Talk:Board of Trustees/Archive 1

Official positions

We should set-up a similar page as soon as we get some more official postions. --Daniel Mayer 05:26, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps Official positions By the way,

• @De, Fr, Ko; page(s) should be updated - there is only mention to Election 2004, and its vote elibigility but this information is now almost useless because the eligilibity in this year was changed.
• En modified, but still it seems to need to be worked due to the same reason as above; and if it is okay, before calling for translators, it should be copyedited.

Thank you for attention, --Aphaea 22:15, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Where to discuss this page

I have a couple of comments on this page, mainly regarding style and consistency. Since most people can not edit and discuss on this wiki, is there a talk page on meta which is more suitable? If so, where? // habj 15:26, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

True. This is not a right place to have a discussion. We are better to go to an open wiki. How about m:Talk:Translation requests/WMF/Board of Trustees (or ../source)? We can also invite people somewhere else, site feedback, m:Metapub etc. --Aphaea 15:51, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Notes

"(to be held until chapters make their own appointment)"

I misread this to understand that Michael held the Chair position until the chapters make their own appointments, rather than that his term is until the chapters make their own appointment. At the moment I think it is reasonable to read it as the chapters will be appointing the Chair and the Executive Secretary, rather than simply appointing those two seats (not many people fully understand how the executive is appointed).

However, I didn't want to make any changes for fear of losing body parts, so suggesting it to someone who has guillotine-immunity :) Cheers, Daniel 03:32, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking this earlier but then forgot about it. ;-) I just added a note that should clear it up a little bit. Cbrown1023 talk 17:47, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Chart

Courtesy of WJBscribe:

Anyone know how to fix it so it displays, and any ideas where we should put it? Daniel 00:44, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Bring up a discussion on m:Wikimedia site feedback (so more can participate) and make sure we poke Jay or someone on ComCom for their opinion. Cbrown1023 talk 14:23, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Sticking this somewhere for a few minutes

• Ting Chen, Chair (term until July 2013)
• Jan-Bart de Vreede, Vice Chair (term until December 2012)
• Phoebe Ayers, Executive Secretary (term until July 2012)
• Stu West, Treasurer (term until December 2012)
• Bishakha Datta (term until December 2012)
• Matt Halprin (term until December 2012)
• Samuel Klein (term until July 2013)
• Arne Klempert (term until July 2012)
• Jimmy Wales, (term until December 2012)
• Kat Walsh (term until July 2013)

Going to switch a Board member infobox in a few minutes, but in case I get distracted, I snipped this info out of the article.... --MZMcBride 23:24, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

TL;DR

I doubt if anyone is ever going to read that amount of text, especially with the newest additions which are awfully formatted. I'd suggest a rewrite of the page, for instance in a way that Bishakha's and Stu's one-paragraph descriptions suggest, with links to more detailed descriptions where appriopriate. (And probably a new, more colourful design, could also help.) A concerned Wikimedian, odder 23:00, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, agreed.

There are a few issues here with the current version of the page:

• there's currently too much text for each person (only about a paragraph or two is needed);
• some of the writing is just bad;
• the tenure accomplishments sections are bizarre:
  • they're horribly duplicative;
    • including completely out-of-left-field sentences such as "This year, Lisbett Rausing and Peter Baldwin have donated $1.25 million." (repeated three times!);
  • usually sections such as these would be reserved only for Board chairs (in the same way that high court history is written about and referred to by the chief judge [e.g.., the Rehnquist Court]);
  • this kind of content would generally go on a single Board history or Board accomplishments page;
  • these tenure sections create needless page imbalance between old and new Board members (which is bad for both aesthetic/layout and social reasons);
• we need better linking to more information; if people really want Jimmy's full bio, they can read his user page and/or his biography on the English Wikipedia; the former Board members actually already have this feature; and lastly
• more text is a larger pain in the ass to get translated.

I'm hoping to find some time in the next week or so to fix up the page. We'll see! --MZMcBride (talk) 23:18, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

A few months ago, Sue asked me to expand the Board of Trustees page to add length to their individual bios in a manner that better reflected their accomplishments, further promoted their work on-wiki and detailed their focus on the Board. We've conducted a number of interviews with board members and we've enlisted other board members to directly edit their bios on Office wiki, then the plan has been to transfer them over to Foundation wiki as they are ready. The discrepancy in the lengths of the bios reflects the difference in who has completed their bios and signed off on them, versus those who have yet to complete them. The imbalance should only be temporary. Bishakha's will likely be ready soon and I'm hopeful Stu's will too. I'm fine with reverting it for now if it seems unacceptable to you both, but I hope you'll understand that we're planning to expand them all to approximately 5-7 paragraphs. Sue also wanted to dramatically expand the amount of text associated with their tenure accomplishments. That large block of text reflects a few hours of her and my time combing through the past resolutions and working on language that fit her vision for the page. I'm happy to discuss other ways to format and make it more pleasing to the eye, but she intends to have that material in some format on the page. I'll leave her a note to weigh in if she'd like, but I hope we can have a longer conversation about this before you change it too much. I'm super open to your suggestions and help in improving this. Thanks, Mroth (talk) 00:22, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't really have the time or patience to sit down and figure out what exactly changed between the three times you pasted this text in. It looks like you just trimmed the text off the top based on how long the Board member served and made no other changes. Given that Kat has served the longest, I'm pasting the (now-removed) text from her bio below for reference [removed].

