User:Bluerasberry/app
Lane Rasberry (bluerasberry)
editbluerasberry (talk • meta edits • global user summary • CA • AE)
| Candidate details | 
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| Total word count for the whole application (required + optional questions) is 1000 (one thousand) words | ||
| Required questions | ||
| Why are you running for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees? What would you contribute? What would you like to learn more about? | Donors have given Wikipedia US$1,000,000,000 since 2017. The most important duty of trustees is developing budgets which advance the Wikimedia Foundation mission with this money.
I want to join the Board to emphasize that investment in community is the surest way to achieve our goals. Currently 10% of the budget is grants, and I estimate that 3% is in community control. At Wikimedia Summit 2024 the Wikimedia movement affiliates decided that the new Movement Charter and Global Council will transfer power from the Wikimedia Foundation to the user community. This will include more investment in our rising Global Majority, especially the Spanish-speaking world, India, and African countries. We also must create governance participation options for the 99% of editors and readers who lack membership in a wiki organization. I would come to the Board with 12 years of experience as a "Wikimedian in Residence", or professional Wikimedian. Currently I am at the School of Data Science at the University of Virginia, and my university will support me in making financial, business, and policy recommendations on the Board. My university pays me so I am not a Wikimedia Foundation employee, and can independently research challenges. Also, I want to join the Board to encourage more organizations to be Wikimedia partners like my university. | |
| Please describe your Wikimedia experience (such as contributions to the Wikimedia projects, memberships in Wikimedia organizations or affiliates, activities as a Wikimedia movement organizer, or participation with a Wikimedia movement ally organization). | .
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| From your perspective, what should the Wikimedia Foundation be prioritizing over the next 5-10 years, and why do you see these as the most important priorities? | Our unique strength is crowdsourced decentralized governance and we must sponsor its growth.
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| Optional questions - Professional Experience, Skills and Education | ||
| Please describe your experience with governing bodies of organizations (nonprofit or for-profit), mentioning the scope of your responsibilities, as well as the complexity of the organization (in terms of scale of operations, budget, number of people involved, or other meaningful measures) and the size of the board or body. | Since I joined the School of Data Science at the University of Virginia it has grown from 10 to 200 people, with annual budget $24 million/year. In this startup environment we collaboratively made all strategic decisions, and my own contribution was emphasizing openness. My colleagues join my research and the school is a model Wikimedia partnership.
I have written budgets and annual reports for Wikimedia New York City, Wikimedia Medicine, and Wikimedia LGBT+. Reporting norms from such wiki organizations can guide the Wikimedia Foundation. Since 2007 I have been on an ethics board reviewing ethics for multinational HIV vaccine clinical trials. Lessons from medical research can inform Wikimedia challenges. The budget is billions for the research overall. I organize do it yourself (Q26384) LGBT (Q17884) anarchist (Q12359071) concerts. We put 100 band profiles in Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. These events have helped 100 people in coming out (Q208099) as LGBT+. | |
| Please describe your professional career experience. | I am a data scientist and principal investigator in research.
After university I did medical clinical research (Q5133849). From 2012 I have been a professional Wikimedian. From 2012-18 I was Wikimedian at Consumer Reports, which is a nonprofit consumer protection (Q664183) organization. They sponsored Wikipedia article development for product safety. Since 2018 as a data scientist at my university I do projects to promote open science (Q309823), open data (Q309901), and openness (Q1683540) generally. Partner organizations like these contribute significant money and development to the Wikimedia platform, and we should seek more. | |
| Please briefly describe 3 situations that show how you tackled, or advised others on, a complex problem in an organization. How did you work with others to address the situations? | .
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| Please describe your educational background, including degrees, certificates, and courses of study finished, and their relevance to board work. | My bachelor of science in chemistry led me to medical research, then to ethics, diversity, and openness, and then to Wikimedia medical content. | |
| Please add any relevant links describing your professional background, experience, profile (such as LinkedIn, staff page, etc.). | . | |
| Optional questions - Leadership Experience | ||
| Please describe ways in which you have helped to form a bridge between multiple communities (such as by working on projects outside your home wiki, or working on a collaboration between multiple affiliates). | On-wiki, I support Wikimedians in applying for Wikimedia grants. My own experience and the gaps in our funding reports have convinced me that many Wikimedians are unable to access money. I feel that financial transparency and public discussion would increase trust in the Wikimedia grants strategy.
As is common among LGBT+ wiki editors, I get harassed by online crazy people. Because my town Charlottesville had a Nazi rally in 2017 and because I live in the United States where shootings 🔫 are routine , I support increased discussion of disaster response. Protections for LGBT+ people, women, neurodivergent people, and other vulnerable groups connect us all. | |
| Can you describe a policy, on wiki or off, that you helped to create or change? What did you learn from this experience? | I have organized community Wikimedia policy demonstrations in the controversies over Superprotect, the removal of WMF CEO Lila Tretikov, the rebranding, Can San Fran Ban Fram?, fundraising messages, and others. These are major wiki disputes with 1000s of petitioners. We can prevent new disputes with financial transparency. I wish to reconcile past conflicts with public discussion and apologies. | |
| How have you been able to empower people to make their voices heard? | ||
| Sometimes in professional situations, there are personality conflicts. Explain how you remain productive even with personality conflicts. | I remain productive by addressing conflicts with de-escalation (Q1182511) techniques. Many organizations already have developed ways to address conflicts, and I want to bring these practices to Wikimedia. As an example, feminist scholar Sara Ahmed (Q15437208) described that society systematically dismisses complaints of women, and teaches how to avoid this. | |
| Optional questions - Strategic Thinking | ||
| Where do you see the need for greater diversity in the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees or within the movement? What steps would you take to improve diversity on the Board or within the movement? What steps would you recommend the Board take to improve diversity? | The need for greater diversity is in the Wikimedia Foundation budget. 50% of Wikimedia money goes to the United States. I favor diverse spending over diverse volunteer representation. If spending cannot be diverse, then budget transparency is essential to justify that. I recommend encouraging conversation about the Wikimedia Endowment to inspire global confidence in our programs. | |
| Verification | Identity verification performed by Wikimedia Foundation staff and eligibility verification performed by the Elections Committee | |
Eligibility:  Not yet verified
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Identification: | |