WMF Board of Trustees: A Fish Rots from the Head Down

[Anthonyhcole]

The results of the recent community election selection of board members:

The candidates with the most support are:
María Sefidari – User:Raystorm
Dariusz Jemielniak – User:Pundit
James Heilman – User:Doc James

linkhttps://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... ew_desktop[/link]

We already knew those three winners, didn't we?

Heilman finishes first. I'll figure out the other two if anyone cares.


tim

[The other two will be re-elections.]

That's impressive, Tim. I very much appreciate your insight into Wikipedia's politics, by the way.

[Vigilant]

Maybe he can start a movement to remove Jimmy Wales...

[Poetlister]

Maybe he can start a movement to remove Jimmy Wales...

That would be nice. However, I can't see that he has enough clout to get very far.

[Renée Bagslint]

Meanwhile, there is a new trustee, Esra'a Al Shafei (T-H-L), described as "a prominent international human rights activist and social entrepreneur". Unfortunately

Due to the nature of Esra’a’s work, sharing photos or videos of Esra’a may endanger her safety or the safety of others.
To help ensure the privacy and safety of Esra’a and her colleagues, we are not sharing any photographs or videos of Esra'a. We ask that you please join us in supporting this important safety consideration.

[Poetlister]

How long before someone puts a photo of her on Commons, insisting that Commons is not censored? and how would the WMF react?

[Zoloft]

How long before someone puts a photo of her on Commons, insisting that Commons is not censored? and how would the WMF react?

... How would the WMF react?

First, there would be a lot of methane...

[Renée Bagslint]

Expert trolling by James Salsman:

I would prefer that we go a bit further than simply asking people to refrain from taking photographs, and provide some sort of measures to prevent them. I have no idea of the pros and cons of different solutions, but a few that come to mind, roughly ordered from easiest to most difficult, are: veils, room-dividers or opaque audio booths in group events, photography-capable-equipment-at-the-door social rooms, private entrance/exit accommodations, and security details.

[Randy from Boise]

Expert trolling by James Salsman:

I would prefer that we go a bit further than simply asking people to refrain from taking photographs, and provide some sort of measures to prevent them. I have no idea of the pros and cons of different solutions, but a few that come to mind, roughly ordered from easiest to most difficult, are: veils, room-dividers or opaque audio booths in group events, photography-capable-equipment-at-the-door social rooms, private entrance/exit accommodations, and security details.

He could have suggested the use of masks or paste-on silly mustaches. Those would also work.

RfB

[Bezdomni]

I believe I've read the suggestion floated of creating a LoMF. That'd go well with fish. Your skull and your citations, Renée, remind me to pay for my mailboxes at creolista! (...sigh...)

[tarantino]

Expert trolling by James Salsman ...

Salsman has been banned from enwiki for over eleven years, but still considers himself a wikipedian. That's really sad.

Welcome back, Renée, BTW.

[Kingsindian]

About Al Shafei's non-profit. People may recognize a few familiar names:

Majal is funded through private donations and grants from non-governmental organizations, as well as any potential revenues earned through freelance development. Its primary funders are the Shuttleworth Foundation and the Omidyar Network.

In 2008, Majal won the Berkman Award from the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University in the Human Rights/Global Advocacy category.

[Renée Bagslint]

How long before someone puts a photo of her on Commons, insisting that Commons is not censored? and how would the WMF react?

Perhaps a photograph of someone else, or better still, someone non-existent, to get the reaction without actually endangering anyone?

[Poetlister]

Expert trolling by James Salsman ...

Salsman has been banned from enwiki for over eleven years, but still considers himself a wikipedian. That's really sad.

Welcome back, Renée, BTW.

He seems to have no other WMF account, at least under that name.

[C&B]

Expert trolling by James Salsman ...

Salsman has been banned from enwiki for over eleven years, but still considers himself a wikipedian. That's really sad.

