in a vowel. Things like that would be foolish and destructive, but not illegal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:35, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I think communities can self-govern; I come from a (big) project that does just that. But for arguments' sake, what do you mean by "achieve practical governance"? Raystorm (talk) 20:28, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Community Requests for Discussion

Would the Board be open to a proposal that a sufficiently well-supported topic from the community should be placed on the Board's agenda for discussion? I am thinking of, say, 100 signatures. The proposal is not that the Board should be required to take any action or decision as a result, the community cannot expect to override the Board's authority, simply that the Board commit to a full, fair and frank discussion and report back on the topic. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 16:13, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea. I can think of several topics that the WMF should address, chief among them is oversight of the admins and functionaries who currently are allowed to do what they want to the detriment of the projects. Reguyla (talk) 17:45, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Chief Technology Officer

The WMF has been looking for a Chief Technology Officer since last May. Does the Board feel this situation is satisfactory? Wha action do they propose to remedy it? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 07:27, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I find this delay troubling on a couple aspects. First, if there was interest from outside in the job someone qualified would have applied. That they have not done so shows how the WMF is viewed in the industry. Secondly, it seems that the leadership doesn't think its important to fill this position and lastly and arguably most importantly, it means the organizations leadership feels there are no qualified people to promote from within or that would have done so already. I find the last one most troubling personally. Reguyla (talk) 17:43, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Underspending and endowment

In case the WMF had an unplanned underspending this year (e.g. thanks to a decrease in total wages), would the board be able to allocate the budget surplus to the planned endowment? I think an endowment should compensate sudden financial hardship, but also sudden financial ease. Nemo 12:23, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Reliability

Our shared vision is free knowledge for all, but reliable information is what makes knowledge, and presently we are publishing unreliable assertions. Readers and editors who responded to the recent community consultation [5] wanted improved accuracy and neutrality in our offering. By my estimation there are fewer than fifteen English language Wikipedia articles that have a version that meets our own definition of reliable.* The board needs to recognise this as a serious failure, and needs to empower the community and the WMF to prioritise making the world's encyclopedia trustworthy.

Improving quality was on the five-year-plan but to my knowledge not one staff member was appointed to monitor reliability. There is no board committee tasked with monitoring the problem. No resolution addresses it.

I'd like to hear individual board members' thoughts on this issue, and wonder if the board might consider passing a resolution that acknowledges Wikimedia's reliability problem and empowers the WMF and the FDC to enthusiastically support realistic initiatives addressing the problem.

I realise the board can only express wishes and intentions, and give overall direction and priorities to the ED and the FDC. But you're not presently doing that with regard to the reliability problem. And I realise there are limits to what the WMF can do. But they will be restrained even in that already limited capacity without clear direction on reliability from you, the board.

I'd like to see the board name the problem as a priority issue, and so encourage volunteers and partners to work toward a solution, and reassure the FDC and the ED that they may direct appropriate resources toward it. While the board publicly ignores the problem, it is harder to convince potential partners that we have the WMF's full support in our efforts to address it.

* Here I'm referring to articles like Dengue fever, where this version passed expert review and was published in a journal.

Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:37, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

"Reliability" made me first think of site reliability (in terms of server uptime and connectivity), but we obviously have articles such as w:en:Reliability of Wikipedia. Maybe accuracy or verifiability or breadth of deep, rich content could be alternate terms to explore?

There's a larger question of how much the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees should be focused on editorial content. That's typically the editors' purview. Keeping the sites up and available for reading and writing (i.e., site operations) is what this Board of Trustees is really responsible for, not prioritizing content development and quality, per se. That said, the Board has passed resolutions such as wmf:Resolution:Controversial content. These types of resolutions are largely decorative/toothless, though it sounds like you may be fine with that. For example, in the case of controversial content, it was a lot of time spent, ultimately resulting in the conclusion that the community needs to solve the problem itself and has been implementing adequate enough measures to do so. Similarly, even if you get a resolution passed about the reliability of editorial content, it probably won't have much effect on its own as it will probably mostly be a few paragraphs reaffirming that the Wikimedia community is in charge of the content and that we all eventually want great, high-quality content. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:44, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

I think I agree with all of that. "Accuracy", "trustworthiness", any number of terms might capture the concept. I settled on "reliability" because it's what we use at en.Wikipedia to denote the best sources, but I'm not wedded to it.

The WMF won't be involved in editorial decisions, but the board should be (and is) concerned about the reliability of our product. The resolution would be largely symbolic: encouraging efforts already under way, and giving the green light to the FDC and ED to support them and new initiatives as they arise from the community.

On the mailing list, Gerard asked what would the money be spent on. IEG's, and chapters are already supporting these initiatives (and individuals are contributing a lot of their own personal funds). I attended a conference in London last year that was all about improving the reliability of Wikimedia's science content. That was supported by WMUK and Wellcome Trust. I envision a summit happening in the next few years, where the editors-in-chief of the world's top medical journals agree on a structure to provide free expert review for our medical content. Hopefully, we can tack that on to an existing industry conference, but it will still cost something. The resolution would simply endorse this kind of thing as a ligitimate use of WMF resources.

One project I'm working on will require some developer input as it matures. It would help us when we're competing for developers' time if the board expressly prioritised making our product reliable.

I also agree with your last sentence but would just highlight your use of "eventually". This symbolic gesture from the board would, in my opinion, smooth the road and speed things up a bit. It won't cost the board anything but a bit of time, and would help us at the coal face. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 23:49, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Would you be pushing for reliability assessment across the board, or for selected aspects? For example reliable information in medical articles has a more direct influence on the usefulness of Wikipedia than reliable information in engineering and taxonomic articles, or articles on music, sports, games, politics and religion. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:12, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Peter, if you're referring to assessing the reliability of a sample of our content on a topic, then I'm still open to ideas about how best to do that. But one method would involve subjecting a random sample to rigorous expert review, using the field's top researchers and scholars chosen by the editors of the relevant top peer-reviewed journals. If that's the method employed, then you'd be limited to assessing only topics that are well-covered by good scholarship, and where the relevant journals are willing to get involved.

But we're getting off track here. There are many possible approaches to making Wikimedia reliable. Here, I'm just asking the board to make a statement to the effect that (a) it is a problem that the world's encyclopedia and most (all?) other Wikimedia products are not reliable sources and (b) it empowers the WMF to support reasonable efforts to fix that. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:52, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't it seem like a majority of Wikipedia articles (at the English Wikipedia) are not on subjects "well-covered by good scholarship"? Also, it's worth pointing people to w:en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Google Project again. When we did something similar before, we determined that even the very organized and active WikiProject Medicine wasn't able to handle more than about 20 reviews (all on important subjects) in a reasonable length of time. A sustained rate of five reviews a month would be seriously pushing our capacity to respond. If a review falls on a talk page, and nobody acts upon it, did it make a sound? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:56, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing:

1. Are the majority of topics in Wikipedia poorly covered by scholarship? Yes. So? An awful lot are well-covered - like most medical topics.
2. Regarding the Google project, It was poorly conceived. The pilot I'm running only reviews articles that have passed FA and have been nominated for review by the editors. I'm not proposing dumping unsolicited reviews on random articles.
3. Regarding the existing WP:MED workforce not being able to handle 20 reviews a year, I know. The main, underlying hypothesis here is, if we offer review by the world's top experts, it will incentivise other experts to start editing and getting our articles up to FA, and responding to the review.

Think what you will of the last point, but only doing it will prove or disprove it. If it doesn't ultimately lead to large numbers of experts volunteering to work our medical articles up to FA, then it will have failed. I know this. Believe me, What, I've thought this through.

Anyway. Why are you taking this opportunity to criticise one attempt at improving Wikipedia's reliability. My question is, should the WMF board of trustees care that Wikipedia is unreliable, and should they urge the WMF to support efforts to improve reliability? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 00:27, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

1. IMO a more broadly applicable approach might be appropriate. Reliability matters for biographies of living people, even though >95% of them aren't "covered by scholarship" at all.
2. The Google Project wasn't poorly conceived. It did not address random articles. It addressed important articles, especially articles that are of relevance to developing countries.
3. I honestly don't think that this incentive will actually produce more experts creating FAs on scholarly subjects. I wish it would, of course, and the only way to prove it is to try, but if the allure of having "your" medical subject featured on the Main Page doesn't attract a medical expert enough to figure out how to edit, what to say, how to source, where to get help, how to resolve disputes, what the conventions are, how to navigate the FAC process, etc., then adding a Board resolution in favor of reliability (and motherhood and apple pie) seems unlikely to do so. It certainly would make no difference in my own willingness to take an article to FAC, and I'm already well past the learning curve. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
I'm happy to discuss specific approaches to improving reliability, though it's off-topic for this thread - which is about the simple notion that the board recognises unreliability is a problem and empowers the WMF to support sensible efforts to improve reliability.

