governance design issue - wikipedia template

[fkiraly]

Governance design based on wikipedia board and committee structure.
Direct translation of wikipedia design to sktime.
For discussion.

Wikipedia references

Word doc with summary of wikipedia governance model and references

committees

• community council = analogue of wikipedia board
• arbitration committee = "judication" committee, multiple wikipedia committees in one - arbitration, mediation, code of conduct, elections

no "core developer committee" - this is a role, not a committee

community council

• strategic and day-to-day decision making
• 4 to 6 members
  • 3 members elected by community, see elections
  • 2 members appointed by council
  • 1 seat for founder (appointed by council)
• 1/3 re-appointed every year, 3 years term limitation
• membership mutually exclusive with arbitration committee

model A (faithful to wikipeia)

• community council appoints CEO, treasurer, secretary, these must not be members of the council

model B (merge due to small numbers)

• CEO, treasurer, secretary roles are council members
• appointed by council

variant:

• at most one council member by org (not a rule in wikipedia)

arbitration/elections committee

• 2 to 9 members
• all members elected by community, see elections
• 1/3 re-elected every year, 3 year term limitation
• membership mutually exclusive with council

elections

• right to vote: contribution within last year (small); employed/paid by sktime; not banned
• right to stand: contribution within last year (medium); employed/paid by sktime; not banned; election statement signed (tbd)
• contributions are objectively defined: user -> bug reports, use case description; developer -> GitHub commits; admin -> org, events (to be worked out)
• arbitration/elections committee checks eligibility
• arbitration/elections committee organises elections

variant (not a rule in wikipedia!):

• right to vote also requires full name disclosed
• right to stand also requires full name and primary affiliation disclosed

[fkiraly]

election timelines

• few weeks open: call for candidates, with rules explained, timelines announced
• few weeks: candidate Q&A, default & community questions to answer; candidates need to write statement
• 1 or 2 weeks: voting is open. single transferable vote principle, securepoll?
• post: results announcement, appeals to arb/elections committee if applicable

[fkiraly]

collecting input from wikimedia
(from meetings and email exchanges, council & expert)

feedback on the wikipedia templated design for sktime

1. clarification

First, small corrections to your Wikipedia/Wikimedia results:

"right to stand also requires full name and primary affiliation disclosed". this is necessary for the board and election committee at Wikipedia and at most arbcoms also, then only access to certain personal data (e.g. IP logs) needed for the work is established.

2. comment on your draft:

(a) What your draft lacks is the act of approval to constitute.
It makes sense to put a draft with the bylaws of your legal entity up for discussion and vote on it after exhaustion (i.e. when everything has been said).

b) Gernerelle hints
The two decision-making bodies should always have an odd number of members, this reduces the risk of stalemate.

The Wikimedia Foundation has been strangling with the Founderseat on and off for decades. Jimbo Wales is just a (perfectly nice) porn entrepreneur who has put his money to charity. Even Richard Stallman is no longer chair of the FSF. If the WMF would be reconstituted again, Jimbo would only be honorary president and at most a non-voting member.

A combined arbitration/elections committee is unwise, as the arbitration committee would then control its own election. Perhaps a joint ArbCom and Council elections committee (2 members each)?

c) You have to decide first if you want to separate control and operation (board of directors-supervisory board model German AG) or mix them (board of directors model).

And then other things follow from that:

I would advise you to separate the operational and control/strategy and that the operational roles (CEO, managing director, finance) are not a member of the board, otherwise the operational will control the council if it has less than 3X members than operational roles.

d) Elected Maintainer?
You should consider who should be your maintainer or maintainer body (4/6 eyes?) and how they are determined. Elected directly or by the council?

Q&A

1. What digital tools do you use for the voting? How does it work?

MediaWiki is used for elections of WMF and Wikipedia projects. There are open polls and secret polls for various votes in the process.

Open Polls:
E.g. in the German Wikipedia all elections are open polls.
Each voting user gives his approval, abstention or rejection on a wiki page using his signature in palin wiki text (default: Username, but customizable, but at least link to user page must be included + timestamp): See German arbitration/arbitration committee elections as an example (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Schiedsgericht/Wahl)

secret votes:
For this, an extension for the wiki software MediaWiki is used: ( https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SecurePoll )

2. "Spendenquittung"
   Some chapters, i.e. local/regional organizations of Wikimedia are incorporated as associations (e.V.) or other local non-profit organizations. These then issue the donation receipts (applies in particular to Wikimedia Deutschland e.V., but also Switzerland and Austria) und grant some money to WMF or spezial projects.

The promotion of Wikimedia or Wikipedia projects is then the purpose of the association and recognized as tax-privileged.