...possibly explained by the act that he's had a new WP account there for some tiem, perhaps

[eagle]

August 15 Board Meeting
Every year, the Board meets early in the Wikimania calendar. The last meeting was a conference call held on June 14, just four days after Framgate broke. Subsequent phone calls resulted in the Board statement on Framgate, but this meeting is the first face-to-face opportunity to reflect and discuss.

Based on this Board meeting, Jimmy and Maher will fashion their Wikimania presentations. Other Board members are on some of the Working Groups and the tenor of today's discussions may be reflected there as well. It may be some time before we learn the real nature of today's discussions.

The Wikimania Board meeting is also the transition of terms of Board trustees. Christophe ''schiste'' Henner is scheduled to rotate off to be replaced by Shani Evenstein Sigalov.

[Moral Hazard]

Expert trolling by James Salsman:

I would prefer that we go a bit further than simply asking people to refrain from taking photographs, and provide some sort of measures to prevent them. I have no idea of the pros and cons of different solutions, but a few that come to mind, roughly ordered from easiest to most difficult, are: veils, room-dividers or opaque audio booths in group events, photography-capable-equipment-at-the-door social rooms, private entrance/exit accommodations, and security details.

“Nonexistence Seems Preferable”: Post-Truth, Feed Identity, and the NPC Afterlife in Neal Stephenson (T-H-L)’s “Fall; or, Dodge in Hell”
By Jonathan P. Lewis
[url]https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/non ... -hell/[url]

Stephenson’s tremendous gift for envisioning future technological praxis is shown in Fall through his speculation, perhaps stemming from his position as “chief futurist” at the AR startup Magic Leap (T-H-L), about how people will protect both their privacy and their digital identities online. The creation of apps called PURDAH and VEIL fuels the editing, personalizing, hiding, and/or announcing of one’s presence in both reality and online, which sounds exciting as a means of combating the scourge of “fake news” and social media bots.

PURDAH is a “Personal Unseverable Registered Designator for Anonymous Holography,” a means to provide authorship of one’s presence in the online world through identifiable traits in one’s writing.

Likewise, VEIL is “Virtual Epiphanic Identity Lustre,” a means to electronically broadcast both noise and signals to facial-recognition software systems. A VEIL can jam one’s face on security cameras and in other people’s augmented glasses or convey links to one’s PURDAH as a kind of QR code or nothing at all. As a means of protecting and projecting one’s privacy and identity, it is quite intriguing — how can, and even should, we protect our identities and go where we want in the coming days of near-total video surveillance?

[Poetlister]

It may be some time before we learn the real nature of today's discussions.

Indeed, we may never get the full details officially.

[Smiley]

Wikimedia Foundation • 16 August 2019

Yesterday, the Wikimedia Foundation announced a new member and leadership appointments to its Board of Trustees.

Shani Evenstein Sigalov, currently an EdTech Innovation Strategist and lecturer at the School of Medicine in Tel Aviv University, will be the newest member of the Board of Trustees. Nataliia Tymkiv will begin her second term on the Board of Trustees.

The Board also re-elected María Sefidari to the role of Board Chair, and elected Nataliia Tymkiv as Vice Chair.

meta:Esh77 / Esh77 (T-C-L)
WP:Wiki_Ed/Tel_Aviv_University/WikiMed_Elective_at_Tel_Aviv_University_(Yearly) (T-H-L)

I'm also a lecturer at Tel Aviv University, focusing on teaching Wikipedia & Wikidata in 2 for-credit, elective courses I designed and lead.

On October 2013 I opened the Wiki-Med course at the Tel-Aviv University. This is a for-credit elective course, the first course of its kind, which gives Med students full academic credit for editing Wikipedia. Thus far, my students wrote about 170 medical-related articles, which have been viewed over 3 million times.

[Smiley]

[Wikimedia-l] New Board member and leadership appointments to Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
María Sefidari

Below (and on the Wikimedia Blog) you will find the official announcement
about these new leadership appointments. You can find below the rest of the
appointments.


