Proposal talk:Board transparency

Impact?

Some proposals will have massive impact on end-users, including non-editors. Some will have minimal impact. What will be the impact of this proposal on our end-users? -- Philippe 23:10, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Transparency Can Be Too Much of a Good Thing

For example: Should every email that one board member writes another board member (or writes a staff member) be public? (If it should be public then shouldn't they edit Wikimedia in a special area and not use email to communicate with each other?) Should board members use a tape recorder to record (and later transcibe) every phone conversation that might possibly affect the foundation? If two board trustees meet casually in person, should someone keep notes? How do we enforce this? Should we enforce this?

Should all discussion of "board issues" be restricted to public meetings? How do you determine what is and is not a "board issue"? If board members have discussed an issue before the Official Meeting, don't we run the risk of turning board meetings into vote yea-or-nay sessions without much debate? Does transparency mean that no communication by trustees on Wikimedia matters should take place without being recorded?

How are funds disbursed? Is there any way besides a public board meeting that the trustees can take a vote and actually spend real money? For example, can the board say that the foundation will now purchase their servers from this vendor rather than that vendor? What if a member of the board has an undisclosed financial interest in "this vendor"? Would an audit catch that malfeasance? In time? How?

As they say in politics, government is like making sausuge; you shouldn't invite the public (meaning us poor slobs) to watch. If we Assume Good Faith from our board members then transparency is unneeded. If we Assume Bad Faith then no amount of "transparency" (in this sense) will help. Sure, record any board meetings that you can. But don't think you've provided any more significant transparency than we had already.

Just my thoughts. --RoyGoldsmith 16:48, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just keep it simple. What do we need to do to provide a "board meeting experience" to users? Start by recording video of the meetings. Should be so cheap we don't actually need to consider the amount of impact that this might have. Certainly it would increase participation in Wikimedia strategy. Then, wait for comments by the users. Maybe they will request minutes of the meetings or supporting documents. If that's easy to do, make those available too. And so on. But, as a first step, providing video of the meetings should good enough. Danilo128 19:30, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My contribution:

Video reading on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv3y6e-Evl0 Mdupont 19:13, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The video above is not available any longer. --Ryuch 08:20, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]