Re: WMF Board of Trustees: Board Selection Process Update

Hi Risker,

On Mon, Aug 10, 2026 at 12:22 PM Risker via Wikimedia-l <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Not everything is a conspiracy, folks.  Raju was about to "term out", to
> be mandatorily retired from the WMF Board due to term limits, as of January
> 1, 2027; originally, his term would have ended on October 1, 2026.
>
Yes, I had already explained that in more detail in my linked comment on
the Board noticeboard on Meta-wiki (including how October 2026 would have
coincided with the bylaws' nine years limit, considering that he first
joined in October 2017); I had also pushed back there against speculations
that he had been "dismissed" or such. Not sure what you mean exactly by
"conspiracy".

That 'end of term' date only moved because the Board was realigning all of
> its term start/end dates to January 1. Those of us who have been around for
> a long time remember that the term start dates used to be a day or two
> before Wikimania started each year, but that was a moveable date and made
> it more difficult to manage.  Since the term start date has moved to
> January 1, any appointments that have been made all wind up ending on
> January 1 of whatever year, regardless of when the person is appointed.
> There is only one further scheduled board meeting before Raju's term will
> naturally expire.
>
Board members also engage in various other important activities besides
attending the scheduled meetings of the entire board (you can learn more
about this in the Board handbook
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal%3AWikimedia_Foundation_Board_Handbook#Board_compensation_and_time_commitment>
).

For example, the Board's October 1, 2025 meeting where Narisetti presented
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes:2025-10-01> (and the Board
approved) that controversial new community candidate review process
developed by his committee, and recommended the removal of Lane and Raval
as candidates, was an unscheduled one
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_meetings#2025>. And that's not
even talking about the kind of committee work itself that such board
decisions build on.

Raju has been a volunteer member of various boards (including several that
> are aligned with our own mission in various ways) for longer than Wikipedia
> has existed. Why is it a big deal that he's stepping away one meeting
> before he has to?
>
"big deal" are your words, not mine. For those trying to assess the
dynamics in the ongoing discussions about the governance committee's recent
announcement, I do find it useful to know that the chair of said committee
suddenly departed recently, just over three weeks after said announcement.
(You may debate "suddenly"; I mean it in the sense that this diverges from
the previously announced end date in just a few months, and that - as
people pointed out on Meta - there doesn't seem to be an official WMF
announcement yet accompanying his LinkedIn post, aside from the silent
update here <https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/board/> that some
community members happened to notice
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard#WMF_Board_size>.)
You could imagine that a committee chair's interest to see their work
through on such an important governance matter might often take precedence
over his interest in saving a bit of time by skipping an upcoming scheduled
board meeting. (But then again, as discussed above, your apparent
assumption that attending those scheduled meetings make up the majority of
a trustee's activities is questionable anyway.)


> I think it is also disengenuous to take out of context the statement by
> Maryana Iskander. She is right that the Board was pretty deeply divided
> when she arrived. One of her mandates was to change that, but she never
> really had a chance to make that point during that particular public
> discussion because she was interrupted.
>
As indicated in my previous post, I was going by Barkeep49's linked summary
of what Maryana said at the event. Admittedly I didn't attend it myself, so
if you think that Barkeep49's summary was "disingenuous" or lacks context,
by all means correct that (although, seeing Hannah's comment, it appears
that your own framing of what was said is not uncontested either). In any
case, I don't quite understand how Maryana having had such a mandate would
change the takeaways in the current situation anyway, or what (if anything)
is disputed exactly about her "effectively two boards" observation that I
quoted.

Apropos, while you are sharing your insider knowledge about such things and
telling us what the former CEO wanted to say but didn't: Do you happen to
know whether the current CEO has such a mandate as well?

Prior to Maryana's arrival, only rarely did appointed board members
> interact with the community in any way.  This has changed drastically:
> since 2022, appointed board members have been actively participating in
> community events, both global (e.g. Wikimania) and at regional conferences.
> This even extends to members of the Endowment board, several of whom
> attended and participated throughout the Paris WIkimania. This was a pretty
> major cultural change on the part of the Board, and I think it is one that
> should be welcomed and encouraged.
>
That's great to hear, although I do seem to recall quite a few appointed
board members attending and participating at pre-2022 Wikimanias too.

Also, not sure you are aware, but this March the board formalized a "Community
and Affiliate Liaisons" role
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation/Board_of_Trustees/Community_and_Affiliate_Liaisons>
for trustees that appears to encompass the kind of community event
participation that you are talking about, and appointed 2
community-selected and 0 appointed trustees to it. (I do realize of course
that this is not directly contradicting what you said, considering that you
were referring to the previous CEO's tenure.)

In any case though, since you are offering this as pushback about the
particular case we are discussing here: I don't recall seeing a single
public communication by Narisetti about the topics in question (as the
chair of the board committee that drove these controversial items: The
August 2025 election process change, the new "Candidate Review Process"
policy announced in October 2025, the removal of Lane and Raval as
candidates two days later, and now this new eligibility criteria proposal).
Which is in stark contrast to the general picture you are trying to paint.
Instead, the burden of interacting with the community in public during the
height of last year's board governance controversy and providing more
clarity about the Board's actions fell largely on community trustees, such
as Victoria (who caught a lot of flak in that context even though she
was not on Narisetti's committee herself), Lorenzo and Maciej. See e.g. our
summary in the Signpost
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2025-10-20/Special_report>
at
the time.  (And to clarify, I mean "interacting" in the sense of addressing
questions, offering context and arguments etc. - as opposed to being the
person who posts a staff-drafted announcement on behalf of the entire
Board.)
If I have overlooked any public comments by the board governance
committee's chair about these matters that "should [have been] welcomed and
encouraged", please provide links. And yes, I'm aware that some appointed
board members (who were not on the governance committee) later last year
attended at least one regional community event and engaged in conversations
about such topics with a number of community members present there. That's
great, but different from the IMHO more challenging and higher impact work
of communicating during such controversies in public spaces like the wikis
or this list, where the entire movement is able to read and refer to them.