Audit Committee

Chair: Tanya Capuano
Members: Raju Narisetti, Shani Evenstein
Alternates: María Sefidari


Board Governance Committee

Chair: Lisa Lewin
Members: María Sefidari, Dariusz Jemielniak
Alternates: Esra’a Al Shafei


Human Resources Committee

Chair: Dariusz Jemielniak
Members: Raju Narisetti, Tanya Capuano
Alternates: Lisa Lewin, María Sefidari


Special Projects Committee

Chair: James Heilman
Members: Esra’a Al Shafei, Jimmy Wales
Alternates: Shani Evenstein


Affiliations Committee liaisons: Shani Evenstein, James Heilman,
Nataliia Tymkiv (alternate)

Funds Dissemination Committee liaisons: Dariusz Jemielniak, Esra’a Al Shafei

Election Committee liaison: Esra’a Al Shafei

Language Committee liaison: James Heilman

[Vigilant]

The Board also re-elected María Sefidari to the role of Board Chair, and elected Nataliia Tymkiv as Vice Chair.

I'm shocked but not surprised at their stupidity.

[Zoloft]

The Board also re-elected María Sefidari to the role of Board Chair...

It's nice that the title of this topic is still valid, evergreen even.

[Poetlister]

What's Fram's opinion on this?

[Midsize Jake]

What's Fram's opinion on this?

I don't think we need to know his opinion on the matter to understand that this is clearly a wagon-circling vote for Ms. Sefidari, directed against the most-active users and admins in the English WP community, do we? I mean, they may be board members, but at heart they're still Wikipedians. They don't accept blame for anything, and they don't let ethical considerations or human behavioral realities get in the way of a perfectly good power-grab.

[Vigilant]

When it finally comes out that FramGate was about Laura Hale, the WMF is going to be eating a shit sandwich in the mainstream press.

[Zoloft]

When it finally comes out that FramGate was about Laura Hale, the WMF is going to be eating a shit sandwich in the mainstream press.

Any concrete steps we can take to help the WMF prepare and consume said sandwich?

[Vigilant]

When it finally comes out that FramGate was about Laura Hale, the WMF is going to be eating a shit sandwich in the mainstream press.

Any concrete steps we can take to help the WMF prepare and consume said sandwich?

It's been hard to inspire most reporters to take an interest in en.wp lately.
It's old news and far from cool any more.

What will pique their finely tuned blood sensing organs is a personal drama, prepackaged like Qworty.

[Kumioko]

When it finally comes out that FramGate was about Laura Hale, the WMF is going to be eating a shit sandwich in the mainstream press.

Any concrete steps we can take to help the WMF prepare and consume said sandwich?

It's been hard to inspire most reporters to take an interest in en.wp lately.
It's old news and far from cool any more.

What will pique their finely tuned blood sensing organs is a personal drama, prepackaged like Qworty.

It's to much inside baseball.

If you want to get the news attention, all you need to do is tell them that Wikipedia helped the Russians get Trump elected or that Wikipedia took money from the Russians and they'll be all over it like Katherine Maher at a Donor party.

[Zoloft]

Framed properly it's a tale of corrupt insiders doing some self-dealing with a charity's funds, nepotism, grifters and graft, and a blithe dismissal of long-time volunteers that finally boils over into open rebellion, the underdogs against the corporate evil.

The tabloid version:
Sex, women behaving badly, New Age and Silicon Valley wannabe elitists, outright theft and fraud, Wikipedia getting too big for its britches.

Wikipedia becoming the fully corrupt version of its early promise, drowned in too much money and gross mismanagement.

[eagle]

Framed properly it's a tale of corrupt insiders doing some self-dealing with a charity's funds, nepotism, grifters and graft, and a blithe dismissal of long-time volunteers that finally boils over into open rebellion, the underdogs against the corporate evil.

The tabloid version:
Sex, women behaving badly, New Age and Silicon Valley wannabe elitists, outright theft and fraud, Wikipedia getting too big for its britches.

Wikipedia becoming the fully corrupt version of its early promise, drowned in too much money and gross mismanagement.

