Talk:Transparency/Practices

What does transparency in the Wikimedia movement mean to you?

Definitions

Well, I guess we need to agree on definitions:

All strategic decisions and some daily decisions are important;

Strategic decision should be made after consultation with the broad Wikimedia movement (community, chapters, other organizations, staff);

For every important decision it should be clear who has taken it (and possibly who has drafted it);

For every important decision a responsible person should be able to explain why the decision was taken, answer questions and address objections.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:48, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Share a story about when you felt like the Wikimedia Foundation was transparent. What steps were taken by the WMF that felt effective in achieving transparency?

Wikidata is a good example of transparent behavior. All decisions are taken after being thoroughly discussed in the community (basically, on the Village Pump, which is reasonable for a mid-size community. Yes, I know that Wikidata is WM-DE.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:52, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

2010 strategic discussion which lead to the strategic plan was pretty much transparent. Certain aspects possibly could have been improved, but generally there was a high community involvement, with dedicated medium for discussion.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:52, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Share a story about when you felt like the Wikimedia Foundation was not being transparent. How did this experience make you feel? What could we have done better?

May be to take a less known example, a recent decision to hold Wikimania 2017 in Montreal was not transparent. The decision itself might very well be reasonable, but WMF (not to provide specific names) screwed up badly but not informing the potential bidders that bids were not going to be considered, and even encouraging at least two bidders to proceed with their bids, wasting a lot of their time. When it became clear, some people volunteered to take the blame, but I still do not have the feeling that these were really the people who screwed up. (To make it clear, I have no personal involvement in this story from any side).--Ymblanter (talk) 21:57, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi User:Ymblanter - how did this event (and wikidata & 2010 strategy) make you feel? Did it affect your work with the movement? Thanks! --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 22:52, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

These are two different things. The 2010 was, albeit big, just one event. Whereas obviously not all of my ideas would make it to the strategic plan, it was a great experience, and I had an impression we had a good job accomplished. For Wikidata, it is just happening for three years on a daily basis, and gives a feeling of involvement. Most of the things I just do not understand (for example, this week they are discussing SPARQL on the mailing list, and I have no idea what this is about), but at least I know if smth is needed the request would be heard and discussed. In stark contrast, for example, with the VE or FLOW stories on the English Wikipedia (yes, I know that responsible people changed, anyway).--Ymblanter (talk) 09:33, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Come on, we'd have to list thousands of occasions. Nemo 23:00, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Nemo, the value of this question, though is learning how it has affected your work, culture, motivation, etc... sharing how these stories affect you is helpful to know why we need to be transparent. How has lack of transparency affected you Nemo? --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 00:25, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

You will discover when/if I bother to write an autobiography. Right now, I don't feel a compelling need to recollect all the times WMF made me unhappy. Nemo 09:56, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

I have taken the liberty of deleting a word from the section title. I'll post a few examples from my experience, but the question as posed does not capture the views of those who have given up completely on trying to engage with WMF and are not likely to see this page at all