It sounds like you and Sue want a Board accomplishments page or some other page (such as History of the Board of Trustees, which could use some love). This page ("Board of Trustees") is a place to document who's currently on the Board of Trustees and provide brief bios of each sitting member. [Though perhaps the page title isn't clear enough? It kind of matches "Staff and contractors" in this way, though.] It's fine to have content documenting the Board's achievements, but it makes absolutely no sense to include a copy of this text in every Board members' bio. The text itself is also poorly formatted (one monolith paragraph, poor linking, etc.) and has serious flow problems.

I don't know anything about Board members approving their own bios (or why Board members would have accounts on office.wikimedia.org, for that matter), but I doubt that any signed off on this text. I've no idea why any of them would want this text in their biography in this form. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:32, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Ouch. This long history doesn't belong on personal bio pages or on the list of resolutions. I'll move it to its own page.

I haven't had much time to look at this, but information about who is doing what should be balanced and useful to the reader. For instance, a "History of Wikimedia" page with a section for "Governance" covering Board / ED / committee governance, and brief factual bios about all Trustees, linking to their userpages where helpful. Narrative personal bios are always tricky. Framing them or governance as a series of proud accomplishments particularly so. (which tends towards 'marketing language', overweights events based on perceived success rather than impact, and avoids even important and useful controversies or failures, which are worth honoring in any balanced history.)

A list of past and present committee memberships and workstreams would be useful. I'm not sure about the rest. Sj (talk) 22:13, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Now cleaned up and merged with the existing Board history page at History of the Wikimedia Foundation. Sj (talk) 23:30, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

I've updated with a section from 2003-2004. All of this information comes from a sit-down I had with Sue where we went over the history of Board activities and hashed out the ones she wanted to highlight. I appreciate the formatting for it now, but the intention is eventually to have the list of board accomplishments better associated with board members specifically, both as a way to honor the work of the board and to accentuate the highlights. The fact that it is not done this way elsewhere is not a detracting point, in our opinion, but an opportunity for us to distinguish this board page from that of other foundations/non-profits. That is expressly Sue's goal with the redux to the page. Can you all help us conceive of a format where we can include the long board accomplishments in the board bios page? Is there formatting that hides the longer accomplishments text until a reader clicks on it? Appreciate your feedback and hope you can help me with this. Thank you, Mroth (talk) 23:24, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

The show/hide thing was done at Staff and contractors. I'd rather not repeat it.

Most of the text you wrote (or pasted into the page) was duplicative, some of it was simply wrong, and it didn't fit into the page's purpose. If you can write some copy for each member that actually highlights the member's accomplishments (rather than simply reformatting an index of Board resolutions and pasting it in a few times, truncating as you go), it'll be much easier to help you figure out a way to incorporate the text into the site.

You probably want to make a draft somewhere. Wikimedia:Sandbox is available. Until you have something worth looking at, it doesn't make sense for anyone to try to assist you. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:39, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I've cut the text from above since it's available here and I think we can continue to edit it on that page (for now). --Nemo 20:07, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Vacant Board seat?

Hi. Is there currently a vacant Board seat? --MZMcBride (talk) 07:01, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Matt's term has ended with the end of December 2012 and the process to find a successor is running. --Lyzzy (talk) 18:29, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Given that there is one vacancy, this sentence (opening para, second sentence) seems misleading: "The Board is the ultimate corporate authority for the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (cf. article IV, sec. 1 of the Wikimedia Foundation bylaws) and currently consists of ten Trustees." Similarly, further down there is another allusion to ten trustees. May be good to clarify? Bishdatta (talk) 14:03, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that Bishakha.

Edit conflict

Now I see Ana's bio is up :) I just updated the Meta page and chart. Sj (talk) 21:22, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

"elected directly" or "nominated" ?

Diff 2016-01-23 Related to m:Wikimedia Foundation membership controversy?

• Historians: this diff happened few weeks after the firing of Doc James from the Board of Trustees. Alvaro (talk) 11:19, 28 January 2016 (UTC)