For the Hasten The Day crowd, Maria's reelection as WMF Chair is a blessing. She is too politically tone-deaf to help navigate the WMF Board through the looming storm.

[eagle]

When it finally comes out that FramGate was about Laura Hale, the WMF is going to be eating a shit sandwich in the mainstream press.

Any concrete steps we can take to help the WMF prepare and consume said sandwich?

Does anybody own stock in Google, Apple, Microsoft or Amazon? Please PM me.

[Poetlister]

Framed properly it's a tale of corrupt insiders doing some self-dealing with a charity's funds, nepotism, grifters and graft, and a blithe dismissal of long-time volunteers that finally boils over into open rebellion, the underdogs against the corporate evil.

The tabloid version:
Sex, women behaving badly, New Age and Silicon Valley wannabe elitists, outright theft and fraud, Wikipedia getting too big for its britches.

Wikipedia becoming the fully corrupt version of its early promise, drowned in too much money and gross mismanagement.

It would be excellent if this got substantial press attention. I'm not holding my breath. Will it get enough to justify an article about it on WP, and would that article be allowed to stand?

[Zoloft]

When it finally comes out that FramGate was about Laura Hale, the WMF is going to be eating a shit sandwich in the mainstream press.

Any concrete steps we can take to help the WMF prepare and consume said sandwich?

Does anybody own stock in Google, Apple, Microsoft or Amazon? Please PM me.

I have Microsoft stock. PM me if you like.

[eagle]

The newest member of the WMF Board is: Shani Evenstein Sigalov.

She has served leadership roles in several Wikimedia affiliates and thematic groups, including as the Chairperson for both Wikimedia Medicine and the Wikipedia and Education User Group, and as a Board member of Wikimedia Israel. She is also currently part of the Wikimedia 2030 partnerships working group as part of the Movement Strategy.

Either she drank the kool aid or kept her mouth shut until she was seated on the board. The partnerships working group had weird draft recommendations like:

Partnerships that strengthen knowledge equity should be a priority in the initial phase.

Sigalov does instructional technology at a medical school, and has the rank of "instructor." You would think that the WMF should at least rate a full professor to serve on its Board.

[Poetlister]

I believe that she is someone of intelligence. Whether she has drunk too much Jimbo juice, or lacks the courage and assertiveness to do much on the board, remains to be seen.

[eagle]

I believe that she is someone of intelligence. Whether she has drunk too much Jimbo juice, or lacks the courage and assertiveness to do much on the board, remains to be seen.

Well her track record on the Partnerships Working Group will speak for itself.

[Jeff Hawke]

Comments were made on other threads about the possible future of María Sefidari,, the current Chair of the Board. This seems the right place to examine the previous chairs and what happened to then

• (2003-6) Jimmy Wales -- who he?
• (2006-8) Florence Nibart-Devouard Anthere (T-C-L) Florence Devouard (T-H-L) -- now receiving WMF grant money for WikiFundi
• (2008-10) Michael Snow Michael Snow (T-C-L) -- university administrator
• (2010-12) Ting Chen Wing (T-C-L) -- engineer
• (2012-13) Kat Walsh Mindspillage (T-C-L) -- lawyer
• (2013-16) Jan-Bart de Vreede Jan-Bart (T-C-L) -- works for Kennisnet, WMF European hosting
• (2016) Patricio Lorente Patricio.lorente (T-C-L) -- librarian
• (2016-17) Christophe Henner Schiste (T-C-L) -- COO, cloud computing company
• (2017-...) María Sefidari Raystorm (T-C-L) -- university academic

Of these, Ting Chen, Florence Devouard, Jan-Bart de Vreede, Kat Walsh are or have been "advisors" to WMF, presumably for pay. It seems reasonably clear that while Trustees are of course forbidden from receiving pay for their duties, the Chair can look forward to a nice little earner from the WMF afterwards.

[Poetlister]

Comments were made on other threads about the possible future of María Sefidari,, the current Chair of the Board. This seems the right place to examine the previous chairs and what happened to them ...