1. There is more than one approach to improving reliability. Different topics will have different solutions.
2. The Google project was poorly conceived. It missed the important point that volunteers will work on whatever articles take their fancy, when they feel like it. It's all very well having experts turn up at an article and offer advice (I think they were medical writers not topic experts, though), but if no one feels like working on that topic, nothing will happen. The model we're discussing - the pilot I'm working on - waits for an article to reach FA before the topic experts step in.
3. You can dismiss such a motion as motherhood and apple pie. From their complete lack of response here, it seems the board does too. I don't, and I'm the guy trying to actually do something, structurally, about reliability. I don't expect the board motion to have a direct effect on your motivation or random experts' motivation to edit medical articles. It would help me in approaching potential partners - particularly medical journal editors-in-chief - and it would help me when I'm competing for scarce developer time within the WMF. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:41, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Considering that the "Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia" grant application was funded to allow WMF to develop "the most reliable and trustworthy public information channel on the planet", I would have thought that an explicit commitment to reliability by the Board would not come amiss: refusing to do so when asked would look very odd in the context of that grant application. It will be interesting to hear from the Board how, in their opinion, the fact that Wikipedia does not regard itself as a reliable source fits into that commitment. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 12:23, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Utterly opposed to the Board or Foundation having any control or standards for editorial content on any national Wikipedia including, but not limited to, en-Wikipedia beyond, at least, editorial content involving legal issues. To do so goes against the very wiki-nature of the project. The suggestions made at Jimbo's talk page and on the Village Pump are nothing less than converting Wikipedia from a wiki to, at least in part, a professionally-edited encyclopedia. Why aren't the original principles on which Wikipedia was founded sufficient? People may rant about reliability, but the success of the encyclopedia in its present form clearly indicates that those are the expressions of a vocal minority versus the millions of people who use Wikipedia on a daily basis without substantial concern about its reliability. It's also to be remembered that it is and is intended to be nothing more than an encyclopedia. It's not intended to be an academic source and need not be more reliable than traditional encyclopedias of the past. I have no issue with the idea, as suggested by Jimbo on his talk page, is that the primary role of the Foundation should be to provide, through software, means by which reliability can be made easier to achieve or unreliability easier to avoid or control, but I'm opposed to any direct intervention on their part in regard to editorial content or, indeed, to having software changes forced upon the individual Wikipedia communities which those communities believe to be more harmful than beneficial. Regards, TransporterMan (talk) 19:07, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

TransporterMan: I agree the Board or Foundatiion may not control content. Nor should they. This proposed resolution is not about that. I'm asking for an expression of concern from the board that Wikipedia and its sister projects are unreliable, and a call from them for the WMF to support efforts to improve reliability.

You say complaints about reliability are the expressions of a vocal minority. I understand some editors don't care and like things just the way they are, but the main plea coming from readers and editors in the recent community consultation (I discuss this below in my response to Ajpolino) was for improved quality, reliability and accuracy. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 00:27, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

•  Oppose I'm sorry but this is kinda silly to expect the foundation board to make a statement like this. Its not going to happen and its just not realistic. Of course its not "reliable", its updated by individuals with no proven professional certifications or training (some have them, but we don't make them prove it to edit). Frankly, until the WMF can get a handle on civility, attrition and recruitment, the board has bigger problems to deal with than stating the obvious. Reguyla (talk) 19:50, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Reguyla: Well, Jimmy said he'd sponsor such a resolution if there was support for it from the community. And from the comments immediately above and below, do you think it's obvious to everyone? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 00:27, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole: Honestly I don't know why we even care if Jimmy would support it. He has a position only because he is the founder and does almost nothing for the projects these days. If it were up to me I would remove his Admin access he never uses and remove any mention of him being an avenue of review for the Arbcom. Still though, if the WMF deals with the problems with abusive admins thinking they are exempt from policy and the toxic environment on the projects that's hindering recruitment and driving away editors then a lot of these types of problems will work themselves out. Because we will have editors actually editing instead of a bunch of POV pushers and power hungry bureaucrats that don't actually edit. Reguyla (talk) 22:09, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose any such move. Wikipedia is not supposed to be reliable in the same way that our sources we use are reliable. Otherwise, study after study have shown that, contrary to insistence otherwise by random people who don't actually do any studies in this direction, Wikipedia is generally more reliable than most other only sources of a similar nature. Given that a) the premise is wrong and b) we already explain the reliability of Wikipedia, I'm not sure what else we need to do here. --Jayron32 (talk) 21:13, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Jayron32: Who says Wikipedia is not supposed to be reliable? We all know it isn't, but do we all think that's how it has to be? Those studies into the reliability of Wikipedia are all poor quality. But even if Wikipedia is as reliable as some other sources, shouldn't it be better? Just because you can't envision a way for that to happen without harming Wilipedia, doesn't mean a way can't be found. No one is proposing a solution should be forced on the encyclopedia. The foundation wouldn't try, and if they did the community would reject it. The solutions come from the community. All I'm asking for here is the board to give moral support to the aspiration. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 00:27, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose Comment (See below for addition). I think such a statement has potential downsides that outweigh any upsides that I can see. I fear that if the board were to release such a statement, it may irritate some editors who might take it as an insult to their hard work. It seems to me that some editors already feel that the board does not have their best interests in mind, and so I'm afraid a statement like this could fan the flames.

I'm not totally clear on what the benefits would be. I've read the arguments above, but they seem a bit abstract and hypothetical. Could you please explicitly state what you think the positives of such a statement would be? I think that would help some of us to better understand your position. Thanks! Ajpolino (talk) 01:19, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Ajpolino. The community is aware of the reliability problem. Last year, the WMF surveyed 1,295 people, asking them to describe (a) global trends that are affecting Wikimedia projects and (b) characteristics of vibrant and healthy projects in the future. The respondents were 69% anonymous, 7% new accounts created to complete the survey, and 24% established, experienced users.[6] Although this last group were only 24% of respondents, they made 31% of the comments. [7]

The 2,468 comments were organised into 28 themes; the top five emerging concerns (by number of respondents mentioning them) were, in order of popularity:

1. Mobile & apps
2. Multimedia
3. Accuracy
4. Neutrality
5. Content structure and breadth [8]

I'm happy to define "reliability" as "accuracy and neutrality" so, if you combine those comments, reliability outranks all other concerns.

The ranking of these concerns differs between logged-in users (more likely to reflect the editor perspective) [9] and anonymous respondents (more likely to represent the readers)[10] but accuracy and neutrality were high on both groups' list of concerns.

I would like the board to just acknowledge these concerns, and empower the WMF to support any realistic initiatives that address them. That's all.

In practical terms, when I approach a potential partner institution with a proposal that they work with us to improve reliability, it would help me a lot to be able to point them to such a resolution, and reassure them that the WMF is supporting such efforts. When I approach the Funds Dissemination Committee to fund a conference or meeting aimed at devising strategies to measure or improve Wikimedia's reliability, it would help me if I could point them to such a resolution. When I approach the very pressed WMF technical team for help with software to present the reviewed versions of our articles, it would help to be able to point them to such a resolution. But that's just me. There are many others working on the reliability problem who would also benefit from a clear statement from the board on this. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:17, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I'm not sure I have the experience to really evaluate those benefits since I have no involvement with potential partners, funding committees, etc. I'm still a bit worried, but hey what do I know. I've changed my vote from "oppose" to "comment", and I'll keep an eye on others' responses. Thanks. Ajpolino (talk) 02:20, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

• Comment Agree that our readers have requested as one of their top priorities the improvement of our reliability (it was ranked 3rd, 4th, and 5th while search and discovery come in 13th)[11]. Agree that having greater support from the WMF to improve quality would be useful. For example it was a community effort to get the copy and paste detection bot up and running.[12] It has been selected by the community as one of the top 10 efforts so hopefully we will see it improved with some support from the WMF soon. The improvement of reliability however is a slow effort that is hard to measure. Not entirely sure how to bring it about but the verbal support of the effort from the board would not be harmful. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:35, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
• Comment Pardon me. I'm a relatively new user on the "user" side of Wikipedia, but I've been a "real" user (that is, the general public) of Wikipedia for most of your 15 years. I sort of fell into this discussion by accident, but it certainly is in line with many of my personal concerns about Wikipedia, both as it is now, and its future. I believe this is the concern, here. IMHO, Wikipedia (and by that I mean the broad community of user-side editors and the foundation) tends to forget who its users are. This problem is compounded by the fact that we call our editors "users".

Wikipedia has two user communities. The first, and most important community are not [[User:]]s. They are the general public who go to our website, search for information and read our articles. They know nothing about what Wikipedia is, what our history and values are, who our editors are, what our publishing process is, and how much editorial control is exerted (or not) by who. Let me repeat that point. The general public who uses our articles have no clue, none, about the black magic that produces Wikipedia articles. They assume (and we all know what happens when you assume!) that "somebody" had to make sure that this information is correct. Now, we all know that to be untrue, and cannot be true, by the very nature of how Wikipedia works, and the founding principles. But the general public knows nothing of this. When I hear stories of Oxford University Press, of all organizations, using our content as reliable information, that's just shocking! But that is what the general public expects of us. Rightly, or wrongly, that is what the man on the street believes. This is a problem.

Once upon a time there were these big things made of paper and cardboard, and fake leather, and they called themselves "Encyclopedias". They were very expensive. But they were worth every penny because they contained the sum of all of mankind's knowledge ... or so their salesmen pitched. Then came the Internet. And one of those big old companies (we all know who) decided to jump on the Internet fad ... but then they decided to do something stupid. Then the Internet rose up and made a fuss and virtually blacklisted the company from the Internet. Soon after, Wikipedia came into being. And Wikipedia started growing ... and getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Eventually, Wikipedia had more articles on more subjects than the old companies ... and the old companies found themselves irrelevant to today's world. Where the old encyclopedias once stood, there was Wikipedia, and it was free. But what the public doesn't know is that Wikipedia wasn't written the same way as those encyclopedias once were. And because of that, Wikipedia can't pretend that one word of its 5 million articles is the least bit correct. It can say that it did look over a few articles, at one time or another, but it can't say that the articles they have today are the same as the ones they looked at, so they can't even say that the few they looked at are correct! But the public doesn't know that!

So with all this said, we come upon an existential question: What is Wikipedia's mission??

Is it to have a fun "toy" encyclopedia that anyone can mess around with and scribble on and post four letter words all over? Or is it to create a "real" encyclopedia created by crowdsourcing the editorial process the way free software did, and brought us GNU and Linux and LibreOffice??