• See the discussion at Research talk:Wikipedia Editor Survey 2012#Looking for survey results. This was a survey carried out to "help us to better understand how we can support the Wikimedia community", closing in November 2012. After prompting by community members the results were finally published in November 2015, some three years later. This is a clear failure of transparency and particularly egregious considering the intensity of the debate over gender issues and the need for reliable statistics during the period in question. Several groups of editors asked for progress at various stages over that three-year period, and expectations were raised that were not met, and those failures to meet expectations were not acknowledged. How does that make me feel? Well, obviously frustrated; resentful that I have to waste my unpaid time trying to get paid staff to do the job they are paid to do; sceptical of the value of any such surveys either to WMF planning or the community; less likely to heed the statements of WMF staff about expectations; and obviously quite unwilling to waste my time answering any such surveys in the future. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 04:52, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
• Look at Talk:Community Engagement (Product)/Process ideas. This was an unstructured and possibly under-planned initiative to brainstorm ideas to improve how software components get built and delivered to communities. It wandered along from August 2014 to April 2015 and then it petered out. There was no attempt to close it, to summarise, to develop action points, to show how it had fed into other planning activities: it just trailed off. In April 2015 a Phab task phab:T97187 was opened, which remains open to this day, to post feedback on all the suggestions. At various stages in 2015 I asked about progress, and the responses were to say the least unsatisfactory. It is not clear, in spite of quite a large amount of community input, that anything useful has ever come of this exercise, and nobody has taken responsibility for either implementing the output or reporting back to the community. How does this make me feel -- well, pretty much the same as the previous paragraph. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:15, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
• Next, go to Talk:2015 Strategy/Community consultation#"We will report back to the community". As noted there, the report was promised in March. It was finally published in August, much later than promised, apparently because no staff effort was available to deliver on that promise, and a consultant had to be employed ad hoc to complete the work. How does this make me feel? Well, not confident in the WMF planning and prioritisation process. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:21, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
• Finally for now at least, let's consider Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2015-16/draft#Time for comments. This vital document was published on 26 May 2015, announced on a mailing list on 27 May, with a closing date of 29 May, accompanied with a comment "We value your input". The consultation period was due to have been a month, and no explanation or warning was given until the delayed publication. The short consultation time was of course grossly inadequate. How do I feel about this? I have to say, quite angry. The statement "We value your input" was unworthy of whoever wrote it: it is patently untrue, and a direct insult to the intelligence of the members of the community. No organisation that values the input of its volunteers treats them like this without explanation or apology. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:31, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
• If you read the Call to Action, you'll see that Innovation is important. Strangely there was no Meta page for it at that time so I started one, with some suggestions for organisations that the WMF might want to reach out to in that area. After a challenge, Luis Villa spared some of his valuable time to post his view of Innovation across the WMF. Frankly I thought it a little underwhelming, but assumed that these things take time. Now I discover that while the WMF was committing itself to Innovation, and I was trying to find out what if anything was going on, the whole "Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia" project was being developed in secret and then pitched to a funding body. Not only was the community not involved in that ideation, it was positively excluded. How did that make me feel? It made me feel that I had been actively deceived. What am I going to do about it? Nothing -- in the sense that although I have contacts in most of the organisations I listed, I am certainly not going to suggest the WMF to any of them as a credible partner in research and innovation. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 07:30, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
• Now that we're on to the Knowledge Engine let me point out just one of the failures of this project. The original proposals and grant applications, as far as we can tell, involved active "curation". In other words, it seems to me that the WMF seriously considered applying for money on the basis that the community, which had not been consulted and indeed which was being actively excluded from the project, would be happy to do extra work for free. There was no basis to that assumption, and it should never have been made. It was not identified as a risk to the project This is a major breach of transparency. How does this make me feel? Very angry indeed. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 07:36, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
• There's a major area in which lack of transparency has led to waste of resources: software planning. We now have Community Tech, which is responding at the tactical level, but we have seen too many projects developed internally without adequate testing against community needs or ways or working.

As far as I can tell, Flow was intended as a hugely ambitious workflow management system, based on a new talk page architecture. The research to design the workflow system never really got going, and the design of the talk page architecture was carried out in an atmosphere that was not conducive to a productive result. Indeed, the result was not what the community needed to do its work and the project has been more or less shelved: it's hard to tell. The Workflows project is still, it seems, active at mw:Collaboration/Workflows and once again there is no active involvement of the community in evidencing the research. So once again this is not going to work. It appears that Workflows will be based on Flow, and since Flow has been rejected by the community that's not going to end happily either.

mw:Gather was designed as a social media add-on to Wikipedia, which has a policy that it is not a social media platform, and would have involved extra curation effort, for no benefit to the project, without the tools needed even if that extra effort had been forthcoming, which it wouldn't, because there was already a policy in place against it. This was a waste of time and effort that could have been completely avoided by a few words at the planning stage.

The point is that there is no visible process for involving the community in these decisions at a stage early enough to prevent a waste of valuable staff time, which is to say, donor money. How does it make me feel? I do not feel I can honestly advise people to donate to an organisation that wastes its money like this time after time after time. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 07:53, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

• WMF did not discuss the MOU with CIS in India - discussion here and here for instance - transparency would make a big difference in whether the community would participate in the larger way or whether just a few members might be co-opted into the transactions between WMF and a private vendor in India providing services. Shyamal (talk) 06:48, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Share your ideas about how we might tackle transparency

Guiding questions for this section:

• In your view, what are specific actions that the Wikimedia Foundation can take in order to become more transparent?
• Have you observed more effectual transparency/communication practices at other organizations/communities that the WMF can adopt?
• What spaces on-wiki do you feel are most effective to share information?
• What advice would you give a new staff member at the Wikimedia Foundation related to good transparency practices?

Communications Committee (Lodewijk's email on wikimedia-l)

I'm not sure if this is the most effective method, but it might be an effective way to gain back a bit of trust. Why not appoint a small committee of a few trusted community members, that can get a bit more information (also when that has to remain confidential) and make some structural recommendations with regards to communicating with the community? Normally I'd expect the Board to take such role, but given recent events, I don't have the feeling the Board is best placed to do so.