Of these, Ting Chen, Florence Devouard, Jan-Bart de Vreede, Kat Walsh are or have been "advisors" to WMF, presumably for pay. It seems reasonably clear that while Trustees are of course forbidden from receiving pay for their duties, the Chair can look forward to a nice little earner from the WMF afterwards.

That's not wildly different from the tendency to recruit WMF staff from the admin brigade.

[Ca$hBag]

I got a notification from the bard of trustees that elections are open. Who do I vote for?

Anyone still trust-able according to Wikipediocracy? Or should I boycott?

[WikiWatcher]

The white smoke has been smoked - and the winners are:

Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight
Victoria Doronina
Dariusz Jemielniak
Lorenzo Losa

I look forward to the scintillating insights of forum members about how this is all going to be a disaster, or something.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimed ... 21/Results

[Bezdomni]

This does not seem to have been a coup. I can happily reassure everyone that my vote was entirely without consequence. Of the three people from Asia & Africa I put in my top four, none made the cut.

The only candidate in my top four (of five) to make it was the guy who has the integrity to have recognized in his ethnography that there is a Polish cabal.

Besides, he's been writing cutting edge papers on using Wikidata to determine the effects of prayer on the longevity of Roman Catholic bishops as compared to more ordinary clergy and academics. Hard science straight from the boardroom.

What more could you ask for? (§)

[Bezdomni]

The white smoke has been smoked

I thought of this thread today as I stood in the middle of a busy road to take this...

[Smiley]

Welcoming María Sefidari as a Foundation consultant.

It appears that the smiley did not have the desired effect

I would never have dreamed of taking a job
right away at the affiliate I worked for. That would have created the
impression that volunteer trustees spent their time on the Board creating
remunerated roles for thenselves.

And it would have broken rules that we introduced, under direct threat by
the WMF of being de-recognised as an affiliate.

I'll be quite straightforward, this is a disaster for the credibility of
the WMF's governance and it must be immediately reversed.

I feel quite silly now having been on the simpleAPG committee for three
years and having advised affiliates who wanted to hire staff for the first
time to draw clear lines between staff and board members, to now have to
see this exact scenario I warned against play out at the WMF.

All in all I can only call for a governance overhaul at the WMF so that
murky situations like this don't happen again.

I guess we are supposed to believe that María expressed no interest
whatsoever in such a role, and was entirely surprised and flattered when
everybody else came up to her and suggested it. Right? Did she maybe have
to be talked into accepting money for the role?

María, with her wealth of experience, is surely aware that affiliates have
been advised to strenuously avoid such conflicts of interest over the
years. This is very much a case of "Don't do as I do, do as I say".

Why should anyone stand for that? If María wants to give advice, serve the
mission, she can do so as a volunteer, like everyone else.

I am astounded.

Unless this is a non-remunerated role, taking on a board member immediately after they
step down is an absolutely flagrant breach of one of the basic tenets of good corporate
governance, the avoidance of conflict of interest. You and the WMF board must be very well
aware of that, as you have spent years (rightly) insisting on absolute probity for the
affiliates.

I am very sad about all of this. It taints the entire governance process.
It is precisely the type of issue that grants committees at all levels have
been asked to "address" in their comments and recommendations; I know for a
fact that governance and leadership issues like this had a very significant
impact on grants recommendations for multiple grantee organizations in the
past, usually with the urging of WMF staff and leadership.

What has happened here is very inappropriate, and deeply troubling.

It's pretty embarrassing that regional Wikimedias have better governance
standards than the (extraordinarily wealthy) international Foundation.

I don't understand how the Tides/Wikimedia general counsel believes that
the conflict of interest of Maria has moved directly from being Board chair
to being a paid consultant for an undisclosed amount "would be shortly
mitigated by her stepping down from her trusteeship for unrelated reasons".