Well, there's a big difference between Wikipedia and them. You see, Wikipedia says it's the encyclopedia that "anyone" can edit. That's a good thing ... and a bad thing. It's been the key to our success, and our biggest problem. It is the reason you're even having this discussion in the first place! The problem is that "anybody" includes literally "anybody" such as an 8 year old, who just learned a new four-letter-word, and likes to post that word over everywhere he can scribble. Or a mentally unstable person who insists that Wikipedia articles must reflect his own personal version of "reality". Or somebody who wants to proclaim himself an "expert" by posting a bio of himself on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia wasn't created with some grand plan for what happens when they hit 5 million articles. I doubt the founders honestly believed they'd reach that mark. They just wanted to do better than Nupedia. And Nupedia did very badly ... they never hit the 100 article mark. And that includes drafts, not published articles. Wikipedia was founded as the anti-Nupedia. Instead of exerting all this control that was killing Nupedia, let's exert no control at all! But there was no long-range plan.

Here we are, 5 million articles later. The public thinks we're something that we're not. Now what? That's the question being asked here. Now what?? If the public knew what we all know, Wikipedia would fold. Someone else would come up to fill the void. Just like someone else came up to fill the void of that big company that thought it could own the Internet. He who does not know history repeats it. I believe I've stumbled into a perfect example of it in action.

The question being asked is "Does Wikipedia want to remain relevant in the future?" Yes? Well, then, you need to do something about this problem. No? Well, then, we can take care of that. You can remain a playpen, and the grown-ups can go elsewhere. Where, you ask? Elsewhere. It's the place you went when Nupedia was going bust. Do you want to be a "real" information provider, or a toy? This is the question.

Now the way GNU and Linux and LibreOffice created their product was similar to yours, but it differed in one key aspect: they accepted submissions from anyone, but they published only the submissions that made sense. What if someone wrote code for the Linux kernel that created a backdoor for every Linux computer in the world?? Linus would look at that submission and hit "reject". Wikipedia publishes it. That's the difference. It's not the matter of setting up a big, bad editorial board, who passes judgement on eveyone saying, "none shall pass". It's a matter of applying some basic sanity, here. We're talking about looking at the scholarly submission of "Sally is a poo-poo head." and deciding, is this a proven fact, backed by a reliable source? Or is it a bunch of nonsense from a 4 year old??

It's also about making a judgement call of what is the impact of our "information"? Is a dubious "fact" about the love life of a dead practitioner of some occult group going to be a matter of life or death? Or is a dubious "fact" in an article about drug dose that, if followed, would kill people a matter of life or death?

We're talking about sanity checks. Is Wikipedia going to be sane or insane? That is the question. So. Will history repeat itself? Will some new project rise up and slay Wikipedia? Or will Wikipedia go forth and prosper? The answer's in your hands. Think carefully. Your 25th anniversary could be somebody else's 10th. That is what you're debating. Just ask a historian. High-storian (talk) 12:48, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

So what's new? · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:02, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

P.S. Not so heavy on the italics please, it is distracting.· · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:04, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

What's new? There is nothing new under the sun. The question is do you want to learn from history, or be a fool destined to repeat it? As for italics, I'm sorry. I'm a human. I do not talk like a robot. Like a robot. Like a robot. Like a robot. ERROR 52: Infinite loop detected. Do you have any constructive comments to share? High-storian (talk) 03:18, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

You probably haven't encountered it, but there are several Wikipedias that do require most edits to be double-checked by someone else before being published. You can read about it at Flagged Revisions. The English Wikipedia (where you edit) has rejected the standard implementation of this, and only rarely uses a variant called "Pending Changes". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:33, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing Very interesting. It's good to know that the capability is there. I wouldn't have ever known otherwise, thank you for a constructive comment. It's certainly worth looking into this further. The broad issue to the question at hand, IMHO, is that Wikipedia is in the information business, but does not want to concern itself with information. Is there something ironic, at least, about that?? I believe the question is do we want to express a concern about the information we provide. To me, it's a no-brainer. History will be the ultimate judge. High-storian (talk) 03:18, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

• Support While the board certainly should not get involved in the detail of content (heaven knows, neither they nor senior management have been recruited with expertise in this area in mind), the content is the reason Wikipedia/media exists, and broad top-level statements of this kind are entirely appropriate and an important part of their function. It would be good to reduce the thinking that WMF is a software organization, which some seem to believe. It is not. Johnbod (talk) 15:16, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

• Comment One can consider starting a new project, a sort of a fork of Wikipedia, where one uses different rules that favors the reliability aspect more. So, you could start with a copy of Wikipedia as it exist today and then let that evolve under different rules and then perhaps adapt those rules to make it work better according to the different reliability criteria. I guess this would work best if this new encyclopedia would only contain scientific content. Count Iblis (talk) 18:12, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Count Iblis. That's an option. I've been thinking we should publish an online "journal": Wikipedia Reviews or Reliable Wikipedia or something, and present a nicely-formatted (like a journal article, not a wiki page) copies of each version of an article that has passed rigorous independent review. But we're digressing. Do you think it would be nice for the board to express their concern about the unreliability of our product and set a goal for making our products reliable? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 00:23, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, but I think they don't necessarily have to take a position on this matter, they can let independent scientists do some research into this matter and then take appropriate measures based on such research results. Count Iblis (talk) 00:34, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Fair enough. I don't think we need scientists to tell us we're unreliable - we admit as much ourselves. I'm just trying to get the board to highlight it and prioritise it. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 01:49, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose: Striving for verifiable accuracy is already part of the five pillars. There's no need to force the board to reiterate what we already know. Praemonitus (talk) 22:20, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

You can't force the WMF board to do anything. They'll make a resolution if they think it will help our mission. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 00:23, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

• Support per Johnbod. Quality measurement and improvement has long been a curiously neglected part of the Wikipedia project. There is a lot more that could be done, be it along the lines of the current efforts in the medicine topic area (which, it is worth noting, are generally welcomed by the community) or those of the Wiki Education Foundation. The board definitely should express support for such initiatives. It's a no-brainer. Andreas JN466 04:38, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
• Totally support - as I understand it's not the intention for the WMF to interfere with content, or to control it, but to better enable those that do. Peter Damian (talk) 18:30, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Meanwhile in Community Resources

Anthony, It may interest you to learn that WMF's Community Resources team, after community consultation, does think content quality is important enough to do something about in the short term, and will focus its next proactive grantmaking campaign on content curation. Asaf (WMF) (talk) 21:59, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Asaf (WMF), thank you. The IdeaLab investigation was a great initiative. (You'll be hearing from me. ) --Anthonyhcole (talk) 01:49, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Obligations and Responsibilities

Does the Board accept the WMF Statement of Obligations and Responsibilities, either formally or informally, as a statement of the behaviours that they expect to adhere to?

If so, would Board members consider that the Non-disparagement provision has been adhered to with respect to the statements made by Board members collectively and individually about the trustee that they removed in December?

Again, if so, do Board members claim that they adhered to the provision to "Become adequately informed regarding all aspects of any proposed decision or action" in respect of recent Board nominations?

On the other hand, if not, will the Board explicitly repudiate this statement and publish as a matter of urgency the equivalent code that they currently accept as being in force? Will they instruct their Governance Committee to meet and review that code, and will they publish the results of that review? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 07:44, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Comment I like the idea of a Code of Conduct for trustees. Raystorm (talk) 22:24, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

So you currently do not? That seems less than ideal. In particular you do not regard yourself as bound to adhere to the standards described on this particular page? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 07:25, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

...What? Raystorm (talk) 07:33, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

I take it from your reply that you, the members of the Board, currently do not have a Code of Conduct: that sounds less than ideal. The question is, whether you and the other Board members regard the Statement referred to as something that you think you ought to adhere to. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:21, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Rogol Domedonfors. I'm not sure what you mean. Have you read through wmf:Resolutions? It's pretty easy to spot wmf:Resolution:Code of conduct, which leads you to wmf:Code of conduct policy. :-) There are other related resolutions and policies in place as well, of course. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:59, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

You are addressing your remarks to the wrong person. It was User:Raystorm who said that she liked the idea of a Code of Conduct for Trustees. My question was, and is, about the status of the page WMF Statement of Obligations and Responsibilities. It has not yet been addressed. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:46, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

As you can see in its header the page is a draft, 7 years old, never implemented. I didn't even know that page until you have mentioned it here. You can find our policies including the code of conduct at the foundation wiki and a review is planned. Alice Wiegand (talk) 22:19, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for that. The second part of my question was whether Board members would accept it informally, and there was a follow-up on non-disparagement. I note that the final part of my question is answered. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:32, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Alice, if you're involved in the review, would you please discuss the language used in point two of the code of conduct? Presently it reads,

People acting on the Foundation’s behalf must respect and maintain the confidentiality of sensitive information they have gained due to their association with the Foundation. This may include personal information about community members or members of the general public, and/or information about the internal workings of the Foundation or its partners or suppliers.

