Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Call for feedback: Community Board seats/Reports/2021-02-10 Weekly

Summary quality

Just from a quick read-through comparing from memory, the quality of these summaries is inconsistent, and a lot of the summaries do not adequately express the gist of original points. (Sorry, I know that such unspecific feedback isn't the most helpful, but maybe try just looking over the points again?)

(Side point, unrelated: Qgil mentioned here that my WMF structure reform proposal would be mentioned in the report to the Board, and it doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere on this page. Is it going to be in a separate report?)

--Yair rand (talk) 02:18, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

@Yair rand About the quality, we know there is room for improvement. This first report was... not only the first one but also filled with information as it could be expected in the beginning of a call for feedback. In the next weeks we will have more precedent, more feedback to improve the report like yours, and maybe less volume of new information that we will be able to process more consistently. We want to follow a consistent way to list ideas naming who said what in which context, linking to the source. We just didn't have the time to do this, and we didn't want to delay the start of the weekly reports.

About your proposal, I was referring to the main report, the one that will be officially delivered to the Board. We plan to start drafting it publicly next week, based on the information of the two first weekly reports. However, you are right that it should be mentioned in the weekly as well. My bad, I actually discussed with the team that we had to be careful not to miss early criticism to the entire process. We paid special attention to the feedback that came from the office hours and wikimedia-l, but I missed your earlier criticism in the main Talk page, which actually preceded the rest. I have added it now, before marking the page for translation and before publicizing this report. Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:56, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. --Yair rand (talk) 10:36, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

@Qgil-WMF: "We paid special attention to the feedback that came from the office hours" I've been in two of the meetings, and in those two quotas were very much criticized. However, that feedback apparently never made it to the report, which only mentions support of that proposal. Not good.--- Darwin ^Ahoy! 23:33, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Clarification request

"Some contributors on Meta expressed a dislike for quotas; members of the Russian WikiCommunity agreed". Did the Russian Community agree with the contributors on Meta, or with quotas? GoEThe (talk) 15:18, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi GoEThe, It is that the members of the Russian WikiCommunity agreed that quotas were disliked. I'll be more careful with my wording next time. Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 15:37, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Why is the Russian community conflated with the meta discussion at all? The wording of that sentence is indeed very poor, I've interpreted it as meaning that the Russian community agreed with quotas, but apparently it's precisely the opposite.--- Darwin ^Ahoy! 23:27, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Quotas: Incredibly biased report, questions

Just for starters:

• Generalized opposition against quotes in meta (not even linked there), somehow translated into "Some contributors on Meta expressed a dislike for quotas." Follows the poorly worded sentence noted above: "Members of the Russian WikiCommunity agreed" (agreed with no quotas, it seems), again forgetting to mention any kind of reasoning for that that could have been stated in the discussion mentioned.
• "Gender equity on the Board should be 50/50" - who said that? 50/50 of what? Are trans people included on that? What about intersex, are they blocked from entering the board?
• "Participants in the office hours sessions" also said quotas might not be a solution at all, explaining the reasoning, in at least 2 of the meetings I've been in, but somehow that never made it to this report.
• Anything and its dog supporting quotas made it to the report. The arguments against were reduced to these two almost incomprehensible sentences, written in bad English: "Some oppose due to worry some people could get onto the Board without the proper skills; The proposal is to discriminate against certain people by denying them the ability to run for certain board seats."

I have not analyzed yet the rest of the report, but this section grossly misrepresent both meta debate and the two online meetings I've been in, basically stating that despite some poorly stated opposition, the community in general is very supportive of all kind of quotas, and that gender ones should be 50/50, presumably split between "males" and "females". Right.

I feel defrauded and extremely disappointed with this report, and frankly hope that this would be corrected, and it's quality severely improved, or else it will be very difficult to rely on this kind of reports at all.--- Darwin ^Ahoy! 23:14, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi there, Darwin, Thanks for your feedback about the first weekly report. My apologies the language used did not represent what you saw on Meta and in the office hours. We aim to capture feedback accurately from all the channels where it is happening. The good news is in a week's time we will have another weekly report published. There is always room for improvement and we still have more reports to publish in the future, and drafting of the final report will begin next week, so I am sure there will be improvement. We will be including feedback about the first weekly report in the second weekly report. We already included feedback about this Call for Feedback. The goal is to capture feedback and document it to inform.

I was present in all three office hours. I don't recall this conversation about quotas. I know in the first office hour session the idea of Regional seats was discussed as an idea to improve upon the Quotas idea. In the next office hour session, discussion focused on a way to make quotas more geographically applicable since that is the only way some people see themselves getting elected. This is similar to what was heard in several conversations in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is illustrated on the weekly report. The goal is to absorb and document the feedback accurately. It is important to include feedback from all sources. Can you help point me to what may have been missed from the office hours so it can be included in amendments for the next report?

While I personally believe there are not just 2 genders, the aim is to accurately represent what was said. That was a quote from someone from the Spanish speaking community: Gender equity on the Board should be 50/50. We will try to be more specific about being clear who said what in future reports. Regardless, it's good we are now talking about this. Perhaps this is something you could take forward to discuss: how to ensure representation of all genders on the Board of Trustees. I know all at once might be very crowded, but how could this work? Maybe you could gather discussion and support around this?

To be honest, we have not yet heard from many women or LGBT+ folx. Hearing from LGBT+ folx is important. We are making efforts to reach out to people in the LGBT+ community to hear their feedback, but so far have been unsuccessful. Hopefully, we can accurately capture the feedback from LGBT+ folx in an upcoming weekly report.

If I missed anything you are concerned about, please let me know. Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 23:34, 12 February 2021 (UTC)