Whether the offer and acceptance were made in good faith or bad faith leads
to the same conclusion: a completely unacceptable situation that must be
remedied aggressively, not papered-over with corporate doublespeak. Whether
poor ethics or poor judgment, neither trait ought to be welcome in a
decision-making capacity. I would not want *any* person with input on the
ED position who thought this was actually a good idea, even assuming the
best possible faith. For this kind of skating on the edge of inurement, we
should already be beyond the initial question of dismissal of the hire to
the question of other, internal restructuring. This is several orders of
magnitude worse than anything Dr. Heilman was removed for in 2015. If
significant measures are not taken to remedy this situation, then this
should be basically the only issue in the upcoming board elections, and it
would be a shame to have an election in which the community is trying to
deal with serious lapses of ethics or judgment rather than trying to decide
the WMF's other, mission-connected priorities.

Many volunteers around the globe have worked very hard for years to meet
the standards the WMF expects from us. This feels like a slap on the face.

[Zoloft]

This did happen back in June, but it still shocks me and stinks of self-dealing.

I was a board member of a charity. It would have violated our charter if I had taken a paid position after stepping down.

[Smiley]

This did happen back in June, but it still shocks me and stinks of self-dealing.

I was a board member of a charity. It would have violated our charter if I had taken a paid position after stepping down.

Ah, I missed it first time round.

The thread was necroed with this comment:

Hi all,

This is a brief note to follow up on our commitment to update the conflict
of interest policy.[1] I apologize that we did not meet our initial
deadline of 30 September, but the update is in progress. We are currently
finalizing the draft updated policy and figuring out the best timing for
publication. We want to make sure we have adequate staff support to respond
to feedback, and we want to minimize overlap with and disruption of other
planned discussions. Currently, it looks like we should be able to publish
the draft updated policy by the first week of November. I will let you know
when we have a set date.

Best,
Chuck

[1] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/C ... est_policy

==
Charles M. Roslof
Lead Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
Pronouns: they / he

[Jazzman]

Rotting from the Head Down?
As far as I can see over the years (unless I missed something important) the Board is scared stiff of the almighty WMF and just rubber stamps everything. Rotting from within is more likely – the Board is (or has been) just as corrupt as en.Wiki's Arbcom - there's a rotten apple in every barrel.
Goodnight is certainly an influential, intelligent, mature person, and possibly one of the best suited for the job. With her on the Board something might change but I'm not holding my breath.

[Poetlister]

The thread was necroed with this comment:

Why didn't they have a proper policy in position years ago? It's so obvious that every charity or non-profit should have one.

[Giraffe Stapler]

The thread was necroed with this comment:

Why didn't they have a proper policy in position years ago? It's so obvious that every charity or non-profit should have one.

If I recall correctly, there was a policy for affiliates, but not one for the WMF itself.

[Emptyeye]

That tracks with my memory, though I can't 100% confirm it. I remember a lot of the pushback actually being from affiliates basically going "Wait we wouldn't be allowed to do this based on affiliate policies you put into place, so why is it perfectly acceptable for you to do it?"

Obviously, there wasn't a good answer, and "Well it's not technically against our governing policies" wasn't going to cut it.

[Vigilant]

That tracks with my memory, though I can't 100% confirm it. I remember a lot of the pushback actually being from affiliates basically going "Wait we wouldn't be allowed to do this based on affiliate policies you put into place, so why is it perfectly acceptable for you to do it?"

Obviously, there wasn't a good answer, and "Well it's not technically against our governing policies" wasn't going to cut it.

The WMF answer was all shit, all the way down.

That's the only reason they backpedaled at all.

The chief legal counsel should have been fired on the spot for their participation in such an obvious scam.

[Poetlister]

That tracks with my memory, though I can't 100% confirm it. I remember a lot of the pushback actually being from affiliates basically going "Wait we wouldn't be allowed to do this based on affiliate policies you put into place, so why is it perfectly acceptable for you to do it?"

Obviously, there wasn't a good answer, and "Well it's not technically against our governing policies" wasn't going to cut it.

I'm not attempting to justify anything the WMF does, but presumably it works under the law of California. The WMUK works under English law. Does anyone know if California law is much more lax about such things? I hope not.