Talk:Board of Trustees

http://www.timshell.com/pics/hawaii/ioavalley.jpg

http://www.timshell.com/pics/tim_chicago970524.jpg

http://www.timshell.com/pics/shell_photos/timnevada.jpg

http://www.timshell.com/pics/KiraWales/Tim_Kira.jpg

http://www.timshell.com/pics/gracie1.jpg

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.

In 2006, the Board hired Brad Patrick to be inaugural Executive Director and General Counsel and it created the Communications, Audit, Fundraising, and Chapters committees. The Board also supported the creation of Wiktionary and Wikiversity, the establishment of an Advisory Board, and the approval of Wikimedia chapters from Denmark and the Netherlands. For fiscal year 2006-07, the Foundation's total revenue was $2.7 million. In 2007, the Board hired current Executive Director, Sue Gardner, and moved the Foundation offices from St. Petersburg, Florida, to San Francisco, California. That year the Board became a signatory to the Cape Town Open Education declaration in order to support further development of a movement around open educational resources and developed the iconic Wikimedia Vision and Mission statements. For fiscal year 2007-08, the Foundation's total revenue was $7 million. In 2008, the Board re-structured to expand the number of Board seats to 10 overall and ensure that the majority would always be selected by the community. The Board also approved Wikimedia chapters from Czech Republic, Austria, Australia, Hong Kong, Russia, Indonesia, Hungary and Norway. That year, the Board received its first grant from the Sloan Foundation of $3 million over three years and it adopted the Pluralism, Internationalism and Diversity Policy designed to support the development of a WMF staff with international experience, languages other than English and the ability to work productively with people of diverse backgrounds. For fiscal year 2008-09, the Foundation's total revenue was $7.7 million. In 2009, after significant consultation process with the community and other stakeholders, the Board re-licensed the Wikimedia sites under CC-BY-SA 3.0 in order to achieve greater interoperability and free knowledge worldwide, and it issued a statement on Biographies of Living People (BLP), urging the global Wikimedia community to uphold the accurate information in BLPs. The Board initiated its long-term strategic planning process and added Wikimedia chapters from the UK, New York City, Denmark, Portugal, Ukraine, Macedonia and Finland. That year, the Foundation received a $2 million grant from the Omidyar Network to support key objectives, a $900,000 grant from the Stanton Foundation to improve usability, a $500,000 grant from the Hewitt Foundation, and a $300,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to increase usability on Wikimedia Commons. For fiscal year 2009-10, the Foundation's total revenue was $15.4 million. In 2010, the Board began a process investigating the issue of controversial materials usage in the Wikimedia projects, which resulted in the Board affirming that the Wikimedia projects are not censored, supporting the principles of user choice and least astonishment, urging the Commons community to continue to practice rigorous curation of content, and asking the Executive Director to develop a personal image hiding feature. The Board also endorsed a new fundraising strategy, focusing on fundraising primarily through the annual campaign in order to ensure the continued independence of the Wikimedia movement. The also approved the 5-year targets for the Wikimedia movement as part of the conclusion of its strategy development process and added Wikimedia chapters from the Philippines, India and Estonia.. That year the Board launched the process called Movement Roles, intended to discuss and resolve key Wikimedia issues affecting governance, collaboration and decision making across different parts of the movement. In 2012, the Movement Roles process concluded with the Board recognizing an expanded framework for affiliation of Wikimedia groups and the creation of three new models for affiliation: partner orgs, associations, and affiliates. Also in 2010, Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund of Tides Foundation donated $2 million to support core operations and Charity Navigator raised the Wikimedia Foudation from 3-Star to 4-Star, the highest possible rating. For fiscal year 2010-11, the Foundation's total revenue was $23.8 million. In 2011, the Board issued a proclamation urging the global Wikimedia community to obtain subject consent for images that portray identifiable living persons in a private place or situation and it issued a statement advocating on behalf of openness and collaboration in the Wikimedia movement, calling on the Executive Director to make it the top staff priority. The Board also expanded the Donor Privacy Policy and approved Wikimedia chapters in Spain, South Africa, Macau, Canada, Chile, Mexico, District of Columbia, Bangladesh and Venezuela. In 2011, the Wikimedia Foundation received its largest donation to date, $3.6 milliom from the Stanton Foundation to fund major investments in technology infrastructure. The Foundation also received another $3 million grant over three years from the Sloan Foundation and $500,000 from the Brin Wojcicki Foundation. For fiscal year 2009-2010, the Foundation's total revenue was $34.8 million. In 2012, the Board initiated a process reflecting upon fundraising and funds dissemination practices. This resulted in guiding principles for fundraising and funds distribution and in the establishment of the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), a mechanism for aligning funding decisions with global community goals. The Board announced that going forward, Board members individual votes would be made public and it approved new Terms of Use for the projects, designed to create clarity and transparency about the rights and responsibiilities of readers and editors, following a thorough and wide-ranging consultation with global community members. This year, Lisbett Rausing and Peter Baldwin have donated $1.25 million.

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)