Forum:2019 Weird Gloop board elections: call for candidates

Forums: Index > 2019 Weird Gloop board elections: call for candidates

This page or section is an archive. Please do not edit the contents of this page. This thread was archived on 23 December 2019 by Cook Me Plox.

Hi everyone!

It's now time to start the process for the 2019 board elections. Take a look at Weird Gloop elections for a full rundown of what's going on (although some small parts of that may change, pending the result of this thread). In short: the company that operates the RuneScape Wikis is meant to be governed by the community of those wikis. The board has some regular corporate duties, but its main (intended) purpose is to be a bridge between the wiki community and the management of the company, and to make sure that the decisions being made by the company are always in the best interest of that community.

We want the Weird Gloop board to include capable representatives for the diverse communities we support. Therefore, we are seeking candidates for three open positions each for the RuneScape Wiki and Old School RuneScape Wiki, and one position on the Portuguese RuneScape Wiki. Please suggest candidates, encourage others to run, and consider volunteering yourself. Although these should not at all be considered requirements, we are especially looking for candidates who:

• Have high integrity, the ability to advocate for a point despite opposition, to resist pressure, think independently and be able to reach consensus;
• Have experience in management, board governance, or otherwise have expertise in a relevant area (product strategy, finance, governance, business);
• Have a track record of leadership, either in the wiki/RuneScape community or elsewhere.

I've also put my personal thoughts on what makes for a good board in the discussion below.

We are also particularly interested in candidates who are not currently administrators on either wiki. Please do not consider adminship as a pre-requisite to joining the board: rather, our view is that the diversity of opinions brought to the table by non-administrators will increase the functioning of the board.

If you are interested in nominating yourself, please follow the instructions on Weird Gloop elections#Submitting your nomination. Nominations will close on December 14th.

Discussion

(You can skip this if you don't care what I think – it's not essential to the election).

From my perspective, the community is best served by a board that does the following things very well:

• Advocate for the community. That means pushing back if management (i.e. me and Gaz) makes a bad move, advocating for transparency and involvement from the wiki at-large, and asking the hard questions to make sure we're doing the right things to ensure the longevity of the site, even if those things are hard. It means speaking up against things you disagree with, even if you think you might be the only one.
• Help make good decisions about money. Part of this is making sure our money is being spent responsibly, and being hard-nosed about requiring business justification for unusual expenses. Some of it about contributing usefully to discussions about what to do with surpluses. It's also super helpful to have one or two people with financial awareness that can help me strategize about financial maneuvers (for example, different tax schemes, or foreign exchange hedging).
• Set the long-term vision. What more do we want Weird Gloop to do? These are all important questions that require more than a yes or no answer, and it’s largely up to the board to provide direction here.
  • Do we want to take our successful approach to support non-RuneScape wikis?
  • Are there RuneScape-related (but non-wiki) spaces we want to expand into?
  • Do we want to try to get dramatically more involved with Jagex?
  • Should we focus on trying to make money so we can build more stuff?
  • How can we use creative incentives to get a more vibrant editing community?
• Take on some personal responsibility. There are a lot of un-sexy, behind-the-scenes things that go into running the wikis. Beyond the technical work that Kitty and Jayden (and sometimes I) do, Weird Gloop needs someone to send our invoices, pay our invoices, make sure we’re paying the right taxes, handle corporation-related requirements, do financial planning, organize/run/scribe/publicize board meetings, run elections, communicate/write reports to Jagex, and (where possible) give public status updates about the company and/or wikis. There are potentially many other areas to contribute. The community is better off if the responsibility for this is shared within the group, and isn’t primarily a function of my and Gaz’s availability.

These weren’t core tenets I had going into the last elections, but after a year, they’ve crystallized as the most important attributes to me. To be clear, this does not mean that everyone has to do all of these things all the time...but it is really helpful if everyone brings at least one thing to the table, besides their familiarity with the wikis. ʞooɔ 00:42, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Don't you think it's important to resolve changes to Forum:Weird Gloop constitution (or at least propose a hard deadline) before calling for nominations, since it affects those who become board members? Christine 01:09, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

I will be proposing a hard deadline of 14 December for the constitution. I felt we needed to move forward on the call for candidates in order to not have the election drag into mid January, especially when the candidate eligibility requirements aren't in any danger of changing with that thread. ʞooɔ 01:36, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Comment - I think the salient question here is whether the existing board functions well and if not why not. In the first election, we didn't fully understand the function of the board so we used different heuristics. With the benefit of hindsight, I'd be interested to see some reflection from board members before the next cycle. cqm ^talk 20:17, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Closed - Voting has started. ʞooɔ 00:26, 23 December 2019 (UTC)