Requests for comment/Democratizing the Wikimedia Foundation

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Background

The Wikimedia Foundation has helped the sister projects grow beyond expectations, but has also failed the community at many times. Some of these failures come down to a basic lack of accountability to the contributor and user communities, and even to its own staff.

Here are some questions about what might be going wrong here, and ideas about how to fix it. Please add your questions and thoughts, there is no owner of this RFC.

Question 1: Should the Wikimedia Foundation become a membership organization?

Wikimedia Foundation is currently a "non-membership organization" under US law, although its original bylaws specify it as "membership". The difference is that members (originally, editors, developers, and so on) would have legal rights to directly elect the full Board.

Discussion 1

1.  Support as proposer. A fully-elected Board comes with challenges but is the minimum requirement for democratic oversight and accountability. Without this an organization is not responsive to its constituents and will not necessarily learn from mistakes such as premature release of new features.

   I would personally like to see membership implemented as a wide range of natural contributors (editors, uploaders, people with a mop, developers with one or more changes merged, etc.), who don't pay to be members (I would be conflicted whether to include donors, let's leave that aside). These people would each have one vote which they could use to elect representatives and directly on various citizen-led referendums. Some of the trusted voices volunteering for our Board now could of course be included in this process, I don't mean for the proposal to equal a vote of no confidence, it's simply a structural fix.

   How one thinks about this proposal is probably based on how one views democracy in general: if they #would rather trust a small, independent leadership group or a broad, raucous community. Are experts the wisest among us, do we distrust our neighbors and colleagues on the wikis? Would our movement survive a transition of this magnitude? Would there be disorder? These are the same questions posed by a larger, societal push towards democracy and away from oligarchy (not to be disparaging, this is simply the name for government by the few).

   Unfortunately, this change can't be accomplished without either Board self-reform or a legal challenge to the original change eliminating membership, but we can at least recommend the self-reform. —Adamw (talk) 19:56, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

   Thanks for raising the idea. What are your thoughts on how members would identify themselves to the organisation? By legal identity alone, or legal identity plus user account? What are your thoughts on minimum requirements for membership – e.g. would you specify a minimum number of edits, or a minimum number of years of participation as an editor in good standing? --Andreas JN466 09:34, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

   I think there are some legal guidelines for how a membership organization must identify its members, but these probably vary by state, so lawyers might be able to create the flexible structure we would need. My thoughts are that ideally, members should be able to choose how they are identified, either by legal name, username, other alias, or fully anonymous.

   Taking my cue from voting rights struggles in the offline world, I would be in favor of lowering the requirements for membership. We have a persistent representation problem, where we hear a lot from a few editors who are very active on talk pages, and hear very little from readers. Membership and elections might be a good tool for increasing reader engagement. Of course, we would need to prevent fraud at the same time, which is at odds with not requiring documentary identification. It might be possible to give readers a token to prove that e.g. they have been reading on some browser and IP address combination, but without revealing their reading habits or identity. Finally, we would want to do analysis to detect and prevent systematic vote manipulation. This is a rough outline, so just to summarize what I would like to see: a) allow members to remain pseudonymous, and b) extending the franchise so many more people become involved and vote. Adamw (talk) 18:13, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

   I don't think that is realistic. In such a system, it would be relatively trivial for a single tech-savvy person, organisation or nation state to register thousands of fake identities as members. --Andreas JN466 18:29, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

   The real challenge is how to get more people interested in voting, improve turnout, these are things that will take time, empathy, creativity, and communication effort. Protecting against theoretical cyber-attacks is also necessary, but a much narrower mathematical task that is well understood. —Adamw (talk) 06:52, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

   Hi @Adamw, what's a pity that RFC don't have more success as other ones. I share with you the necessity of democratizing the movement, but not necessary with the same solutions. I start from the fact that election has nothing to do with democracy but well with oligarchy. A democracy by definition is a organization where every one can participate to decision. The Wikimedia projects are democratic in this sense, and it should be great if the movement could be inspired by this kind of governance. In a certain sense, all contributors are virtually a member of the board of the projects if and when they want. But I don't know if this match with American's laws concerning foundation. Richard Stallman with the help of a layer start the copyleft from the copyright, switching the proprietor by the user community. But, making the same by replace elected officials of Wikimedia board with all contributors is probably not so simple. Lionel Scheepmans ^{✉ Contact} _{French native speaker, sorry for my dysorthography} 19:02, 16 August 2021 (UTC) PS I'll start also a RFC concerning the future of Wikimedia enterprise.