(My bold.) The bold text may lead staff and board to believe any and all information about the internal workings of the Foundation is sensitive, and so confidential. I presume that's not the intent. If that is the intended meaning, would you mind raising the question of whether such a blanket restriction is appropriate in today's climate? (I think the default position should be freedom to discuss anything about the internal workings of the WMF that has not been specifically classed as confidential.) --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:18, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Transparency - cost versus benefit

In discussions about Transparency, at such places as Wikimedia Foundation transparency gap, there seems to be an assumption, more or less explicit, that transparency is nothing but an overhead: that we do it because we have to, because it's the good thing, but accountability to the community is fundamentally an overhead. To the extent that this is believe, I suggest that it needs to be challenged, from the top, and by example as well as words. Firstly, of course, there is a cost attached to preparing and publishing reports and accounts. This can be reduced by embedding transparency into the business activities. When a report is being produced, it needs to be written in such a way that it's easy to remove any sensitive content that could not be published, or mark portions that are time-sensitive. If built in this process takes much less time than having to unpick a document afterwards (we see this above on the #Risk Assessment Document update). Secondly, building mechanisms for engagement around transparency would significantly improve the quality of decision making. For example, the Board governance committee has failed to publish any accunt of its agenda or activities since 2014. Yet its remit includes "Recruit, for Board review and consideration, new appointed trustees when a vacancy exists or is anticipated". There is no doubt that effective community involvement in this activity at an earlier stage would have improved the chances of avoiding the recent damaging conflict between Board and community. Better exposure of the WMF technical plans would have prevented the waste of effort on Flow and Gather, and the damage by the launch of Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia. Any one of these examples of these demonstrates, I think, that transparency and better engagement would have delivered far more benefit than its cost. Since transparency is already an agreed principle, I call on the Board act to ensure that transparency and engagement are embedded in the WMF planning and business processes and that resources are made available to deliver the benefits which would accrue from effective engagement with the community at the strategy and planning stages, as well as the direct delivery of the projects. A copy of this is at Talk:Transparency/Practices#Cost versus benefit Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:20, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Risk Assessment Document update

The Audit committee at their March meeting wmf:Audit Committee/2015-03-16 referred to this update being ready for the Board by the end of June and then refers to "review of the document by the Community". Does the Board have that update, or does it expect to have it in the next few days? What arrangements will the Board make to publish it for review by the community? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:34, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Two months later, without response or even acknowledgement, should we assume that the document has still not been delivered to the Board? Or that the Board has decided not to share it with the Community? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 19:39, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

And now it is nearly four months. I think we should make this a major issue in the next board elections. --76.194.210.58 09:43, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

This was delivered to the Board by the July meeting. There was almost nothing confidential in it, so I hope that a finance staff member will share a public version soon. [In the future, better to structure the whole document as a public doc, with a possible private addendum, to avoid this delay – not having regular public feedback is an important meta-risk]. –SJ talk  23:46, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Is this the document that was belatedly added to the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2015-16? If not, will it be published "for Community review" as suggested last March and if so when? It seems unsatisfactory that it should have taken so very long to decide on this point and that there is still no definitive answer on this page nine months since the Audit Committee meeting and six months after my original question. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 17:27, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

• Since the time has come round again for this document to be produced, sadly without any progress on the issue I raised last year, please may we be assured that the Audit Committee will prepare this year's Risk Assessment in a form which makes it convenient for review by the Community, without major effort required for redaction, and that the Board will then actually publish it for such review? It is entirely possible that the Community may have some useful input to this process. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 07:54, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Requests for comment/Indefinite block the user:6AND5 in the armenian Wikipedia

Please give advice, what do I do?--6AND5 (talk) 01:14, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

+Talk:Affiliate-selected Board seats/2016/Nominations/Susanna Mkrtchyan#Questions from 6AND5/2--6AND5 (talk) 10:52, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Audit Committee membership

The list at wmf:Audit Committee seems incorrect. Could it be checked please/. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 07:49, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Done now, thanks. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 11:26, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

HR Committee

The Wikimedia Foundation Board HR Committee meets at least once a year according to wmf:Resolution:HR Committee Charter. However, the wmf:HR_Committee minutes were last posted for meeting wmf:HR Committee/2014-01-31. Has this committee met since January 2014, and if so, when? Why have no subsequent minutes been published? Does the Board view this lack of publication as an acceptable state of affairs? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:18, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Board vacancy

Following the Chair's suggestion [13] it seems appropriate to suggest that the Board respond to the loss of two of the community-selected members by holding a new community-wide selection process -- I hestitate to call it an "election", although I know this is what it has been termed in the past -- this summer. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 10:41, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

A specific point worth raising. It may well be that if there is a community selection process, the community will choose to nominate the person removed from the Board in December 2015. My understanding is that that person is eleigible to hold a seat on the Board under the Bylaws -- will the Board confrm that is the case? Will the Board make a statement as to whether they would be prepared to accept that person onto the Board if they are selected by the community? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:37, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Unpublished resolutions

It seems that the Chair of the Board has the power to determine that a resolution should not be published: see wmf:Vote:Board deliberations. How often has this been done? Will the Board commit itself to publishing for every resolution either the full text or a dated statement that a non-public resolution was passed? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 07:48, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

I don't remember that we ever used that clause since I'm on the board. Alice Wiegand (talk) 08:40, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

New Board Handbook

It seems that at its meeting on 30 Jan 2016 (see wmf:Minutes/2016-01), the Board agreed a "new handbook to be published soon". It appears that there has been at least one further meeting since that one, although not details have been published yet. Has the new handbook been agreed? When will it be published? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 10:33, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

This is an update which covers the term limits resolution, the resolution about the standing election committee, and some procedural adjustments. No surprise potential. To be clear: There is no _new_ handbook. I guess that updates are implemented soon, this again depends on people's workload. Alice Wiegand (talk) 08:33, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for that. I acknowledge the correction, the minutes do indeed state "Updated handbook" not "new handbook" as I mistakenly wrote. I note that the updated handbook will be published at some point in the indefinite future. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 16:18, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Training for external Board members at Wikimania 2016

hi, I've created a proposal page to ask for community feedback regarding a possible workshop for our external Board members, to increase their understanding of our culture, values, and relevant topics. Please, weigh in! Pundit (talk) 19:22, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Crisis of confidence

The continuing failure of the Board collectively and the majority of its members individually to engage with the stakeholder community in any meaningful way over such issues as: removal of a community-nominated member; selection of a member unacceptable to the community; inadequate supervision of the Knowledge Engine project; staff discontent; technology planning; work of the governance committee; discontinuation of the advisory board; long-term strategy -- all of these suggest a crisis of confidence. Are we at the point where a motion of no confidence in the Board by the stakeholder community is warranted? Would any members of the Board care to explain whether or why they feel such a motion should not be brought forward? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:18, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Without commenting on the substance of the issues above, I submit that it is clear at this point that the board is (now) paying attention and no doubt actively discussing next steps. Bearing in mind they are all volunteers spread out across the world spanning about 12 timezones, it is no doubt difficult to secure the time to actually get (at least a quorum) together to have the urgent and high-stakes discussions they need to have. I would suggest we assume that the extraordinary developments of the last 72 hours have had effect, and let the board deliberate. I think we have been heard loud and clear, and am prepared to wait for the board's considered response. Ijon (talk) 02:12, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Disclosure: I am saying this in my capacity as a longtime volunteer, but I am also a WMF employee. Ijon (talk) 02:12, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

It may be clear to you but it can hardly be by reading this noticeboard. Can you point to any public statements by the Board or its members in a venue likely to be seen by a large proportion of the stakeholders? How much time and effort does it take to post a short message here saying that the Board is considering certain matters and will take action on a certain timescale -- five minutes, maybe ten? I am not calling a vote of no confidence, I am suggesting that one might be imminent if the Board does not give the community good reason to hold off. Like it not, time has all but run out and it is for the Board to take action now, or, by further inaction, let matters come to a critical, and highly damaging breach. This has been happening since summer of 2014, when the then chair explained to the community that they might have to leave if they did not agree with his views; or early 2015 when the Board allowed its advisory committee to lapse and its governance committee to go silent; or mid 2015 when the Board allowed the KE project to go ahead without involving the community; or late 2015 when the Board made two unexplained and highly controversial decisions on its own membership. This is not the Board being suddenly and unexpectedly bounced into action, this is the Board facing the predictable and inevitable consequences of its own failure to engage with the community. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 09:46, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Rogol Domedonfors, I am reading what Ijon has to say for the first time here, but I would urge you to heed what he says. He has been tracking these issues closely, and has been a strong advocate for important changes, for a long time. He probably cannot share details, but if he is confident that there is a newfound sense of urgency among the Board, that is not an insignificant thing. -Pete F (talk) 23:36, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I also concur, there have been a lot of discussions and commentary throughout multiple forms of communications including emails, wiki's, IRC and blogs. The next few days should be interesting. Reguyla (talk) 02:50, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Peteforsyth: you may well be correct. But my point is that time is running out. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 07:29, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

It seems worth noting in this thread, for posterity, that Lila Tretikov announced her resignation on February 25 (four days after Ijon's words of reassurance). -Pete F (talk) 00:04, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Does that announcement tend to increase or decrease the community's level of confidence in the Board, I wonder? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 05:04, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

It is somewhat troubling that little seems to have been done by the Board to allay concerns that the volunteer and donor community might have about the Board's handling of the events of the past few months. Let me just remind the Board that they have lost two Board members and an Executive Director in that time, and that suggests that the Board has been unusually unlucky, to say the least. If the Board wish to maintain the confidence of the community, they need to exert themselves to explain as fully as they can what has happened, why it happened, what lessons the Board have learnt and what they plan to do to manage such risks in the future. On the issue of the Board's removal of a community-selected member, it is vital to have better, clearer and more measured communications. The majority of the communications on this matter have come from one member of the Board -- it is not clear whether he is communicating on behalf of the Board or not -- and those communications have been unduly combative and have failed to resolve issues to the satisfaction of the community.

Of course, it may be that the Board simply do not regard the confidence of the community as of any importance, and do not see the necessity to spend any time trying to retain or regain that confidence. If so, and their lack of communication suggests that it may be be the case, then they need not be surprised to find themselves facing an explicit vote of no confidence. Is that what the Board wants, and do they think it would be in the best interests of the projects? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 07:09, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

It seems clear from the failure of any Board member to engage with this issue, and the continuing failure to adhere to the timetables laid down in the Board Handbook, that members of the Board no longer concern themselves with the views of the Community, and hence presumably are indifferent to whether or not they retain the confidence of the Community. It is time to begin the process of articulating the ways in which the Board is losing that confidence and I am listing them here in case there is any member of the Community or the Board who wishes to make a comment at this stage.

• The Board's failure to oversee the strategic direction of the Foundation.

• The Board have failed to publish their long-term strategy.
• The Board have mismanaged the decision-making around the Knowledge Engine proposal.
• The Board has failed to ensure effective senior leadership of the WMF.

• The Board have failed to engage with the Community.

• The Board have failed to give an adequate explanation for the removal of a community-selected trustee.
• The Board have allowed one of their members to engage in a public dispute with a former trustee in a manner which is below the standards expected of a member of the Board when discussing Board business.

