As covered previously in the Signpost, I was removed from the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees in late December, by an 8–2 vote. The Board has not been forthcoming (publicly or to me) about the reasons, though they have (officially and as individuals) repeatedly stated that “mutual trust” was the main factor.

My brief time on the Board – since sent there with more than 1800 of your votes in June – was defined by tensions around transparency. I believe transparency is a crucial value of the movement. Upon joining the Board, I encountered a culture of secrecy that was distressing. I advocated, forcefully at times, for publishing information that others felt should be kept secret. They may have believed I felt so strongly that I would publish it unilaterally; but it’s hard to know: I’m not a mindreader. I’ve not published such information.

During my time as a trustee, and in the weeks since my removal, I’ve learned that many Wikimedia Foundation staff share the Wikimedia movement's dedication to transparency, share my concerns about secrecy in the present organization, and are willing to take bold steps to bring about change.

Shortly after my removal, several Wikimedia staff created, and began to populate, a page on Meta Wiki called the "Wikimedia Foundation transparency gap." Many community members, including English Wikipedians and members of other projects, and former staff and Board members, have built out the page in detail, documenting areas in which the WMF could improve its transparency, and suggesting specific steps it could take to do so.

This essay will focus on just a few of those ideas.

The past couple of weeks have seen a great deal of discussion on transparency and what this means for our movement. Members of the volunteer community, along with Foundation staff, have begun collecting specific ideas about how transparency could and should be improved, on the Meta page Wikimedia Foundation transparency gap. The community is a unique and invaluable asset of Wikimedia. Not only is transparency required to properly leverage this asset: our communities demand transparency.

Not everything should be transparent, but a great deal must be, and I believe much more than currently. We need a culture that is transparent by default, one where confidentiality is only dragged out for specific reasons and with specific justification.

We must keep in mind that the WMF is a steward of movement funds, and those in positions of authority should act accordingly. This is reflected in our values "we must communicate Wikimedia Foundation information in a transparent, thorough and timely manner, to our communities and more generally, to the public." We additionally say: "In general, where possible, we aim to do much of our work in public, rather than in private, typically on public wikis." We need to redouble our efforts to reach this goal.

Our long-term strategy must be developed in genuine collaboration with our movement. This means that strategy discussions are started early, that ideas are proposed, and that this is done before a year into a project or millions of dollars are spent. Our ideas around “search and discovery” were developed before April to June of 2015 and we presented them first to potential funders rather than our own communities.

Restricted grants can change the direction of an organization. If allowed they need to be very carefully managed. The Bylaws require Board approval of restricted grants over $100,000, and for good reason. In a movement like ours we must not be “selling” ideas to potential funders that we are not willing to sell to the movement as a whole.

Grant applications should be published at the same time as they are submitted to potential funders. This would keep those in a position of management accountable. It would reduce the risk of unpleasant surprises down the road. The community would also be aware of what has been promised to those who are funding us. Best practice would be to take this a step further by discussing what kind of grants we should accept – an idea put forward by the previous ED, Sue Gardner.

With the grant for the visual editor (VE), from my understanding there was a timeline around rollout agreed to with the funder. Thus VE was rolled out before it was ready, as exemplified by the difficulty initially of adding references with the new system. It should have been obvious to all involved that rollout was too early. We ended up taking an idea that had a great deal of support from the community at large and turning it into a loss for the WMF’s programming teams.

Those who have pushed the most for transparency around restricted grants have left the organization. We now need “clear standard[s] for transparency [around] restricted grants”].

If the US government can have “open, honest, challenging conversations”, then why can’t we? Our communities are able to have frank and difficult discussions in public. If one takes a controversial position one should be willing to defend and stand behind it. We have a communication gap, one that holds our movement back; this would help address it.

That these discussions are public keeps some level of behavioral decorum and allows inappropriate intimidation tactics to be reined in by admins. It also allows those who “vote” for community candidates to judge if those they have elected are living up to their positions before they ran. We should not be hesitant to publish dissenting views. While the final vote obviously wins the day attempts to hide other views should be disallowed. And they should definitely never be misrepresented.

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• It is, perhaps, inevitable that boards need some in camera time (see, though, Ricardo Semler's book Maverick for why this may be less than one would think). However the more that can be open "warts and all" the more community trust is engendered. I see no reason that the open part of board meetings should not be live streamed, as some other organisations have done. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:27, 16 January 2016 (UTC).[reply]
  

• Who funded the visual editor with a restricted grant? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:36, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Was this common knowledge? I remember the general outline of the VE deployment dramahz, superprotect, and so on, and it seems as though this would have changed the tenor of the discussion considerably had it been known. Choess (talk) 17:30, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  VE was funded by 3.6 million from the Stanton Foundation [1] in 2011. From my understanding it was not a restricted grant but I have heard rumblings that this funding was part of the reason for the early roll out. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:27, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks for clarifying, James. My reading of Sue's blog was that she has no problem with restricted grants, provided they're for something we'd be doing anyway. We do have to be careful not to let the tail (funder) wag the dog, though, and avoid taking on projects that will consume resources (ED's attention, legal time, floor space, etc.) to the detriment of higher-priority projects. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 23:54, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  My reading is she felt they need to be strictly managed and accepted with care. They are not a problem per say but can easily turn into a problem. If the WMF is required to chose between a funder and a super majority of volunteers I hope they would think long and hard before siding with the funder. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:38, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• How was the media viewer funded? Wbm1058 (talk) 19:59, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Thank you so much, DocJames. Yes, we need as much transparency as default, even if we find it difficult. We edit transparently, warts and all. Anyone can see our mistakes, we've learned not to care. Most especially with the financing, it is important for transparency as far as possible. WiseWoman (talk) 21:47, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• DocJames, do you believe your cultural experience as a Canadian contributes to and informs your perspective on transparency? I ask, because I'm wondering if American business culture, or the culture of Silicon Valley in particular, places less emphasis on the importance and value of transparency. Viriditas (talk) 05:12, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I sort of approached the board believing that many of the values we as Wikipedians hold would be shared their as well. I think it was more of a WP community perspective versus a Silicon Valley perspective rather than any single nationality per say. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:41, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• This Op-ed by User:Doc James gives the impression that James Heilman has nothing substantial to say about his six months sojourn aBoard and his ousting. One can argue if the intersideral void is or is not an useful model of transparency, but this is rather not what is usually implied when using the word transparency in its political meaning. Pldx1 (talk) 09:48, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This op ed is not specifically about my ousting per say or specifically about my time on the board. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:02, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]