   @Lionel Scheepmans: I like where you're going with the critique of representative democracy, I also think the goal should be for everyone to have voice and agency. The way wikis are self-organized is inspiring but I wouldn't want to see this exact structure replicated on a higher level. Wikis are a "do-ocracy", which has its strengths but fails to give a voice to people with other time committments, or no desire to have endless online debate. This probably isn't what you meant, though—I can imagine that the future Global Council will be more satisfying, and will blend some representative structures with wiki-esque transparency and accountability. There's lots more to say about this! —Adamw (talk) 07:14, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

   The do-ocracy is everywhere @Adamw, including in elections, if we take into account the incredible rate of absenteeism, which sometimes exceeds 50%, as in France... Belgium is the only country with Greece where voting is compulsory, but one can then vote blank or null. In my region, we could count 12,5% of abstention and 20,8 % by adding the blank and null votes. Concerning the endless online debate, we could easily set a limit to a certain number of characters per speaker, in the same way as we distribute the speaking time in electoral debates. Drawing candidates at random in order to establish a stratified sampling of the Wikimedia population, as one would do in a large-scale survey, is another way to designate a smaller population of decision-makers. But the election is for me the worst system over all. Take à look here, all the focus is on candidate while we usually few people take care about what's happens between the votes. That's a very bad behavior il we know that Wikimedia board member are not under imperative mandate... And concerning the Global council, I don't see how they will manage without drawing lots to legitimately establish a representative assembly of such a diversified movement. Lionel Scheepmans ^{✉ Contact} _{Fr-n, En-3, Pt-3 and sorry for my dysorthography} 10:03, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

   @Adamw I'd suggest that the membership criteria be essentially the voter eligibility guidelines for the WMF Board of Trustees vote. You can qualify through:

   • meeting basic editing criteria (not be blocked in more than one project, > 300 edits, etc), or, by being a:
   • developer
   • WMF staff
   • affiliate staff
   • Board member
   • advisory board member
   • movement committee member
   • grantee
   • organizer of a Movement event

   Do have a read through it! I believe it's quite thorough.

   As for the requirements of being a membership organization, the US's Federal Election Commision publishes some guidelines. The context of the guidelines is unclear, but it is clear that it applies to membership organizations; that's what's ultimately important. It is an interesting read. Some of the portions the WMF clearly currently meets; I see only one small tweak required: acknowledging eligible members / Board voters. I think this can be done through a change in the interface for submitting an edit that would make a contributor a member (e.g. adding a snippet of text that says something along the lines of "This edit qualifies you to become a member of the Wikimedia Foundation and to vote for the Board of Trustees elections", and sending a notification confirming the fact afterward, and/or an email / talk page message). Other optional good-to-haves:

   • RfCs where the WMF acknowledges that they must abide by the result.
   • Ability for members to approve the annual budget

   I think having a formalized "membership" system and list of members would also help with setting default eligibility rules for voting, e.g. for the steward elections.

   I'm interested in hearing your thoughts! Cheers, EpicPupper (talk) 05:20, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

2.  Support. Existing operation seems too bureaucratic or inefficient in case of highly disruptive users in smaller wikis.--Jusjih (talk) 00:56, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
3.  Support per proposal. And EpicPupper's proposal of "RfCs where the WMF acknowledges that they must abide by the result" sounds excellent, thank you. Edward-Woodrow (talk) 12:11, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
4.  Support participation of non-US citizens may be a legal problem, idk about this -Framawiki (talk) 17:05, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
5.  Support Why not? Makes sense to me. --Piotrus (talk) 11:53, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

• Question: How will this affect the participation of non-US citizens from a legal standpoint? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs) 06:57, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
  • SHB2000, per the FEC link above, I don't think that members need to be US citizens! While US (more specifically Florida) law would apply to the membership process, this is the same status that all of the WMF's actions have. (not a lawyer, not legal advice). Best, — Frostly (talk) 02:30, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

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6. Well, in that case, I too  Support. SHB2000 (talk | contribs) 03:26, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Question 2: Should we bring back the FDC?