• The Board have failed to manage their own activities.

• The Board have failed to check the background of an appointed trustee with damaging consequences.
• The Board has allowed its Advisory Committee to lapse without ensuring adequate external advice.
• The Board is in breach of its own procedures for notification and publication of its own business.

Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 11:50, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Reviving important archived item (Superprotect)

This thread from 2015 was archived, but is still important: /Archives/2015#Resolution on superprotect

Although there has been much informal discussion in many venues, there has never been an official acknowledgment of the letter signed by 1,000+ people, nor a formal statement of what will be done going forward. There is a bug entry on this (thank you Qgil-WMF. It may also be worthwhile to review the recent discussion and the November 2015 poll about the WMF's response to date. -Pete F (talk) 21:04, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Small addendum -- this item is, according to the Phabricator ticket linked above, on the February agenda for the Community Liaisons. This seems like a good thing; but as I have stated before, I still feel strongly that explicit participation from senior leadership of WMF (the recipients of the letter) are important. If the response is fully delegated, that will send a clear message, and IMO not a healthy one. -Pete F (talk) 21:12, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Pete, I'm uncertain what kind of official acknowledgement would be appropriate. I can reply in my personal capacity and comment on my own view: I have fiercely opposed the introduction of SuperProtect since the beginning of my tenure. Once I was elected, I put the removal of SuperProtect on the publicly available list of items I have wanted to address. The actions I personally took to successfully resolve the issue was putting a discussion about SuperProtect on the agenda of every Board meetings we had, as well as discussing the timeline for removal of SuperProtect with the WMF ED at least every month, requesting status updates, and expressing my strong view that it is disruptive to the WMF relations with the community. I believe it was eventually instrumental in the SuperProtect's removal, although I believe it was basically the final small step in a series of many, done by many respected community members individually, and by group voice as well. If you believe some additional recognition of your petition is due, I can assure you that it definitely made me feel more certain that my own views on SP were right, and that the petition was a good, organizing and empowering move. Pundit (talk) 22:47, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Agree having this strong statement from the community that superprotect was inappropriate made it easier to push for its removal. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:04, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

As The Board officially sided with the hostile actions against the community in this mail to wikimwdia-l, I think some apology for this huge mistake should come from the board as official as this, not only for superprotect alone, but for the whole actions against the communities with the MV-disaster, where the board and some rogue devs kicked the communities explicitly in the face. You are a new board now, so I hope such utterly wrong actions will never occur again, but to distance yourself from misdeeds of past boards would be well taken by the communities.

The Board should make clear, that this mail by the board was wrong and should never have been sent. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 11:03, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

User:Sänger I was not on the board when Jan Bart made that statement. I disagreed with JB statement when he made it, I disagreed with his statement when I was on the board, and I disagree with his statement now. I believe that the community and the WMF needs to interact as equals. Superprotect was the WMF trying to claim the upper hand. We have gotten superprotect disabled but we also need a clear statement by the WMF board that the sentiment behind that action no longer exists either. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:17, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

I know, that you were not on the board, that hostile decision against the community was one of the reasons, the community nominated members were all sacked by the community in the last election (or better so-called election;). It is nevertheless, regardless of its members, still The Board, and it would be fine if The Board revokes its wrong and hostile declaration and comes back to the community. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 18:23, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

I was not on the Board that issued this support neither, obviously, and from my activity on the Board it is clear that I worked consequently towards the SuperProtect removal. I generally agree that a clear statement that overriding communal consensus is never a good idea can help. However, I don't think that spending 30 minutes discussing this at a Board meeting NOW makes sense. We basically have to prioritize, and the search for a new ED, appointing an interim, seeking a new Board member, reforming the Board governance, as well as addressing the strategy, or reviving the Advisory Board are the things that need to be addressed ASAP. I will definitely support addressing this issue later in the year. Pundit (talk) 15:06, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

That assessment makes sense if you take the view, discussed above, that the community can be of no help to the Board. I suggest that in fact the Board cannot afford to do without any help they can get from the community, and indeed that such help would be available were the Board to choose to reach out for it. If you take this view then a few minutes spent repairing one of the more significant breaches between the Board and the community would be time very well spent if it promoted a more constructive engagement . It seems likely to me that the Board will not be able to resolve the multiple serious issues facing it and the movement if it attempts to do so entirely from its own resources -- perhaps you disagree?. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:42, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree with you: I believe it makes sense to use the community's help. It is just that even the form of reaching out needs to be discussed, agreed upon, and planned - while currently we're spending a dozen of hours every week on things that have to be done ASAP, all of course over and above our normal work. I really hope once we're out of emergency mode, a constructive way of drawing on the community's resources will make sense. In fact, even for the ED search I think we will be able to ask for some support. I also wrote of three different ways of improving the Board and collaboration with the community on wikimedia-l (volunteer liaisons, revamping the advisory board, revising the Board's structure). I want to follow up on these ideas, as well as reach out for the community's input - but trust me that it is not viable to make it happen NOW. Pundit (talk) 00:25, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, the decision is yours to make, and all we can reasonably ask for is that you take that decision explicitly and stand by its consequences. I am however gratified to note that my suggestions above under #Community broker, #Advisory Board membership and #Thinking about the WMF Board composition have aligned with your thoughts. Do you think this page might be a better venue for discussion of those ideas rather than a mailing list? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:25, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

I think we should have a structured discussion somewhere on meta, here it is difficult to refine proposals and discuss them, IMHO (but still easier than on the list). Pundit (talk) 15:54, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Pundit, could you just join the discussion underway here, which began following Lila's November announcement? Talk:Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer#November 2015 poll: Has the letter achieved its goal? I don't see the benefit of creating yet another venue for discussion -- but I'd welcome hearing your thoughts there. -Pete F (talk) 20:28, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

This is the noticeboard of The Board, can you tell me a better suited venue to discuss this? And don't come up with less open venues like mailing lists or Phabricator, they are no proper wikipage. This is the wikiversum, and everything should be discussed on open wikipages, unless some very important facts recommend otherwise. If this is not the right wikipage, just show me the right one. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 10:42, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Sänger, I think Pundit's point is that this page is not a good one to deliberate -- and that linking specific proposals that have been developed elsewhere (like Nemo_bis did) is a better use of this page. I agree with that in principle. In the case of Superprotect, it seems odd to me that the WMF should need advice on how to respond to a letter -- odd, but not impossible to work with. At this point, however, I believe the biggest obstacle to moving forward on this issue is now in the past; as such, I think talking with staff, rather than trustees, might be the most effective way to move things forward. Staff, as always, can advocate internally as needed, but may encounter less resistance now than previously. At the moment, I see an opportunity to bring this longstanding issue to a positive conclusion -- and, like Pundit, I'm not sure that getting it on the Board's agenda is a necessary step. Do keep an eye on phabricator:T119595. -Pete F (talk) 18:07, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Hey, since when is Phabricator a venue for discussions? I was kicked off Phab because I dared to discuss something and didn't strictly adhere to problem solving. Could someone please inform user:AKlapper (WMF) about this change in the rules there, so that I could again use Phab? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 18:37, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

I did not suggest Phabricator as a venue for discussion, I merely pointed out that relevant stuff is happening there (which you are able to read, even if blocked from participating). The venue I suggested for discussion is one you're already aware of, Sänger -- the letter's talk page. -Pete F (talk) 18:43, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

[offtopic] Sänger's Phabricator account got disabled due to phab:T90632 and phab:T90801 after the user ignored warnings to please follow mw:Bug management/Phabricator etiquette. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 11:26, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

I see the mentioned Phab as something purely for discussion, not even remotely technical. If the same logic that got me banned there would be aplied, it should never have been opened, and you, Pete, should be banned by now from Phab.

I was banned there, because I asked for a venue for discussion, and the devs failed to deliver any answer, despite there had to be some venue for such a pure community item as a profile. Discussion outside Phab was refused, inside it was denied. It was a catch 22 for me. So consequently those, who didn't want to discuss, banned me. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 12:37, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

#Proposed resolution on user rights process is the current concrete proposal. Nemo 15:03, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Nemo_bis, I like that proposal a great deal; but a statement from the board or from the executive director (or even the interim executive director) need not get into that level of detail to accomplish good things. -Pete F (talk) 00:07, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Might be. But producing a statement, even one sentence long, will require a lot of work. On the other hand, my resolution is ready for approval and can't possibly be improved further. :) Nemo 21:16, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

I do agree, Nemo_bis, that moving to enact this proposed resolution would be a good, strong step, and the board should certainly consider it, and consider it a pressing priority. My point is merely that it's not the only possible step forward. But it would be an excellent one, and there is no visible obstacle to passing it at the next meeting (nor has there been since you published it). -Pete F (talk) 22:05, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

I generally agree with the spirit of the proposed resolution. I have some doubts (for instance, why should it always be up to the global community to decide what technical roles be introduced? I'd prefer local communities to be able to take or leave some), but this is ok. my main concern now is bandwidth: we're in the middle of a search for a new ED, a new Board member, and we're already dangerously cutting the workload on critical topics such as strategy. My personal view is that SuperProtect is gone. I did my fair share of work to make sure it got removed, and when I was making actual effort to make this happen, I truly believed it mattered. I'm not so convinced that such a resolution is critically important now (for instance, more than thinking about the vision for our movement in 5 years), and it still can take disproportionately much of our time. As I stated before, I hope we will have an opportunity to readdress this issue before Wikimania, and you can also think of ways the topic can be discussed in the community. I don't think that drafting a Board's resolution is the way to go though - this is the final step (and done by the Board), not the middle one. Pundit (talk) 16:58, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Is the strategy work you refer to something which you feel that the wider community is or ought to be involved with? If so, perhaps you could point to the venue where that community engagement will take place. If not, please at least tell us when and where you propose to publish the results of that work. (I asked a similar question here some time ago [14] but it seems that the Board did not then regard the issue as important enough to take notice of.) Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 10:31, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Strategic consultations were conducted by the WMF, but currently we're for instance seeking the community's input on the desirable skills, things to seek or avoid in our ED search, etc. Before Wikimania I intend to start a discussion about the Board's reform, and even before that I plan to publish an agreed on skills matrix. Pundit (talk) 15:13, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Meetings in February and March 2016

