Wikimedia Advisory Board

[Rogol Domedonfors]

The Foundation used to have an Advisory Board, a long list of Very Important Friends of Jimbo. It was required to be renewed annually by the WMF Board of Trustees and so lapsed at the end of 2015 after no appointments or reappointments were made in that year. Just one year ago, Dariusz Jemielniak assured me that it was "one of the B[oard] G[overnance] C[ommittee]'s priorities to revise and re-ignite the Advisory Board." Unfortunately the Meta page, linked to above, bears no indication that this has happened, and the Foundation website does not even reflect the lapse in continuity. So we may presume that the BGC did not manage to set fire to it as promised, although just yesterday they published an interim proposal.

But wait! Florence Nibart-Devouard has written and populated a page Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Sources/WMF Advisory board. So there is an Advisory Board after all! But it's a secret.

[thekohser]

This is a very good find, and well-documented, Rogol. More like this!

[Rogol Domedonfors]

Thanks. Just a quick update. I posted a related comment to wikimedia-l today at 11:10 UTC and Natailla Tymkiv updated the Foundation website at 16:46 UTC to mark it as historical. I used to have sensible and productive discussions with Natallia, and continue to think that she's doing her best, but I have come to believe her –and indeed my – efforts at reforming the WMF, however well-intentioned, to be radically misdirected.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

I see no reason to doubt that billionaires use gmail accounts to post to wikimedia-l but in any event it's all publicity.