Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Call for feedback: Community Board seats/Reports/2021-02-17 WikiDonne User Group

Attendees

• Camelia Boban, foundress and primary contact of the WikiDonne User Group

Topics

General remarks

The Italian community is very focussed on creating contents and many of them do not care about the administrative side of the Wikimedia movement. Those who do though, are afraid of losing power in the movement overall.

Quotas

Camelia states, that quotas, though serving a very important intention, are not a good idea, referring additionally to experiences from the introduction of “pink quotas” in Italy.

Though quotas might help to serve smaller groups within the movement to grow and protects them, they feel offensive to many people, even by members of underrepresented groups as they feel their work and capacity diminished by it. Thus many people do not want that kind of protection.

According to Camelia, the movement would require to find a better system, best would be a quota that doesn’t seem to be one (laughing).

Board-delegated Selection Committee / Community-elected committee

This only increases bureaucracy. What is the point in electing a committee instead of voting for a board candidate directly.

Follow-up

It was agreed, that a second meeting with WikiDonne will be held in the next week.