The Board usually meets monthly, and had presumably had meetings in February and March of this year. Please may we know when the minutes of those meetings will be posted? (Even better, of course, would be to have the minutes posted, but one step at a time.) Currently the latest set of minutes linked at wmf:Meetings is for January 2016. Should we take it that no resolutions were passed at the February and March meetings, since none are recorded at wmf:Resolutions, or were they perhaps secret resolutions? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:17, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Update: it now appears that resolutions were passed on the 10th and 30th of March [15]. So there were at least two meetings held in March for which minutes are not published. This is not a satisfactory state of affairs. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:11, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Further update. Just to add to the confusion, the resolution wmf:Minutes approval January 30, 2016, approving the minutes of the meeting of 30 January 2016 (the last one mentioned at wmf:Meetings) states that it was approved on January 30, 2016. Surely that cannot be correct? It contradicts the minutes themselves and is prima facie nonsense. That resolution was posted on 8 March, so it cannot have been approved on either the 10th or the 30th March, the only two meetings of which we have any evidence, even though they are not properly documented. So there must have been a third meeting after 30 January which is currently undocumented. Do members of the Board agree that this degree of laxity in publishing a timely and accurate account of Board business is unacceptable? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:26, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Rogol, it's in the middle of the night where I live, so I won't look up what you say in your last paragraph, but I want to give you a comment note on your general question. The board can pass resolutions following two paths: a) have a formal meeting and vote while every board member is able to hear everyone else and b) via an online vote. Both resolutions you mention in your first post have been passed online with unanimous votes. There has been a meeting in march with the overall topic of internal governance, minutes will be published as soon as they are prepared by our secretary and approved by a board vote. Especially the last part usually takes more time than you may suppose. I try to come back tomorrow to respond to your last question. Alice Wiegand (talk) 21:57, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your prompt reply. The current mode of presenting the resolutions does not distinguish between the two species, and, as it appears, there has been at least one formal meeting which is currently undocumented. It would be helpful to the community, and follow the values of transparency which the Board is committed to, if the fact of a meeting having been held on a certain date were published promptly: this does not seem an onerous task. I am well aware of the fact that preparing Board minutes takes time (having more experience of being a trustee myself than you may suppose) but do not regard that fact as an acceptable reason not to publish the mere fact that the meeting has occurred. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:14, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Follow-up. The Wikimedia Foundation Board Handbook requires that the agenda for each meeting be posted to wikimediaannounce-l at least two days before the meeting. Was this done for the meeting in March? Where is the agenda for that meeting? What was the date of that meeting? The Handbook also requires that the minutes of a meeting be published no more than five weeks after the meeting. In the case of the December 2015 meeting, the delay was over nine weeks. Why was that? Will the Board examine the way in which is has conducted its own business in recent months and publish a statement as to whether they believe it has been acceptable? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 06:01, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Further follow-up. I see that the obvious error in the resolution wmf:Minutes approval January 30, 2016 has been silently corrected (with no acknowledgement here, which would have been courteous). That correction reveals that there was a Board meeting on 4 March, in addition to the non-meetings of the 10th and 30th March. It is somewhat shameful that we are reduced to this sort of exegesis to recover information which, according to the Board's own handbook, should have been published long ago. Just to make it explicit: there was no publication of the fact of the meeting on 4 March to the mailing list wikimediaannounce-l. The minutes of that meeting have not been published within five weeks of that meeting. Both of these are violations of the procedure laid down in the Wikimedia Foundation Board Handbook. No member of the Board, or Board officer, has troubled to post here an acknowledgement of that fact, let alone an explanation or an apology. It seems that the Board have abandoned the Guiding Principles of Transparency of which they appear to be so proud. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:56, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Rogol, the minutes of the January 30 meeting have been approved by an online vote as said above. That online vote was closed on March 4th when the last Board member signed the resolution online. The correction is just that: a correction of an obvious mistake, there is no resolution needed to do that. The fact that the March meeting wasn't announced with its agenda is my fault. An announcement was prepared, then we postponed the meeting, then the announcement slipped out of my mind. In general I beg for some understanding that there are many things on the table of the Board. We have to prepare the search for the next ED, we have two vacant seats, we need to review our internal processes and efficiency, we need to provide guidance and support to our interim ED, we have to come to some general working agreements. We do this in regular meetings, with informal check-ins, we are discussing via mail and phone and the current frequency of all this is really high. Same is true also for the staff which is supporting the board. This is not an excuse, I agree with you that we have to follow our own rules. But reality demonstrates that -- especially when the workload is high -- it's hard. It's not our intention to hide anything. The existence of an resolution though doesn't mean that there was a meeting.

These are the regular meetings of the Board:

• Minutes/2016-01|January 30, online meeting
• March 21, online meeting (minutes to be approved)
• April 22, in person meeting (agenda to be announced soon)

Hope that helps to clarify. Alice Wiegand (talk) 08:21, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to provide that information. I realise that the Board is rather busy, but suggest that it would have saved your time, not to mention mine, to have adhered to the normal procedure. As I understand it then, there was a meeting of the Board on 21 March, the notification and agenda for which were never published, and the minutes of which are due to be published by 25 April. Presumably there were no formal resolutions made at that meeting since nothing has been published, but I suppose that will transpire within the next few days.

Of course it is hardly important, but when I pointed out the obvious anomaly in the published resolution, I was not expecting a formal vote of thanks, as you appear to think, and which would have been rather disproportionate, but I did feel it would have been nice if the person making the correction had spent an extra minute of their valuable time posting either here or to my talk page acknowledging the mistake, thanking me for bringing it to their attention and noting that the change had been duly made. But still, as you say, the Board is very busy and such niceties take up time. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 16:29, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

• It appears that while the agenda for the meeting of 22 April was posted on the 18th (thank you) it was not announced on the mailing list as discussed just one day previously. Much more seriously, the minutes of the meeting of 21 Msrch, presumably approved at the meeting of 21 April, have still not been posted, in breach of the procedure described in the Board Handbook. This is the fourth consecutive Board meeting for which minutes have not been posted within the time limit laid down. While we appreciate that the Board is somewhat busy, this lack of attention to timely communication with the Community is simply not acceptable. Please post the minutes of the Board meeting of 21 March without further delay. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 16:44, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

I note that these minutes were finally posted last night, two weeks late, and, it would appear, as a result of a public posting [16]. Even so they are not correctly linked. The situation remains unsatisfactory, and I call on the Board to explain, apologise and take corrective action to deliver on this part of their commitment to transparency. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 06:38, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Adding seat type to infoboxes at wmf:Board of Trustees

Hi. The thread at Special:Permalink/15340631#Regarding Board of Trustees suggests adding the seat type to the infobox of each Board member at wmf:Board of Trustees. Barring objections, I'm inclined to accept this request. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:01, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

I've always found it confusing to find this information and it required digging around, so I'm personally (without consulting with anyone) in favor :) Pundit (talk) 17:18, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

@MZMcBride:: Just one thing you might consider: Board members take different paths to join the Board, it doesn't mean that we have different classes of Board members. You know that, but it is as obvious for external readers who want to get information about the organization? It could be that pointing out the paths leads to a misinterpretation that there are differences in status, rights and obligations. But tbh it could also be that I'm just putting too much weight on it. Alice Wiegand (talk) 19:59, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Small intervention: The members, that were properly elected by the community have a better legitimation to be on the board as the other ones, that are only appointed.

Unfortunately the board recently made clear that it doesn't care about democracy, and it ditched one elected member for dubious reasons. So yes, in practice you can probably say now: they are all the same, as they are all just inside jobs, just appointed without further legimization. But please say so officially on the relevant pages, don't just act in this way. --Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 09:37, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Alice. Yes, I had similar thoughts. In some ways, I'm not sure how necessary the seat type information is to readers and it seems a little pointed (overly critical) to include the data point in the infobox as seat type is really not very important. And I agree that the information could potentially be misleading. But in other ways, it's very Wikimedian (matter-of-fact, precise) to include such details. (cc: Lokal Profil) --MZMcBride (talk) 05:21, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I can see your reservation. To me (as a community member) it is mainly relevant since it shows me which elections I can affect directly (community seats), or indirectly (through chapters). It also allows me to go back and find more informations on their candidacies etc. Especially for these two categories there is often an overlap (many chapters appointees could just as well have been community elected). If we are worried about the phrasing then "Took the seat after community election 2015"/"Took the seat after appointment by the board in 2016" might be more neutral ways of communicating the same info. Finally is this something we really want to make less transparent/harder to figure out? /Lokal Profil (talk) 19:34, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Paid editing TOU, two year anniversary

It has been almost two years now since the Foundation published its paid editing requirement in the TOU, the Wikipedia project has still not complied with the requirement to publish their alternate policy. The Wikipedia guidance is becoming more onerous by the day. My experiment with paid editing has resulted in exactly the kind of problems I was concerned about and discussed in the Foundation's RfC.

The disdain for paid and COI editing at Wikipedia is resulting in profiling of new users, their submissions and direct admonishments (sockpuppet allegation etc) on a regular basis from WP:COIN. Even established, compliant editors, can run afoul of the project's guidance when the rules can be changed (by certain editors) upon a whim. In the broadest terms, let's face the fact that the Wikipedia project does not want subjects that utilize sales of any type.

The Foundation's goals were amiable, but the implementation missed the mark of informing the end-reader of possible slanted content. (Unless the end-reader is sophisticated enough to inspect the article's talk page, the edit summaries and the user page of each contributing editor.) Contention on the Wikipedia from veteran volunteers that feel that nobody should be paid to edit, either as a consultant or an employee assigned to the task, is high enough now that I believe that the project should be divided. One solution would be a sister project for article's where the subject has to earn money to sustain itself/themselves -- a business friendly project to remove this contention. (A serious integrated sister wiki, not a cartoon.)

