Wikipedia talk:WikiProject WMF Relations

Project Goals

This section is for discussion of the goals of the project, including current draft goals and other goals that editors believe are priorities for the community. 15:46, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Board of Trustee Elections

The section is for discussion of the third purpose, "to ensure that the English Wikipedia is suitably represented on the Board of Trustees", and the proposed method of bringing it about. 15:46, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

• I hope a lot of specifics are developed around how the board of trustee stuff will happen. Because while it makes sense to me that logistics and organization are done at this wikiproject, any actual development of number four should be done in a really prominent way; the whole ACE process feels like a good model there. I think the Board stuff is incredibly important and I'm supportive of the concept but the devil is definitely in the details of how this is excuted in my opinion. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:30, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

  any actual development of number four should be done in a really prominent way My current plan is for a cent-listed WP:VPR RFC, but something closer to the ACE process would also be appropriate - how would you propose that would work? BilledMammal (talk) 09:45, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

• I think that this section of the WikiProject documentation reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of a Board of Trustees (any board, not just the WMF one). I can foresee that the "How to vote card" would be based on candidates who are from English Wikipedia backgrounds and have grand plans to "represent" certain groups. Bottom line, a Board of Trustees must put all of their personal preferences aside and do what is best for the organization they hold in trust. If a candidate isn't willing to do that, they shouldn't be a trustee. Nor should anyone support a candidate who is unwilling to do that. I will note that the majority of elected WMF trustees has come from the English Wikipedia community, and many held positions of authority on this project beforehand, or were extremely well-respected members of this community at the time of their election. Actually, most of them remain very well-respected members of our community even though many of them took decisions that were not well-supported within our single project. Risker (talk) 05:08, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
• Rather than try and reserve a trustee seat for one particular language version of Wikipedia, I think it would be worth asking some pertinent questions of future trustee candidates and encouraging those who think that there should be some connection between the use of money collected from Wikipedia's readers and the development of these projects. That said I would have no problem with a few grand being granted to the wayback machine or the Geograph (we have millions of images sourced from the geograph). The divide isn't really between this wiki and the WMF, it is between the volunteer online community and those on the non volunteer side of the movement. ϢereSpielChequers 08:24, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
• English Wikipedia is the largest and (debatably) most important project the WMF controls. It deserves proper representation, but so do other WMF-controlled projects such as Commons, Wiktionary, Wikidata and other-language wikipedias. Should we shift the emphasis to ensuring that the whole community of editors is well represented? Contributors to Commons, frwp, etc. are potential allies in this discussion, and I'd hate to alienate them by suggesting that English Wikipedia is in some way above their work. Certes (talk) 09:37, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

  One of my hopes is that we will be able to collaborate with the other projects such as de-wiki; to set shared goals and have candidates from all wikis run on a "joint ticket", so to speak. I don't know if this will be practical, but it is something I have considered and hope to make happen. BilledMammal (talk) 09:48, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

• IMHO, one weakness of voting for Trustees is that we know so little about them -- unless they are active on one's home project -- & lack a way for an unfiltered group of volunteers to discuss them. (And this is a serious problem with those appointed to the board: we Wiki[p|m]edians have no idea what they have to contribute to our work.) If nothing else, anyone interested in promoting the third goal ought to write a voter's guide for the Board elections, much as has been done for the Arbcom for countless years. An example would be the one I wrote for the 2021 elections, but at the last moment chickened out & did not publish it. -- llywrch (talk) 07:06, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Some thoughts

Formalizing this into a WikiProject feels like enemizing the Foundation and further supporting an "us against you" mindset. — Frostly (talk) 02:05, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

• Discussion on even the most watched of user talks is not cannot be community discussions. Right now this whole project harkens back to the sort of work that caused ArbCom to write what turned into WP:LOCALCON. The project cannot actually speak for the community but is claiming the ability to do so. So getting that authority, through formal RfC, feels like it should be this project's first goal. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:30, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