Transparency depends on accountability

This idea has come up a few times now, and I'd love to see it represented in the document somehow. If the Wikimedia Foundation is not accountable to the Wikimedia movement, for example. then there is no way to guarantee future transparency or correct problems. Adamw (talk) 22:57, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Speaking for myself only here, but I think the intent was to take the pressure off being transparent. It can be scary, especially as a new staff member. I think accountability is only possible through transparency; when attacking a two headed beast, it seems prudent to me to take it one head at a time :) But I agree, Adamw, I just think this is a two step process.--CCogdill (WMF) (talk) 21:49, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Mention talk pages

Someone more knowledgeable in current wiki usage should write this section. There are good conventions around how to use draft tags (mentioned here) and talk pages, and we should follow these out of respect. Is it normal to have just one talk page at the top of a hierarchy of articles? More than one talk page per article? Dialogue happens in talk pages, what are the conventions for moving to the content page? We should link to existing tutorials, e.g. Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines. Adamw (talk) 00:43, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Simultaneous public and private conversations?

I noticed that our dialogue is sort of polarizing, we're talking about public and private as if they are two separate types of conversation with no overlap. I think a more realistic way to look at any public dialogue is that it has a life cycle like this:

1. A small number of people bounce an idea off of one another and decide to take the discussion public.
2. The ideas are introduced in public and discussion begins.
3. Small groups break off at any time, then come back to the larger discussion.
4. Conclusions are reached publicly.

There should never be a need to prevent any conversation. Whenever there's a private discussion, we should hold a public discussion at the same time so that we're not prioritizing the private one. Conversely, any time there's a public conversation, we should feel free to discuss privately as well.

Adamw (talk) 01:19, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Re: Take advantage of events

Marketing is not transparency. Public advertising is not transparency. Abusing events for purposes different from their main focus is not transparency. Nemo 23:02, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Use of private listservs and Google Groups

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T124324

Over the years, WMF has accrued a "transparency debt" in its use of private, internal mailing lists. I recommend an audit of internal mailing lists and careful consideration of the different options for configuring a list:

1. completely private and internal
2. private and internal, but with access procedure for trusted volunteers under NDA
3. publicly archived, but members-only, with some access criteria (this can be useful for committees and such, and perhaps also for some team collaborations)
4. publicly archived and open subscription

.. with the best practices articulated here in mind in making this determination. This is independent of any technical change, e.g. use of forum software. More important than technical changes may be the application of clear codes of conduct when switching from closed to open systems.

Ideally there should be a systematic approach that is well-documented and public. A couple of years ago I made some efforts to document current state as I understood it on OfficeWiki (no irony there!); the "Mailing lists" page may still prove useful as a starting point along with the public Mailing lists/overview.--Eloquence (talk) 23:38, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree a lot with the importance of this point and that's why I put a lot of effort in making Mailing lists/Overview more complete; everyone can give a small gift to transparency by adding one more existing list there. Google groups (and similar) should most definitely be forbidden; I hope it's clear to everyone in WMF that they are a black hat practice. However, even worse is the abuse of private email addresses in Cc... Nemo 09:40, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Transparency vs TMI

Siko, Guillaume, EGalvez, CCogdill, JRobell, and AVrana: thank you for starting this important work! AVrana, a further thank you for making everyone aware of this on wikimedia-l! I wrote up my own document in response to a transparency discussion we had at WMF in Tech management, not realizing your work was already here. I think the two writeups are complementary, and I want to figure out how to merge my stuff in.

The reason I wrote my doc: I think it's very easy to fall into the trap of publishing everything in the name of "transparency". Transparency in decision-making for people in a position of authority is the combination of:

• Letting people know when and how you intend to make important decisions
• Offering people the ability to provide important information before it is too late
• Explaining how long you intend to take to make a decision
• Explaining who will be present for important discussions about a decision
• When the decision is made, explaining the reasons for the decision

Good decision-making frequently involves candid conversations between flawed human beings. Given I count myself to be very squarely in the "flawed" category, I fear our latest rounds of calls for transparency means we may be held up to an unrealistic standard of oversharing. I appreciate being able to work around colleagues I trust, and have spirited discussions where I might say something I regret saying. I would appreciate it if I'm not expected to have to have every conversation in such a way that I have to worry about how every word I say plays on a global stage.

