Beeblebrox wrote: ↑Thu Oct 21, 2021 5:33 pm
I found it a little overwhelming to sort through ~70 candidates and rank them in order. I suspect most voters will do what I did, look for names they recognize as belonging to reasonably sane people and vote for them.
No, I looked for statements that I recognized as being reasonably sane:
James Hare wrote:I have been a part of Wikimedia for way too long. I remember when Wikipedia was a radical experiment that no one took seriously. We proceeded anyway. Fast forward twenty years and Wikipedia is now looked upon as one of the last bastions of reliable nonpartisan information. I consider this to be a massive failure of the part of our society to take this kind of work seriously as a priority, but also a testament to the strength and resilience of Wikimedia's movement. One that is built organically around a common belief around the importance of sharing information. One where you do not need to formally join an association in order to participate.
With the movement charter we are presented a challenge to develop a governance framework for the Wikimedia movement. A decentralized movement which has, historically, resisted most forms of consolidation and imposition of hierarchy. This is a feature of our movement, not a flaw. But without a formally recognized institution like the Global Council, we are left with various scattered power structures that favor the well-organized and well-resourced. In practice this leaves volunteers feeling like they have no control over what the Wikimedia Foundation does even as the Foundation spends millions of dollars improving its community relations. The system may somewhat work but the belief will persist that it doesn’t.
If the movement charter drafting committee is successful, it will create a new polity that has been sorely missing: the organized counter-voice to the Wikimedia Foundation. Even with the best intentions, the current arrangement, with a few large organizations and many poorly organized volunteer communities, will inevitably produce conflict. There are sincere disagreements over what should be prioritized and why, and given how spending power is allocated, people will perceive the process to be unfair. And I honestly don’t think corporate hierarchies like the Foundation’s scale well to movements like ours; this is reflected in the velocity at which the Wikimedia Foundation makes improvements to the projects.
I consider these the top three priorities for the movement charter:
- Build legitimacy in the process and institution by establishing clear and explicit power arrangements;
- Empower the everyday and occasional Wikimedians to have say in the decisions made by movement-funded actors;
- Help movement-funded organizations like the Wikimedia Foundation scale management and oversight of their work to the hundreds of language communities, sister projects, affiliates, and so on.
Ad Huikeshoven wrote:Imagine a world in which all editors of Wikimedia projects are happy, and have found balance in their lives. The reality here and now is different. You are addicted to editing one or more of the Wikimedia projects. It's not your fault nor are you to blame that you're addicted: it's quieting the pain of a childhood trauma.
The Wikimedia Foundation shamelessly exploits the fruits of your unpaid volunteerism. You put so much time into it that it comes at the expense of caring for your family, your friends, your job or your school. In case you are financially independent or retired, you are free to spend all your time as you wish - if you do not forget to drink, eat and sleep on time. As long as you are not yet financially independent, you could expect the Wikimedia movement to look after you and provide guidance and support where you need it most.
The Charter for the Wikimedia Movement is the place to establish the rights of unpaid volunteers. I want to work to ensure that locally, in all countries, there is professional support for local volunteers in their own language, which meets the local needs of those volunteers. This includes translation to (and from) local languages of (news) reports about the Wikimedia projects, localization of templates and gadgets, organization of community activities, and what you need to become happy, and find balance in your life.
My intention is to contribute to the drafting of a text that will be endorsed by the communities. This, I believe, will need to be an iterative process of community consultation. The committee will produce texts in several rounds and gather feedback from the communities - and other stakeholders. I will work to ensure that it will be an open consultation process based on making consent decisions. In the feedback rounds, anyone may object to parts of the text. For the Charter to eventually be ratified, the committee must have resolved any insurmountable objections before anyone is asked to ratify the text.
Yair Rand wrote:A major goal of the Charter is to "clearly define roles and responsibilities", set boundaries, and define what we're doing and how we do it. It is essential for the future functioning of the projects and supporting organizations, that we create ironclad safeguards against overreach by our institutions, firmly anchor long-standing principles and goals, and establish a solid and effective framework for how the various high-level processes and parts of Wikimedia interact with each other.
The new framework should unambiguously specify responsibilities and authorities, minimize conflict, and allow everyone to get on with their work. The Charter should organize structures to enable projects and groups to receive needed support, while protecting them from inappropriate interference. As expressed in the Strategy Recommendations, all of Wikimedia's supporting organizations should be bound by enforceable basic requirements, and certain structures should be distributed and decentralized.
I would like the creation of the Charter to be an open and participatory process, involving many volunteers directly editing numerous Charter drafts around Wikimedia, moving forward in a wiki-style manner, our many communities and groups cross-pollinating texts and ideas and arguments and points of discussion, and gradually converging towards coherent results with the assistance of the drafting committee.
Whatever the method, the final outcome must be subject to community-wide ratification. Wikimedia is built by the volunteer community; it is the community that must decide whether to go forward with the Charter.
Anne Clin (Risker) wrote:I firmly believe that the individual projects – the Wikipedias, Commons, WIkidata, Wikisource, and the many other “sister” projects – are the centerpiece of the movement, and the movement infrastructure must be designed to help these projects to grow and develop in a healthy way. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of any Wikimedia affiliate organization; nonetheless, my work on the FDC and the 2030 strategy project has inculcated a deep and abiding respect for these organizations and their value to the movement as a whole, as they are important aspects of the project support infrastructure.
Those are my four. I found no compelling reason to vote for anyone else.