  The concept of WikiProjects doesn't entail that any WikiProject should "own" a topic area, or have special rights or privileges compared to other editors. Asking for this (or any other) WikiProject to be accorded such privileges would be a fool's errand! A WikiProject is fundamentally a social construct: its success depends on its ability to function as a cohesive group of editors working towards a common goal. Andreas JN466 08:25, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

• It's very much toned down from the RFC proposal of a couple months ago, thank goodness. Sandizer (talk) 05:50, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
• I'll use an analogy I made at a presentation about Wikipedia earlier this week. Think of Wikipedia (& the other projects) & Foundation together as a university; we volunteers are the faculty, the Foundation is the administration. Both have the same general goals; however, we differ in some important details. Further, there appears to be no good way for us to have productive discussions with the Foundation. Any channel that is opened between the larger body of volunteers & the Foundation (either the staff or the whole) ends up being taken over by functionaries who (to put it politely) have goals that do not always benefit either party.
  I feel Katherine Maher's attention to the various Wikimedia chapters was a failure because most volunteers either have little interaction with them -- or don't even know they exist. (At least she tried, unlike Sue Gardner who AFAICS made no serious effort to reach out.) The Foundation needs a way to usefully interact with the average volunteer, so both can make decisions that benefit both. -- llywrch (talk) 18:13, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Stewards Election and Confirmation

In an attempt to make it easier for English Wikipedia editors to contribute to the Steward Elections I have created Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)/Archive 7#Stewards Election and Confirmation.

Comments on how it could be improved etc for the future are very welcome; I think such a document, with improvements, would be very helpful in the Board of Trustees elections, regardless of whether we separately create a "How to vote" card. BilledMammal (talk) 16:08, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Nice idea. Thanks for taking the time.

In the grand scheme of things, in my opinion steward actions rarely affect the English Wikipedia and aren't too big a deal to enwiki, and there's also a bunch of stewards and they go through yearly reconfirmation. But it's still nice to have this data and it's still nice to encourage enwiki folks to participate more in meta processes.

The BoT elections are much more impactful to enwiki, in my opinion. This is because 1) their terms are long and there is no reconfirmation, 2) there are only six seats available, 3) these six seats are voted on by all 1000-ish wikis so we are all competing against each other for a very small amount of representation, and 4) BoT actions do directly affect the English Wikipedia since they are the managers of the WMF and WMF actions often affect English Wikipedia through their choice of what software to work on, where they spend our donation money, and other actions.

I definitely think it's a great idea to publish a voter guide for the BoT elections. And I would also support publishing suggestions of who to vote for. For the suggestions of who to vote for, I would suggest picking the folks with the most edits to enwiki. In other words, picking en-wikipedians. I see the BoT as a very small senate, and it is important to maximize our state/province's (enwiki) representation on this senate.

Legoktm not getting elected in the last BoT election was a big blow and a missed opportunity to get an enwikipedian and a very talented mediawikian/developer on the BoT. And also someone who has their fingers on the pulse of FOSS and open source movements. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:20, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, although I think we should consider non-English Wikipedians if they are aligned with the priorities of the English Wikipedia - I think, for example, that the German Wikipedia is quite aligned with our position.

It would both allow us to expand our pool of potential trustees, and it would address concerns of some English Wikipedians of enwiki having too much influence over the WMF if we proceed with such a plan.

One thing that we need to do is fully the rules scrupulously; in particular, while my understanding is that we can endorse and support candidates, those candidates cannot be affiliated with us in any way - as soon as they are they can be disqualified. I'm still trying to work out if that allows us to convince editors to run and then seek to build support for them - preferably we would be able to, as half the problem is having enough enwiki candidates, but I'm not certain that wouldn't get the candidates disqualified. BilledMammal (talk) 19:33, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

it would address concerns of some English Wikipedians of enwiki having too much influence over the WMF. I would suggest that it is the role of the 999 other wikis to advance the aim of reducing enwiki influence, while enwiki focuses on making sure that enwiki isn't underrepresented. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:48, 10 February 2024 (UTC)