Do y'all think that parts of User:RobLa-WMF/Transparency might be worth incorporating here? -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 23:59, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

While not exactly the same thing as transparency, Denny's account about the problems with public discussion seems relevant here. --Tgr (talk) 00:45, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi RobLa-WMF! Thanks for kicking this off. For me, this falls under us really defining what transparency means for communities and for WMF staff -- the first question on this page. I feel like we have mixed ideas what we mean when we say "be more transparent". What does it mean to NOT be transparent? Where is the line drawn? This is something I also have questions about on a daily basis. I think User:Eloquence touched on this point by coming up with guidelines to decide what mailing lists should be open and which should be closed. Similarly, I wonder if the same could be applied to projects, strategies or other work. I'm also wondering out loud - this could be a super interesting discussion for Wikimania. So, to actually answer your question - sure! feel free to add on this page or in the questions on the talk page --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 18:46, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Guidance on what should be confidential is useful too

There is also value in giving guidance on the (limited) situations of what should be confidential, AND to separate out what can be mentioned as being discussed where the topic matter can be addressed, though the detail may not be made available. As a community we do have a good understanding that there is certainly non-public information, and the community has a general good (though not perfect) respect for that non-public component.  — billinghurst sDrewth 10:21, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Good stuff - another related meta page

• Wikimedia Foundation transparency gap

Glad to see this page coming to life. There is another page on this topic, recently built by a number of staff and volunteers. I like the general framing here, and the focus on examples of where things have worked; still, I think a lot of good work was done identifying specific issues that should/could be addressed. Any thoughts about how to make sense of these somewhat-overlapping pages? Should they be merged? I'm not sure, but I do think they should at least make explicit reference to each other, and maybe summarize each other's contents in their intros. -Pete F (talk) 16:22, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Transparency => agreeing on public-facing channels and helping stakeholders stay on-top of things

I've been following Wikimedia-l for quite some time now. It usually has very low return-on-time-investment for me (and I think I'm not the only one), but I still do it. Why do I do it? Because it's a comprehensive, though unfiltered, source of information of what's happening in the Movement, and since I have a Hebrew speaking community at home that has its own language and time barriers, and I sometimes translate important things for them.

If the community is indeed a stakeholder of the WMF (and I do hope there's a consensus about that) - merely being transparent is not enough. Sharing information actively, in a way that the community (even the non-English speaking community) can receive information effectively.

I think there is a better solution for Wikimedia-l for doing this, and I even think there is one in the making: the Discourse Pilot which can be extended to replace Wikimedia-L and organized in a way that can ensure better transparency and information relay. Organizing Discourse around topics can help different users subscribe and follow things that are of interest to them, while filtering out the rest.

I highly recommend we eventually shut down Wikimedia-L, and change it to Discourse. Alleycat80 (talk) 20:09, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Couldn't they coexist and be automatically syncronized?--Ymblanter (talk) 20:19, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Mailman already allows topics to be defined. Some Wikimedia lists make use of the feature. Nemo 22:34, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Subsidiary and collaborating organizations

It might be useful to articulate the expectations of transparency when WMF ties up with other organizations, contractors etc. - for example I have been very disturbed in the past by the refusal to show the community what the collaboration with an Indian NGO entailed. Also similarly with Wikimedia India Chapter which has private email groups, a private wiki and has been pointed out by many as not philosophically in line with Wikipedia traditions. (example points here and here) Shyamal (talk) 05:33, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Limits to transparency

I'd like to see these set out. One obvious example is to protect the personal privacy of staff in certain situations. I'm sure there are other circumstances, too. Tony (talk) 08:43, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Cost versus benefit

Copy of a posting at Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard#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 on the Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard#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 account 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 to 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. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:21, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Transparency officer

User:EGalvez (WMF) suggested in the Wikimedia-l discussion about WMF non-disclosure agreements and non-disparagement clauses that I put some thoughts here.

What I described in the linked discussion is a pattern that seems to have played out many times before: questions about transparency may be endorsed as valid by, say, Jimbo Wales, leading to an expectation that an answer will be forthcoming, but then nothing happens and the same questions arise again at a later date, leading to wasted effort all round.

Examples:

1. "I'll have to talk to others to make sure there are no contractual reasons not to do so, but in my opinion the grant letter should be published on meta. The Knight Grant is a red herring here, so it would be best to clear the air around that completely as soon as possible."
2. "things like standard boilerplate language to be signed by all employees doesn't strike me as something in and of itself to be kept private - there is a valid interest in showing that our policies are fair and humane for employees, responsible in terms of the privacy of personal information, etc.".

It occurred to me that it would be good if there were a designated "transparency officer" within WMF who could be relied upon to track such queries and report on progress so these questions receive appropriate closure, with either the desired information being supplied or a legal or other reason given why it must not be supplied.

