Cascadia Wikimedians/Joe Mabel's comments on the proposed Global Charter

Joe Mabel's comments on the proposed Global Charter

The following is a personal essay. Feel free to fix any typos, etc., but please if you want to discuss with me over the substance of this, let's do that on the talk page.

Although I'm the voting delegate for Cascadia Wikimedians, I'm writing here as an individual. I am not specifically urging a "yes" or "no" vote. I have not yet made up my own mind how I will vote as an individual contributor, and I am hoping to receive some input from my fellow Cascadians as to how we should vote as an organization.

I see both things to like and not to like about the proposed charter. I think that it is important that in deciding whether to adopt this that we compare this against present reality, not against some ideal. The only degree to which the latter should be considered is if adopting this charter will "lock things in" in a manner that will prevent needed improvements in the future.

The proposed charter is focused almost entirely on rights, responsibilities, and governance. There are a few other issues I might want to have seen taken up, but that is neither here nor there. Throughout the rest of this document, I am stipulating that the scope is what it is, and any criticisms I make will be relative to that scope.

We are on a compressed time frame here—two weeks between having a final version of the English-language document and expecting affiliates to vote—so in order to make timely remarks, I have had to spend less time studying the document and the supplementary documents than would be ideal. It is quite probable that I've missed something, and please do let me know if anything I say is missing has actually been addressed.

Let me start with some of what I like.

• The proposed charter is straightforward; it deals mainly with matters that are likely to remain the same over time, rather than getting "lost in the weeds" of immediate concerns.
• The section on Wikimedia Movement Principles and Values is excellent. Ditto for the section on individual contributors (other than it sliding somewhat oddly into issues about Wikimedia communities, but that's just a minor issue of what is where in the document). The section on Wikimedia Movement Organizations also seems fine.
• The proposed charter does an excellent job of meeting the WMF's "bottom line". In particular, the section on the WMF's responsibilities is, implicitly, a recapitulation of the responsibilities that the leaders of the WMF have indicated that they wish to reserve, and that they do not foresee delegating except, perhaps, in the distant future.
• While I have issues with the sections on the Global Council and on amendment of the charter, they do look to me like steps toward democratizing the Wikimedia movement.

Next, two broad negatives:

• I think this whole document and vote has been made much more confusing by a failure of the MCDC to state explicitly what problems this charter intends to resolve, and to distinguish what here is a recapitulation of the existing situation vs. what is new here.
• While I can see that this most recent draft of the charter shows some influence from the discussions at the recent Wikimedia Summit in Berlin, it seems to me that precisely with reference to the Global Council and to amendments some key conclusions of that meeting have been ignored. I would not have expected the MCDC to follow slavishly the specifics of the recommendations made there, but I would have expected at least an ancillary document explaining why issues of widespread concern are going completely unaddressed. It makes me wonder why we took the time and effort to gather 180 people in Berlin.

Here are a few things I think the proposed charter gets right:

• The very effort at setting up a more democratic body with some actual power is entirely a good thing.
• The specification of a Global Council Board (effectively a steering committee; I'll be abbreviating this as GCB) within the larger Global Council (effectively a legislature that can establish temporary and standing committees) is good.
• The ability to bring people onto the committees (and even the Global Council itself) beyond those directly elected is good.
• The decision to start with a relatively small Global Council that can grow over time, and to cap its membership at 100 is good.

But now for my issues, many of which come down to a lack of checks and balances in any direction. In the following, when I say that things are not addressed, I am not just referring to the charter itself; if these are addressed in the supplementary documents I couldn't find them there, either.

• There is no guarantee that the Global Council will have any staff or budget of its own. Offhand, it seems to be largely at the discretion of the WMF (or possibly some entirely unnamed outside entity?) to provide them with the basic staff, etc. that is necessary for them to function effectively. Nor is there any indication that such staff will serve at the pleasure of the GCB rather than of the legal entity (presuumably the WMF) that funds their positions, despite an overwhelming (94%) vote at the Summit in favor of such a provision.
• There seem to be no term limits at all. Not only is there no limit on how many successive terms a single individual may serve on the council, there is no limit even on the length of a single term, nor on the council deciding to extend their own terms once elected. I see literally nothing in this document to prevent the council even from extending their own terms indefinitely, appointing further members, and never holding another election. I don't think that will happen, but I would have expected a charter like this to address such issues.
• Similarly, there is no clear provision for removing someone from the Global Council or the GCB, nor is is there any indication of what would be considered a legitimate basis for such removal. E.g. can someone be removed because of lack of ongoing confidence or do issues have to rise to the level of malfeasance? Can the GCB remove one of its own members? Can the Council remove a GCB member? Does an action like that merely require a simple majority or a higher threshold? Et cetera. I could probably form a dozen reasonable questions along these lines, none of which are addressed by the charter.
• The attendees of the Berlin Summit had a lot of concern for the potential of self-dealing: many went so far as to argue that no one who is otherwise "on the payroll" should be on the Council. For example, there is nothing here to prevent a scenario where someone is involved in directing funds to a group that, in turn, is paying them a generous salary.
• The designation of specific seats on the council for representatives of affiliates (and one for the WMF itself) goes against what I perceived to be the consensus in Berlin, as does having what appears to be a single global vote for the representatives of the individual contributors versus geographic representation. In particular, it seems to me that those members who are connected to an affiliate get double representation: they vote both through their affiliate and again, separately, as individual contributors.
• While there is lip service to diversity, equity, and inclusion, there is nothing concrete. There is no guarantee of any sort about gender representation on the Council or on the GCB; there is no clear assurance of broad geographic representation. (Perhaps ironically, given my prior remark, the best bet on this front seems to be that "eight members will be selected through Wikimedia affiliates" but nothing specifies what many of us would have expected, that this be done on the basis of geographic regions rather than a single worldwide vote by affiliates.)
• The thresholds for amendments (55% of the relevant voting body in each case) are, in my opinion, very low. If a charter is intended to be stable, then I would think one would want a stronger consensus than that to change it. On the other hand, given some of the flaws I've just mentioned, I'd like to see the ability in the rather near future to introduce a set of amendments to establish some checks and balances, so maybe I should be happy to see a low threshold.
• One criticism on another front: if the Council were to grow to 100 members (which I think is workable) we would end up with 20 people on the GCB, which I think is not workable. I would refer people to en:Parkinson's law#Related efficiency for a good brief summary of why 20 people is too many to function as a steering committee or cabinet, and of course to Parkinson's book for a fleshed-out, chapter length discussion of the matter.