The Funds Dissemination Committee was an elected body which redistributed roughly 10% of the Wikimedia Foundation budget to smaller organizations.

Discussion 2

1.  Support, but just the good parts. Let's have collaborative control, distribute a lot of cash, encourage transparency, but not have the same reporting requirements. Let's also increase the proportion of grants going back to smaller organizations. The Wikimedia Foundation plays an important role in redistributing resources—without its efforts, we might have even less equity, the larger and on-average-wealthier projects might simply take all the donations back into themselves. The WMF should apply for its own budget, as has been said by others.

   (Disclaimer: I have a potential conflict of interest, my current employer is Wikimedia Germany.) —Adamw (talk) 19:56, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

   Adamw, I don't know if you're aware of this, but some kind of FDC has already "returned" in form of the Grants Regional Committees. What do you think of it? RamzyM (talk) 17:02, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

   Ramzy Muliawan, no I was not aware, thank you for mentioning it! I would prefer to hear more from you, Anasuyas and others, but my initial reaction is that it seems like a great idea which is sadly lacking in democratic guarantees. Rather than an election, "there will be a review process to confirm the members of the committees", it looks like the WMF Community Resources and the Trust & Safety teams will decide the final appointments. I love that these committees will be "making decisions on proposals supporting the region", but from this text I don't expect them to have final control over funds distribution.

   I don't mean to put everything in simplistic terms of "elected or not?"—if the Wikimedia Foundation continues to give out grants, this is good and means that some redistribution is happening. But if one central and undemocratic organization has all the control, then we have little recourse if we disagree with their grantmaking choices. The balance of power around these issues seems especially tricky, since many affiliates who might otherwise support counter-initiatives are dependent on WMF grants for their existence and may not feel secure standing up to the hand that feeds.

   Another question I'm unqualified to answer is, are most community members happy with the current distributions? Are the right affiliates and programs being funded? Should the WMF reallocate more of their donation revenue, or is the proportion already just? —Adamw (talk) 18:24, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

   @Adamw those are good points! Perhaps, then, it would be worthwhile to change this part of the RfC to be phrased as "Should Grants Regional Committees be elected bodies?" I think the GRCs take many good aspects from the FDC, and add the important aspect of more regional representation. GRCs are uniquely able to understand the perspectives, experiences and culture of applicants and grantees in their own region. GRC elections might look like a SecurePoll vote, where the "honor system" is used: voters can choose to participate in voting for regions that they feel a connection to. This would leave out the complex process of setting eligibility rules for voters in terms of connection (obviously other criteria such as edit count would still be included), avoiding potential disputes for voters whose heritage is of one region but who are living in another.

   On the questions you posed, I certainly agree that a handful of users wouldn't be qualified to answer such broad questions! I'd personally propose a yearly grants reflection process where the WMF seeks feedback and consultation from community members with similar guiding questions.

   Does this sound good? Thanks for bringing forward this RfC! EpicPupper (talk) 04:59, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

2.  Support -Framawiki (talk) 17:05, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
3.  Support: I like the "elected by the community" aspect, less keen on grants as a whole but community input to those grants is good, especially in the wake of this. Edward-Woodrow (talk) 13:09, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
4. Not enough detail here. See also en:User talk:BilledMammal/2023 Fundraising RfC. Lot's of problems IMHO with how the system works at present anyway. --Piotrus (talk) 11:54, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
5.  Support As the world adopts multipolarity, democraticizing the NGO would be slightly easier. The balance and quality of the projects will be more transparent. Ahri.boy (talk) 17:56, 20 June 2024 (UTC)