As it is, it's a bit like making calls in the wilderness. When answers are given, they can't be relied upon to receive follow-up (as in the case of the Knowledge Engine grant above, where there were no contractual impediments at all, as I confirmed with the Knight Foundation for the Signpost, yet nothing happened for a month); then bits of information leak out (see Requests_for_information#Non-disparagement_clauses or the various Knowledge Engine leaks), and the result is an avoidable build-up of confusion, mistrust and resentment. Andreas JN466 11:34, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this JN. I do like the idea of formalizing/organizing requests; especially the ones that are most important. I am not sure that there are staff right now who can dedicate their full time job towards building up such a process, but this could happen "grassroots". That is, I'm wondering if there is a way communities can create their own process for these requests - maybe a table of sorts? This could help start off a tracking system and it will help the WMF stay organized as well. We have a lot of staff doing many things, but if there was a streamlined system for requests for information, this could help us get organized. Also - as you know, we need help right now. We have a lot of changes happening and we are also in the midst of strategy and annual planning. I'd be more than happy to feedback on any page you might set up. Thanks again for post this on this page - really appreciate it. --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 21:29, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Well I feel silly! I didn't click on the Requests_for_information link! I can ask internally about the idea to see how we might support this page. I am going to guess that we will want to have some kind of structure for the requests (description, purpose, etc.) and have someone assigned to the page. I can bring it up to Community Engagement to see how we can support. Not sure we can have dedicated staff, but we can at least have some folks watching the page. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 21:35, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Edward. As in building bridges, I am sure there are things we can do on each side, until we meet in the middle. If you let the community know what kind of structure would make your job easier, then we can work towards that. From the community side, I think the main concern is that there will be someone responding – even if just to say that the information cannot be supplied for a particular reason. I don't envisage that this "transparency officer" function would be a full-time job for a WMF staffer, but it would be good to know that some person or department is taking care to ensure that the page "works". Andreas JN466 12:33, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Edward, have you had a chance to ask about it internally? If no, can you please do it? I guess it is still a valid question. Or maybe the issues was handled in some other way? --アンタナナ 13:45, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Further steps

Does anyone propose to take any action on the basis of these discussions? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:21, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Six weeks later, it seems that the answer is "no". I propose shortly to mark the page {{outdated}}. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:42, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Rogol Domedonfors, I see this page as a set of practices. I do not think that steps taken (or not) are supposed to be visible on this page --アンタナナ 13:47, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

If there is no visible connection between what is discussed at this page and what happens in the wider working world, then something is amiss. Anyone can write a page of practices. The issue is whether anything happens as a result. It seems that in the absence of any answer to my question over the last three months, that no-one who ha read or contributed to this page intends to implement anything or can point to anything as a result. That ssems to me to be unsatisfactory, and to suggest that, to the extent that the originators of this page had the intention to have an effect, the page has failed in its purpose. If of course the intention of starting this discussion was merely to hold a discussion, then the page has served that purpose and might be marked {{historical}}. If the intention was to change anything, then there is no evidence to suggest that the page is anything other than {{failed}}. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:55, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

well, I still see this as a page for collecting stuff. it even says so: "This page is an attempt to start documenting and sharing some good practices among the Wikimedia community (and perhaps beyond!)". but these pages: Requests for information, Wikimedia Foundation transparency gap seems like pages with things to take care of --アンタナナ 21:09, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Collecting stuff is not the same as doing things. I am asking for any evidence that anyone has done anything, anywhere, at any time, as a result of this collection of stuff. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:12, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

the point is that I agree :) collecting stuff is one thing. doing stuff is the other thing (and usually it is better to collect stuff based on mistakes of other people, not your own, so gathering stuff may be a first step to do). personally I have been including this page just as a reading material whenever relevant --アンタナナ 21:24, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

I am glad to hear that we agree. You mention Wikimedia Foundation transparency gap: the discussion there suggests that that page has also been of little practical effect. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:32, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Rogol Domedonfors it is curious to know that you are even more dissatisfied with the speed of moving forward --アンタナナ 00:12, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Rogol Domedonfors I have gathered some ideas (I have started with the ones discussed before) on this page Wikimedia Foundation Board Governance Committee/Board transparency. I decided to have a separate subpage for this to track doable ideas, failures and good moves (if any). Your input is welcome --NTymkiv (WMF) (talk) 00:18, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for that pointer. My concern is whether there has been any progress, at whatever speed. There seems to be no evidence for it. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 19:23, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

• In the absence of any evidence that this page is active, or has led to any action, I again propose to mark it {{outdated}}. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 16:04, 10 September 2016 (UTC)