Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/Board resolution and vote on the proposed Movement Charter/Appendix

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Proposed Changes to Resource Distribution

Being a former member of the first FDC and now being a member of N&W Europe Regional Funds Committee, i both applaud the proposal at the same time I give a big sigh of frustration. The applauds is for the general set up of one GRDC and eight Regional Funds Committees and the general principles proposed for them. The sigh is for the set up/implementation for the different bodies. Just this year, in the N&W funds committee and in the informal groups discussing the GRDC there is emerging a sense that the group of EDs (for chapters and/or corresponding in other affiliates) will/could/should be a key stakeholder in this ecosystem. Should the members in the regional bodies primary be taken from former EDs, or some parts of it? Should this group be formalized as an election body for new members, or a part of it?. Should there be established a complementing body of non EDs, for he EDs to not a have 100% say in this? As understood, these questions are in an early phase, and needs to be discussed more thoroughly and broader, but I believe it would be a mistake to run into implementation as written here. Once again a top-down approach that miss out on the input of several that is the way we work in the project (bottom-up). And at the same time as I want more discussions, I see it leasable to create a GRDC as proposed to jan 1. Anders Wennersten (Yger) (talk) 12:03, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Anders Wennersten, Yael Weissburg here, VP of Community Growth. Thank you for this reflection. I'm glad to hear that in some ways this proposal builds on what we learned from the FDC and the Regional Funds Committees. That is certainly the intent; to improve on what worked/is working and discard what isn't.

For the last 6 months we've been engaging with Affiliate EDs on how we can improve the grants distribution process, including for next year's budget, and regardless of the outcome of the Charter vote. I am currently drafting a summary of that process, including what we learned and heard, and I will tag you when it's published (my hope is end of next week). In short, there seems to be common agreement that Affiliate EDs, while not the only stakeholders in the grants process, are the primary stakeholders, and therefore they must be better included in the process. Precisely what you're calling attention to.

What we were trying to wrestle with in the proposal is how to bring that perspective in without putting EDs in unfair positions where they represent both their own Affiliate and the broader region, and also how we don't overprivilege existing Affiliates as we as a movement make space for new ones. In my mind, what feels clear is that there needs to be mutual accountability - that however the Regional Funds Committees are composed, they are accountable to the Affiliates and the community in their regions, and that the Affiliates and communities delegate authority to the Regional Funds Committees.

I like the questions you've posed (copying below), and would value hearing from you and others about your ideas here:

Should the members in the regional bodies primary be taken from former EDs, or some parts of it? Should this group be formalized as an election body for new members, or a part of it?.

[My own questions]: Maybe there are ways we try to test one or more of these in the first iteration? Something like, regional elections with at least one seat needing to be filled by a former ED? Something else? RWeissburg (WMF) (talk) 20:31, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Glad to see you also are thinking of how to best involve EDs more or less formally in the upcoming process of establishment and running of the Regional Funds Committees. And I like your first spontaneous suggestions, but I believe a more dedicated group/process to elobarate on these issues must be established rather soon if anything should be concrete before end of year. I suppose we can take it on after you have published your summary next week? Perhaps you can complement that summary with a proposal of how to continue this discussion in order to establish some type of routines, even if preliminary, before end of year Anders Wennersten (talk) 05:41, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Anders,

Absolutely. I'll tag you in on that. In the meantime, my overall proposal is that we continue the discussion on-wiki; that we do what our community is so good at and deliberate and debate in the open. I'm hoping this page can be that place, but happy to move the discussion elsewhere if you can point me to a more appropriate place. RWeissburg (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Committee composition

I understand that not everyone is happy with the Regional Funds committees, but I'm not sure how this will solve any of the problems that previous bodies might have. It would also be important to bring some more of the documentation of the current problems that the Regional Funds committees are having and how this solution would address them, since it's not 100% clear where this proposal is coming from or what are the problems that the proposal is trying to address. As the BoT has expressed, form follows function, so it would be good to see that the BoT is doing what they preach.

Moreover, having community & elected bodies is important, but there are several assumptions here that need to be unpacked around "representativeness", and/or how a popular vote might solve current deficiencies. In any case, any committee working on funds should pick for skills & abilities, not only for popularity. There are ways in which this could be solved:

• a number of seats for onwiki volunteers interested in participating in the decision making processes, elected by vote through an on-wiki process;
• a number of seats for affiliate members/volunteers (including board representatives, movement organizers, etc.), could be TDB how to elect them (could be with a vote from the affiliates or with members of the affiliates or etc.);
• a number of seats allocated to professionals that are actually working on the civil society space and have a professional background on the topics that are normally in the interest of affiliates and/or have experience with strategic processes. These seats could be the last to be appointed, with a process that involves the first & second categories deciding on who to call, etc., with the aid of Program Officers for each region.

Popularity when connected to money won't lead to better outcomes, and might end up creating unfair situations for a lot of reasons. As an example, some of the gender work back from 2010-2011 wasn't very popular among the online editor community, which pushed back against any work that tried to address the (persistent) gender gap. Some of the hardest topics that society needs the Wikimedia movement to be delivering reliable information on are very niche or hard to grasp if you're not expert in the topic, or might not seem as impactful for a number of reasons. There are no safeguards being proposed to ensure that there's diversity, representation & equity being brought to such a body -- so you could end up in a situation where there's more representation from certain countries or certain demographics with more power than others. Broad participation doesn't always lead to better representation, particularly in the Wikimedia movement, where we estimate that only 1 out of 10 editors are women, not to mention other minorities and population groups that are barely represented in our movement.

There's also a balancing act that needs to be made among the different stakeholders involved in making decisions around funding, funding allocation, distribution of resources, etc. Otherwise, the problems that the Funds Dissemination Committees had will be re-created and re-enacted again.

Some of the criteria being proposed is also very problematic, such as the idea that "funds could be allocated based on other criteria such as population, community size, community need, etc.". Whatever criteria should be in line with economic justice -- for several reasons, all the criteria mentioned there goes against important justice principles (small populations receive less money; countries where people have more time to volunteer and have bigger communities would be favored instead of those were economic conditions, educational backgrounds, etc, make it harder to volunteer on Wikimedia projects, etc., etc). Any definition of impact of the work an affiliate is doing should involve a conversation with affiliates working on this region, and not just a decision made by the Board of Trustees, the Wikimedia Foundation, or even a semi-elected body. Subsidariety also comes with knowing the local reality you're operating in.

This proposal is concerning because it has the opportunity to exacerbate problems in regional power distribution dynamics, and I'm expressing my opinion here just to give voice to this concern. Moreover, I think that this process should have been done in a completely different way, and that the Board is eroding public trust in the decision making processes at the WMF. --Scann (WDU) (talk) 19:04, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Product and Technology Advisory Council

We invite you to discuss this proposal directly on the separate proposal page