1. The Wikipedian's who are most opposed to paid editing (anything that could be interpreted as advertising) and delete any perceived signs of advocacy, tend to be in academia and prefer short, traditional paper-style encyclopedic articles. Conceptual, scientific, academic articles would remain with the Wikipedia.
2. An integrated business friendly wiki, would house corporations and organizations, biographies of living persons, film and recording, authors and books etc. (I.e., a wiki about creators and their creations which by their very nature require exposure to thrive, it's just a fact of life.) The new wiki project could warn the user that the wiki might contain information about sales, services and some articles may have connected contributors.
3. Much like the migration to the Commons, the Wikipedia could choose to keep the article and sustain soft or hard redirects to the new location of the article. For instance, the Wikipedia could determine whether it wants to maintain the entire Microsoft article, or summarize the article in a soft redirect and provide a "See main article" hat, linking to the full article.
4. In the new business friendly project, interested parties would adopt existing or create new guidelines. For instance, accepting RS interviews as evidence of notability. Paid editors could disclose their status on the new project and not be discriminated against when volunteering contributions to the Wikipedia project.
5. The internet has changed, spamming the Wikipedia is not a viable SEO tactic as most Wikipedians still tend to believe. The reason why notable businesses, organizations and creators want a Wikipedia article is to participate in RDF and WikiData resources. With the enormous effort of the Wikipedia project to keep these articles out, migrating them out, instead of pruning to prepare for deletion, would seem to be a more productive use of energy and resolution of contention.

Most people have to earn a living, let's acknowledge this, and the fact that the Wikipedia project does not want these articles. Separate the two ideologies into sister projects so they can coexist in peace. 009o9 (talk) 20:06, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Do I get this right: You're proposing a spam-wiki as an official project alongside? Ever heard of en:Wikia to set up your own project? I really don't think your strange idea will get any traction here. BTW: I don't think that anyone really has anything against paid editors from GLAM, as long as they provide useful and npov content. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 17:42, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

@Sänger: You decide, is this spam?[17] The article (not mine but I grabbed a copy) was recently pruned and AfD'd. Several years ago, such an article would have been at least a stub. There is definitely a protracted effort at WP:AfC to keep articles out and paid editing accusations abound at WP:COIN, even school alumni are now required to declare COI.[18] (Which means you have to stop editing your article of interest.) As far as I can tell, Wikia is a cartoon, not a serious wiki with an RDF backend. Regards, 009o9 (talk) 20:04, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

"The Foundation's goals were amiable" not really, they just wanted some news headlines. Nemo 20:20, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Why would this commercially oriented wiki be associated with the WMF? How is it educational? Anyone is free to create such a site. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:51, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Because useful stub articles like En:The Best American Science Writing are no longer wanted at the Wikipedia and will likely be nominated for deletion as advertising when discovered.009o9 (talk) 18:47, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Additional Yes anybody can create a Wiki, but cross integration into the WikiData project is not likely. Yes, another data source could offered and curated, but it would be a lot like reinventing the wheel. A lot of decent subjects and contributions are being purged and declined if they even have a hint of commercial subject matter. I'm suggesting a place to sustain articles, like "The Best American Science Writing" instead of summarily deleting them. All information is valuable. What if I want to know who is the most preeminent scientist behind a commercial venture? If I have a product or corporation name, I'd have the breadcrumbs to do the research and learn the scientific terms behind the venture. If the information I'm seeking is buried under a scientific name, chances of finding it are greatly reduced.

Using the term "educational" in terms of scholastic learning is rather narrow, learning is a life-long process. In fact, most learning/education comes from a real world initiative, not the lecture hall. Even shallow articles like "The Best American Science Writing" can be improved in the Wiki format, but it is less far likely when a COI editor is precluded from direct editing, in addition to declaring her interest and employer. 009o9 (talk) 19:47, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Wikimedia Armenia

The following discussion is closed.

---

Because there is no 2015 annual financial report, and the 2014 annual financial report is half done, has nothing about "One Armenian, one article" campaign, please cancel the Recognition of Wikimedia Armenia. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vadgt (talk)

Financial report for 2015 will be ready in July, WMF is informed about it. 2014 annual financial report is complete. As for the "One Armenian, one article" campaign, Wikimedia Armenia spent no money on it, it was done in the collaboration with the local TV station.--David Saroyan (talk) 16:13, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Vadgt, these questions are not for the Board of Trustees to answer. The purpose of this page is "discussing issues related to Wikimedia Foundation governance and policies, and related Board work". The Wikimedia Foundation is monitoring chapter compliance through its staff, so I have moved your questions to Wikimedia Armenia talk page. David Saroyan, thanks for providing the answer to the questions above --NTymkiv (WMF) (talk) 16:56, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Strategy Alpha

It seems from discussions, or lack thereof, that this is not a particularly effective forum for discussion of long-term strategic isssues between the Board and the Community. Rather than wait for something to happen, I have started a proposal at Grants:IdeaLab/Strategy Alpha. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 11:51, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

I have also started a related discussion at Grants:IdeaLab/Community Broker for the Board of Trustees. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 09:54, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Proposed resolution on user rights process

As announced earlier, I prepared a very simple text the board can certainly agree with: User:Nemo bis/User rights process. Please schedule for the earlier opportunity (a quick online meeting is probably sufficient). I recommend to vote on it before the WMF board elections end, to ensure higher participation. --Nemo 20:48, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi Nemo, I will bring this to the attention of the board. But this is in no way the "easy" topic you are suggesting it is. I will get back to you Jan-Bart (talk) 10:30, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Now that superprotect is gone, we no longer have the hypothetical problem "OMG the board is giving micro-management orders to the ED". It's time for the WMF board to focus on how to avoid future errors like that. Nemo 18:48, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree, this is a good time to address this important issue. Thank you Nemo bis for taking the time and effort to put this proposal together. -Pete F (talk) 18:48, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

While this tool was not so much of a problem in and of itself, it was the misuse of this tool that was of concern IMO. Hopefully the same issue will not simply arise via another technique. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:25, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

The section was mistakenly archived by a bot. Nemo 07:47, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Have the stewards been notified about this proposal? It seems to fit neatly within their existing role. John Vandenberg (talk) 00:54, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, see MF-W's comment. Of course it's fine if the WMF board sends a final notice to Stewards' noticeboard before approving the resolution. Nemo 09:42, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: As I have stated here Talk:Wikimedia Foundation board agenda 2016-09, I am willing to look into it more. It seems that the original proposal was not commented much. Only Peteforsyth and Sj commented on it. Stephen thinks that both the legal team and the community engagement team should discuss it with Katherine. It may be more appropriate to address questions like this in an initiatives like the Technical Collaboration Guideline instead of a Board resolution --NTymkiv (WMF) (talk) 01:18, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for this update, NTymkiv (WMF), I agree that this would be a good thing to discuss. For my part, I am certainly open to the idea that the goals of Nemo's proposal could be met without the need for a board resolution. The part I feel strongly should be done at the executive or board level is a formal acknowledgment of the Superprotect letter signed by more than 1,000 people, some discussion of what the organization has learned from the process, and how it might impact efforts going forward. In my view, that does not need to include the kind of specific commitments in Nemo's proposal; I would think a short blog post signed by the ED and/or members of the Board would be sufficient. I have discussed this in depth with Qgil-WMF in recent months, and heard briefly from Katherine (WMF); it's my impression that Katherine opposes formal acknowledgment, but I have not heard the reasons for her opposition. -Pete F (talk) 19:44, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

About this page

When I entered the WMF Board of Trustees in summer 2012 I wanted to create a place where the community can get in contact with the Board, where exchange and deliberation can happen and where Board and community have the opportunity to get a better mutual understanding. After some discussions in the Board SJ started this page in November 2012.

Looking back I think the page hasn’t fulfilled its purpose and it was created with too little thinking about expectations and realization. In general the page has become more a Q&A page, where the Qs are a mixed bag of curiosity, assumptions, and inquiry and where the As are behind schedule or missing at all.

Why is that? The Board does not have a general process how to deal with this page. So, if you get an answer depends on if your question has been noticed by a board member who feels able to answer. If your question addresses staff related issues, you probably won’t get an answer at all. That’s far away from what was intended and also far away from how we imagine a fruitful communication between community and board. We definitely need to think about how to fix it with the resources we have. Given the amount and the importance of issues on the Board’s task list, I can’t promise you a quick solution, but I wanted to let you know that the Board is aware of this flaw and wants to change it. Alice Wiegand (talk) 09:34, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

It would help us, the Community, to help you, the Board, if you were able to give us some ideas of the amount of additional effort that you might be willing to invest in the desired fruitful communication. So far it is clear that the interaction has not been as fruitful as we all wish but I claim that the principal reason is that the Board has not been willing or able to invest the time and energy required. This is a pity as I am sure there are members of the Community ready willing and able to assist if only they were able to engage the Board in a constructive way. As I have already pointed out, the persistent failure to engage is diminishing the Community's confidence in the Board, and this is something that needs to be improved sooner rather than later. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:27, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Rogol, I honestly disagree that "additional effort" is a realistic opportunity. My personal opinion is that if something does not work the way you expect, it doesn't help just to do more of it. You need to do it differently to make a shift. Alice Wiegand (talk) 18:45, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