Regards, Tilman


>
> I agree with many in this thread that it would be good to have increased
> leadership training.  At one point, some of that took place at Wikimedia
> Summits, but that was geared entirely toward affiliates and was explicitly
> not related to developing leadership candidates outside of the affiliate
> sphere.  Some of that continues to happen indirectly with various
> volunteer-based committees, but to some extent people need to have shown
> some leadership talent before they get onto those committees.  I think we
> need to do better.
>
> Risker/Anne
>
>
>
> On Mon, 10 Aug 2026 at 13:15, Tilman Bayer via Wikimedia-l <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>> To explain Luis' slightly cryptic "more board news today" comment:
>> Raju Narisetti, the chair of the Board Governance Committee - on
>> whose behalf Margo sent the message that opened this thread, and which had
>> led last year's controversial selection process changes and candidate
>> removals
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2025-10-20/Special_report>
>> - suddenly announced his departure from the board the other day (see also
>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard#c-HaeB-20260810080100-Boud-20260810054700>
>> ).
>>
>> Also, to keep conversations connected: Worth being aware that on July 31,
>> a different Board Governance Committee member (i.e. not its now departed
>> chair) posted an update
>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2027/Proposed_eligibility_criteria#c-Nadzik-20260731153200-Response_from_the_Board_Governance_Committee_to_community_feedback> regarding
>> the eligibility criteria on Meta ("We realize that our proposal needs more
>> work to achieve these goals").
>>
>> Regards, Tilman
>>
>> PS: Not to zoom too much into particular personnel examples, but this
>> whole debate might be an occasion for the Board to explain and juxtapose
>> its eligibility criteria for the other (appointed, i.e. non-community
>> selected) trustee positions as well. Also in light of the previous WMF
>> CEO's comments (as reported here
>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk%3A2025_WMF_Board_reform_petition#c-Barkeep49-20251019133900-ViridianPenguin-20251019030700>)
>> that the community-selected and (non-community) appointed trustees form
>> "effectively two boards (not that they were at odds necessarily but
>> operating in almost parallel) and how hard that made her work as a CEO". I
>> am not one of those who think that, say, every trustee must have edited
>> Wikipedia or that we need ideological litmus tests (in the sense, say, that
>> you cannot be a high-ranking executive in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp while
>> serving on the board). But at a time where some seem to be pushing for WMF
>> to compromise on its longstanding free knowledge ideals and guiding
>> principles in order to serve the organization's own narrow financial
>> interests, it's worth asking how much we know about the appointed Board
>> members' pre-existing stances about such ideals and principles.
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 9, 2026 at 1:38 PM Luis Villa via Wikimedia-l <
>> [email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> Since there is more board news today, sending a long-drafted followup:
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jul 24, 2026 at 7:45 PM Erik Moeller via Wikimedia-l <
>>> [email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Wikimedia Foundation needs folks with relevant governance experience
>>>> for an organization of this scale, but it also needs voices that
>>>> challenge it and push it in new directions on the Board. The trick is
>>>> to find the right balance between those goals. Requiring that people
>>>> advance along an internal functionary ladder towards the possibility
>>>> of standing for trusteeship is not that balance; it is the kind of
>>>> requirement structure you find in institutions that drift towards
>>>> stagnancy and self-reinforcement, often out of institutionalized fear.
>>>>
>>>> A compromise proposal:
>>>> * Change the word "must" to "should" when it comes to the governance
>>>> experience criteria
>>>> * Require that candidates indicate comparable or equivalent experience
>>>> in their candidate profile if they do not meet these criteria.
>>>>
>>>
>>> To echo and add to what Erik said: Governance of an organization like
>>> WMF is a wickedly complex problem, requiring many different skillsets. It's
>>> not enough to have good *ideas* - you have to have the *skills* to make
>>> those ideas happen: how to understand an auditor's report; how to think
>>> through the human politics of governance; employee management skills; etc.
>>> etc.
>>>
>>> So I think tightening skills and experience requirements is pretty
>>> reasonable.
>>>
>>> I like Erik's suggestions, and would add: WMF should invest in board
>>> skills development, not just restrict those who don't yet have the skills.
>>> Among other things, this could be formal training through services like
>>> https://boardsource.org/; or experiential learning through board
>>> observer seats/fellowships like Haas does for their b-school students:
>>> https://haas.berkeley.edu/cssl/programs-events/board-fellows/ The
>>> former would be good skills development for the movement, and the latter
>>> would double as a transparency move.
>>>
>>> I mean *invest*, not "commit to invest"; the Foundation should do a few
>>> years of this investment and *then* put in stricter rules, since otherwise
>>> the temptation for new board members to say "this is not necessary" and
>>> pull the drawbridge up after them would be very strong.
>>>
>>> I would also add, beating my recent drum: much of the energy that goes
>>> into Foundation board questions should instead be going into making the
>>> Foundation less central to the movement. That goes for the board -- who
>>> should be following through on the "infrastructure for open" commitments of
>>> 2030, not re-centralizing, so that the exact composition of the board is
>>> less important -- and for many movement leaders: *you can be a movement
>>> leader without being on the WMF board*. There are so many ways to lead.
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