Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Call for feedback: Community Board seats/Conversations/Topic panels/Topic panel: Board - Global Council - Hubs

Board - Global Council - Hubs

Hello - I don't think this is the right place to start a conversation that the BoT has no position on, especially if the BoT still hasn't offered any views on how it fits into the implementation of the strategy in general, so there isn't even a general framework to relate to. Braveheart (talk) 16:12, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

@Braveheart @Yair rand Hi, there have been many questions and concerns during this call for feedback connecting the Board with the Movement Strategy and especially the (Interim) Global Council. Many people have requested a clearer connection in our conversations, also in Movement Strategy conversations, and beyond (i.e. SWAN meetings). We are honoring all this interest with a dedicated session.

This session is mainly about how the upcoming Board election can be organized in a way that supports or at least doesn't affect negatively expected Movement Strategy processes like the creation of the Interim Global Council. How to avoid confusion and exhaustion among volunteers participating in these governance processes.

Some examples of related feedback we have received (the wording is mine):

• Why is this call for feedback running separately from the Movement Strategy conversations about governance?
• Volunteers are being asked to participate in too many initiatives at once. The calendar should be better organized. We are exhausted.
• Why is the Board working on all these changes now, while the Global Council and its competences are being defined?
• What will be the scope of the Board once the Global Council is created?
• Let's stagger the introduction of new seats over the next three years to support (various reasons including) the creation of the Interim Global Council.
• The Board is not the place for regional representation. That is a role that probably belongs to the Global Council and the Regional Hubs.

If you think the current description is not capturing well the intent described above, we welcome your suggestions to improve it. Qgil-WMF (talk) 21:43, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Besides the second question (which kind of also points to the fact that spending more volunteer time on discussing this topic is a bit odd), don't you think these are questions the BoT should answer itself, instead of us making up some possible answers?

If you instead want to talk about how the transfer of power from the BoT to the global council as well as the regional and local level should work, then this panel would make more sense. Braveheart (talk) 00:36, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

@Braveheart: The design of the transfer is specifically a task to be managed by the IGC, not the Board, according to the Strategy Recommendations. @Qgil-WMF: Determining which responsibilities will be transferred from the Board (and thus, what the Board's remaining scope is), is also specifically an IGC responsibility. Neither of the questions outlined on the page ("How could the different s/election processes of these bodies be organized? How would it be possible to reach out to potential candidates, getting apt volunteers for each body, without confusing or exhausting everyone?") have anything to do with the six questions above, and are not the Board's decision to make. (That was basically the whole direction of the initiative, seriously.)

So, question 4 is not something that can be answered in this setting. I doubt anyone asking question 1 was thinking of the Board call for feedback swallowing the strategy process, as opposed to the strategy process integrating the Board issues, so I don't think there's anywhere to go from that. Question 6 is about regional diversity in Board selection processes, which has another topic panel planned, and really fits there better than here. That leaves questions 2, 3, and 5, which are about scheduling of Board issues. So the two questions on the page could be replaced with something like "When should the Board consultations and selection processes take place, taking into account the other processes happening around the same time? How should the Board make scheduling decisions that work for the community?". Also replacing "Their relationship with the Board and the s/election processes for all these bodies are not known either." with something about timelines. And maybe changing the title to something more about process overlap.

(Question 3 is of course a very good point, but mostly about something that already happened: Why did was the decision made at that time? But it's relevance now is largely about how the Board can avoid timeline problems in the future.)

The page should make it clear that it is not a platform for making decisions about the IGC, Hubs, or GC themselves. --Yair rand (talk) 05:35, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

@Yair rand:, @Braveheart: - as we have added subpages for all the panels and their topics, I would like to move this contributions to the according talkpage at Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_for_feedback:_Community_Board_seats/Conversations/Topic_panels/Topic_panel:_Board_-_Global_Council_-_Hubs - hope this is okay with you? DBarthel (WMF) (talk) 11:30, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Sure, but I've also said my piece on this ;-) Braveheart (talk) 15:41, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Core issue, torn apart

I'm worried that core issues in implementing the recommendation to ensure equity in decision making are torn apart and been discussed on several places. You "can" connect Interim Global Council, Global Council and Hubs with the question how to fill community seats on the WMF Board. The question is if you should. There are already several places where these topics are discussed, the group of people around Mehrdad and Kaarel are working on it - I would rather like to see the Board taking an active part there and help to get to a good result and to find a feasible path through contrary proposals and positions. Alice Wiegand (talk) 14:29, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Dear Alice, thank you so much for sharing your concerns on this talk page! We have received similar questions with the movement strategy team in the backchannels and so I feel it makes sense to also respond here publicly.

• There have been explicit questions regarding the connection between WMF governance and movement governance processes on different fora (from movement strategy calls to SWAN discussions, etc.). I think that this panel session can help us to have a clear conversation about the connection points and facilitate informed decisions on how to approach these processes.
• With the movement strategy team we are monitoring closely discussions regarding WMF governance, because there is high potential to learn from these conversations and also to extract information for the movement wide process. We will also be present during the panel meeting and provide a high level framing of where the movement discussion is at. As you can see, I am seeing this rather as a connection point between the 2 processes, rather than a parallel discussion track.
• We are indeed working on the proposal for next steps regarding movement governance. There has been some energy around this with proposals across movement (e.g. here and here), which needs some consideration time. We hope to follow-up really soon and we also plan to integrate the key points / conclusions from the panel discussion in this follow-up.

I hope these points and this framing make sense to you. I look forward to an interesting conversation on Saturday. Take care! --KVaidla (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying, Kaarel. I’m joining the discussion, so maybe I’m a connection point by myself ;-) Alice Wiegand (talk) 19:48, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Panelists section is not for persons advertising but for understanding what way directed topic-related questions a person can answer or explain to other panel participants

@Oscar . (WMF) and Mehman (WMF): please decide together as panel moderators, what exactly four panelists as it told here from five persons you already pointed out here are worth to stay at exactly panelists section. It can be numbered less (if there's no persons to take part) than four but not more. Please, for example, move one of five panelists you're already pointed out at panelists section to the participants section and delete such person from panelists section for it to at least looks like equal to other topic panels. And please stop advertising people at panelists sections writing a long and mostly topic-unrelated information about panelists.

P.S. At first panel that already had place noone exceeded [moving a more and more people to panelists sections] that limit of four panelists, despite there were many people from participants section who voiced much more propositions and topic-related text than panelists themselves. Please be more restrained and selective in your [panelists section filling] appetites.

Thank you.85.238.102.83 08:47, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

@85.238.102.83 Kaarel is not a panelist. He will give a short update about the Movement Strategy process, especially for attendees that haven't followed that process lately. He will also be available in case there are any questions that are specific to the Movement Strategy. Several people had express concerns about this session combining Board elections related topics with Movement Strategy related topics, and we have responded to these concerns inviting a member of the Movement Strategy team. This type of situation is unique to this session, and this is why we are making an exception here. I have edited the page to clarify Kaarel's role clear. Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:45, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

User talk:Qgil-WMFOk, but maybe to detach him to some new subsection named, for example "Consultants" or something like that? To equalize all panel pages panelists section? Because as I see the panels right now it's not a call of feedback but some panel moderators competition about who will be best (and more beautiful way?) will describe and hold the panels itself that is not a declared goal of panel sessions. And that's some way frustrating.

P.S. Just saw you already did what i mean. Thank you85.238.102.83 11:33, 13 March 2021 (UTC)