Re: WMF Board of Trustees: Board Selection Process Update

*left

On Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 7:13 p.m. Hannah Clover <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Risker wasn't at WCNa that year. Personally I prefer ViridianPenguin's
> summary, as he was near me and it best reflects what I remember before I
> like that session to cry in the hallway.
>
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 6:55 p.m. Tilman Bayer via Wikimedia-l <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>> 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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>

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