It is for you and your fellow Board members to determine the amount of effort you wish to devote to engaging with the Community: the choice is yours. You seem to be telling us that however you wish to engage in the future, you will not be devoting any more effort than you do at present, and that is your decision to make. But that decision has consequences, and it is for you to accept responsibility for those consequences. The amount of effort devoted by the Board collectively and individually in this forum and elsewhere to engagement with the Community on strategic matters has been small: very small. Indeed, elsewhere on this page I described it as conveying an impression, whether intentional or not I cannot say, of an attitude to the Community akin to contempt. This is the message you are sending out, and the message you are willing to continue to send out for the indefinite future. That is your choice, and I think it is a damaging one: you are choosing to worsen an already poor relationship by your inaction and disengagement. It is clear that the Board needs help in the present situation. It has, for whatever reason, chosen to allow its Advisory Committee to lapse, and it is faced with a major crisis in the governance of the Foundation and in the management of its own membership, to the extent that it cannot always manage its own affairs correctly. This is a time to ask for help, not the time to alienate the Community by comments which suggest that the reason for the Board's lack of engagement is that the Community has somehow failed to ask you the right questions. There is no way in which a successful mode of exchange and deliberation can be developed if you are not prepared to invest time and effort in participating fully and frankly in it. It doesn't matter what the Community does, if the Board is not prepared to engage. I do not know how to help you if you are determined not to be helped. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:33, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Mostly, this page could be merged to the Wikimedia Forum, from which issues can be "escalated"/notified to wikimedia-l (which WMF board members really ought to follow; following would be easier if WikimediaAnnounce-l was properly managed). What's really needed is a place for the community to officially log concrete proposals, such as #Proposed resolution on user rights process, which of course are expected to be preceded by wide discussion in proper venues (such as the Wikimedia Forum itself). Of course the WMF has never cared about community proposals in the last decade; but who knows, things might change sometime if people are given a chance. Nemo 07:47, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

I do see a problem Alice mentioned above that "the Board does not have a general process how to deal with this page" and "If your question addresses staff related issues, you probably won’t get an answer at all". I would suggest just keeping this page tidy in a usual way: receive request -> check if relevant -> if No -> close / move to a more relevant place -> if Yes -> post some kind of confirmation that the request was noticed and (if applicable) what's the timeline for finding the answer (No, Yes, Maybe, Honestly do not know etc). Probably we should have some place where to publish some useful Q&A (if any). Or a map with link to the archives (by the way, Rogol's amazing at referring to useful stuff, relevant for the topics discussed, even if it is archived (see here) :) ) --NTymkiv (WMF) (talk) 01:43, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

It's very nice of Nataliiya to say that, but I have to say that the "useful stuff" which I have been attempting to propose over the last year or so appears to have gained remarkably little traction with the Board (or, indeed, the community at large). It appears to me that the Board collectively and individually do not have the time or the inclination to engage with the community here or, indeed, anywhere else. I should be only to happy to be proved wrong about that, and challenge the Board members to do so. I do not know what more members of the community willing and able to engage constructively can do to help the Board. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 17:19, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I do apologize if my comment sounded as if it was a compliment. I didn't mean to. I was stating the fact. Re: Attention. Well, I do not know. It is really interesting that your comments or input do not attract visible attention (like being commented on a lot), though you usually raise important questions. I would actually prefer to think that people see your comment -> nod in agreement and do not engage, so the Board/staff/other people can read it. Though I do not know the answer, of course. Maybe your mysterious personality has something to do with it. I mean people may be more interested in who you are, than in things you do (that was the elephant in the room pointed out :) ). That was all kind of off-topic. Rogol Domedonfors, could you please tell me what you think of my comment about the future of this page. Have you got other suggestions? (JFYI: I am going to commit to keeping this page clean and look for closure of the questions posted, but this cannot be viewed as a permanent solution, of course. Though I hope to work the rules for how this should work along the way (in the best case scenario)) --NTymkiv (WMF) (talk) 19:17, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I would be happy to see a member of the Board spending time reading this page and handling comments, if it were to build constructiv engagement and improve the quality of Board/Community relations and strategic decision-making across the mission. However, it will not be an effective use of the time either of yourself or the community if there is no backing from the Board collectively to address issues raised. I would point out that Q&A is certainly part of the process here, and one which has partial success a couple of years ago [19] and [20] and less last year [21]. However proposals and suggestions are routinely misunderstood or mistreated as if they were simply factual questions, possibly because many of them are couched in polite terminology which gives the appearnce of a factual question rather than a proposition: "Have you considered doing X" rather than "I suggest you do X". To develop a fruitful engagement – and it is a relationship that needs to be started and nurtured – there needs to be genuine interaction of a level of mutual respect and understanding, and I venture to suggest that when Board members start from the position that they simply do not have time to engage with constructive propositions from serious and experienced members of the community, then that fruitful engagement cannot and will not result. I would not want to see a member of the Board promise, or be seen to promise, something they cannot deliver. In passing, I would hope that Board members, and the serious and experienced members of the community I refer to, are capable of treating a proposed question or suggestion on its merits without their consideration being derailed by speculation about the proposer. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:05, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

wmf:Resolution:Gift Policy Amendments Increase Threshold

«In most cases, the Board will be given 7 business days to decline». What a funny wording:

• "be given" for "will give itself",
• "in most cases" but no mention of who decides which cases are like "most" and which will require more time.

Is 7 days really an appropriate time? Such grants can take months of discussions, hence

• such a limit forces the board to a yes/no choice without possibility of amendments and
• the ED/delegate has a remarkable discretionary power in deciding when to submit the grant for approval.

I note this minimal amendment was not joined by any change to increase transparency. Also, will the WMF website state who is delegated by the ED for such matters, if anyone? --Nemo 07:38, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Just for the topic to stay here --NTymkiv (WMF) (talk) 21:08, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Privacy Policy — Information We Collect : proposed disclosure is misleadingly incomplete

(revised for length; Sj's reply is to un-revised comments) The Privacy Policy was discussed at the board meeting last week. I pushed for and gained consensus for language in the new policy that made it clear that the privacy policy would not allow browser fingerprinting. It was added back in December 2013 when this was discussed AT LENGTH at Talk:Privacy_policy/Archives/2013_(2)#Information_We_Collect:_proposed_disclosure_is_misleadingly_incomplete. and stayed in the draft for weeks. Then on the last day, it was removed. Now we have a draft privacy policy that does not bar browser sniffing, does not indicate that browser sniffing may take place and yet claims to be maximally informative. That's an untenable situation. That's the bottom line. I've complained about this as Talk:Privacy_policy when I noticed it, and was ignored. I hope the board adopts a new policy that is not misleadingly incomplete. Be honest. Clarification: I'm talking about the practice of browser sniffing to uniquely identify a reader by collecting as much information about the browser as possible including plugins and fonts. I'm not talking about simple browser sniffing to counteract user agent spoofing or even simpler straightforward use of the User-Agent string (of § 14.43 of RFC 2616/HTTP/1.1). I'm saying that after having read the policy and FAQ, a user should know what browser fingerprinting is (via a link, perhaps), know that WM employs it, and that access is restricted to approved projects and user groups X, Y, Z, only (link to list of existing pages on them ). Also, I think that the policy should have one definition for "personal information", but the current draft has three (and there's a fourth here)! I think it should be the policy itself "that describes what sorts of browser fingerprinting may happen", not a non-binding FAQ. At the moment, neither does. And LVilla thinks browser fingerprinting relies on cookies; it does not. --Elvey (talk) May 2014 (UTC)

That makes sense, thank you. LuisV is overseeing this, so I believe he's the one who you should check is open to incorporating these improvements. (The Board reviews and approves major overhauls, and we've already approved this one; we don't approve or review incremental changes such as the one you're proposing, since we have ridiculously talented legal staff to handle that. And I know everyone involved wants the result to be as awesome as possible, so exactly this sort of incremental change may be made over time.) –SJ talk  13:47, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Sj, FYI: LuisV stalled and ultimately failed to respond at all.--Elvey (talk) 07:47, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

User:LVilla (WMF) User:LuisV (WMF) Hello?--Elvey (talk) 19:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

User:LVilla (WMF) User:LuisV (WMF) Hello?--Elvey (talk) 19:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

SJ? Anyone?--Elvey (talk) 19:32, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Elvey, Talk:Privacy policy still seems like the right place to discuss updates to the policy or its descriptions. You might have more luck discussing a very specific change, and queueing that up for the next time the policy is revisited. Of course you may still get no response; but proposing a specific, minimal revision is a fast way to get feedback from busy people. –SJ talk  03:14, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Seriously? A specific, minimal revision was put forward! Please reread: "I pushed for and gained consensus for language in the new policy that made it clear that the privacy policy would not allow browser fingerprinting. This issue is ripe for response from the board. Especially after Luis Villa totally squashed the discussion, after removing the consensus-backed language at the last minute. --Elvey (talk) 21:13, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Search box

This page should have links to the archives, and a search box for them.--Elvey (talk) 19:32, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Fixed, partially. No working link to archives.--Elvey (talk) 21:13, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Litigation

It seems that the WMF is currently involved in at least three different legal cases according to its blog [22], [23], [24]. The appeal for donations linked on the front page of the Foundation website [25] currently reads

Where your donation goes

Technology: Servers, bandwidth, maintenance, development. Wikipedia is one of the top 10 websites in the world, and it runs on a fraction of what other top websites spend.

People and Projects: The other top websites have thousands of employees. We have about 300 staff to support a wide variety of projects, making your donation a great investment in a highly-efficient not-for-profit organization.

I call on the Board to state how much donors' money they expect to spend on these legal actions, and to explain to the donors how they reconcile that expenditure with the statement quoted here. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:39, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Do you think any of them were a bad idea? I think they are all appropriate and I'm glad the actions were taken, and consider them a good use of my and others contributions. I do support openness, however. Wikipedia's expenditures are less clear than they once were. I remember being able to look at individual expenditures on a test basis to see if purchasers were making good choices and getting good value or not. Now, there's no way to drill down. Impacts my attitude toward giving. I find the answer at [26] to be unacceptable, for example. Doesn't contain a single link. Even https://15.wikipedia.org/financials.html offers no way to drill down like that.--Elvey (talk) 08:13, 31 October 2016 (UTC)