Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Call for feedback: Community Board seats/Reports/2021-02-26 Meeting with the Georgian WikiCommunity

The meeting with the Georgian community took place on February 26, Friday. The meeting was attended by 6 active community members. The community was provided with a historical background of the process, as well as the latest news from the call for feedback.

Together with the community, we reviewed each proposal to understand what the community thinks about each proposal.

  • Ranked voting system: One participant commented that this system is not suitable for elections, as it can be manipulated and candidates with the best characteristics may be at a disadvantage.
  • Quotas: Two participants liked the idea of quotas, but if it is based on quotas on a regional or linguistic basis. For their consideration, it is necessary to conduct quotas on a regional basis and each large region should get a seat (or seats) in the BoT on this basis (for example, CEE should get one seat in the Board). WMF can also introduce a quota for large language communities, so large language communities can choose their representative on the Board (for example, the Arab or Slavic community can choose their representative on the Board).
  • Call for types of skills and experiences: This proposal was rejected as those present felt that in a diverse movement, like the Wikimedia movement, this form of election or selection of candidates is not the best and cannot be representative of the Wikimedia movement.
  • Vetting of candidates: All participants in the discussion rejected this idea as a very subjective form of board elections.
  • Board-delegated selection committee: The participants rejected this idea, as they think then this whole process doesn't make sense, since, in the end, the community loses the opportunity to be involved in the selection process of future members of BoT.
  • Community-elected selection committee: The participants saw it as falling into communism when you choose someone and he decides instead of you something that you may not like.
  • Election of confirmed candidates: One of the participants supported this idea as a status quo in comparison with other ideas.
  • Direct appointment of confirmed candidates: All participants unanimously rejected this idea as not democratic not transparent. In addition, they added that the Board already has this ability to directly appoint members and it is impossible for all members to be appointed by the BoT.
  • Regional seats: Three participants supported the idea as one of the best since it will give the regions an advantage to choose their candidates, who will subsequently represent their interests in the foundation BoT. But they also noted that first, it is necessary to clarify how the regions should be divided so that everything is representative.
  • Specialization seats: The participants rejected this idea as it doesn't appear to be very representative of the entire community and the Wikimedia movement.

Participants stated that they will contact the facilitator team in case they have more ideas or thoughts on the process.