October Surprise: The 2025 Wikimedia Elections Fall into a Transparency Trap
Two Wikipedians are booted from the Board of Trustees election, and no one is buying the lack of explanation.
For an organization established to support a project all about openness and transparency, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has a funny way of making its biggest mistakes behind closed doors.
At time of publication, the WMF is approaching the end of its semi-annual elections to fill seats on its Board of Trustees. Like any corporate or institutional board, the trustees make CEO appointments, review annual plans, and provide general oversight. The Board has 12 members: Jimmy Wales is the sole permanent trustee, five are appointed by the Board itself for outside expertise, and six are selected by vote of the editorial community and its affiliate organizations.
But this year a last-minute change to the process—and the unexplained removal of two candidates—has plunged the Board and the election into acrimony unlike any Board election in Wikipedia’s history.
Dig Your Own Hole
The 2025 cycle started normally. In May, community trustee Victoria Doronina announced the election timeline in a letter posted on Meta-Wiki, a wiki for WMF and community collaboration. “Here are the key planned dates,” she wrote:
May 22 – June 5: Announcement and call for questions period
June 17 – July 1, 2025: Call for candidates
July 2025: If needed, affiliates vote to shortlist candidates if more than 10 apply
August 2025: Campaign period
August – September 2025: Two-week community voting period
October – November 2025: Background check of selected candidates
Board’s Meeting in December 2025: New trustees seated
Out of 17 applicants, 12 were deemed eligible. Affiliates shortlisted six finalists. Voting was scheduled for late August. But the timeline didn’t hold. On August 21, six days before voting was to begin, the Board abruptly postponed the start to October 8, citing a decision to switch the order of two items: background checks would now happen before voting began. The logic was sound enough: scheduling background checks after voting meant the Board would vet candidates only after the community had spoken—creating a very real possibility of overruling the election results. But no specifics were cited.
Then on October 3, just five days before the delayed start of voting, the Board announced that only four of the six active finalists would appear on the ballot. Two candidates—Ravan al-Taie (User:Ravan) and Lane Rasberry (User:Bluerasberry)—had been removed by “unanimous” decision. The letter did not name them or explain why, but you could read between the lines.
Their rationale centered on a change to the Candidate Review Process just two days earlier, on October 1, explaining that background checks were meant to safeguard “reputational, financial, operational, or other types of risk for the Foundation” based on a range of factors, including “subjective criteria like a candidate’s judgment, discernment, discretion.” No specifics were cited.
If failing to put the checks first was an unforced error that set the stage for the rest, the larger failure was in what their official communications left out. Thus the Board’s intended fix walked them straight into a transparency trap, one as old as governance itself, but ever more common in this age of heightened scrutiny.
The dilemma: either reveal damaging information and face accusations of interference, or stay silent and erode legitimacy through opacity.
Fight Song
But the mistakes didn’t end there. The letter, shared by Board chair Nataliia Tymkiv, sought to further justify the Board’s decision:
“Now more than ever, the Foundation needs a strongly unified board committed to collective decision-making responsibilities that can help steer the organisation and our movement through difficult global headwinds...”
Editors found this, shall we say, vaguely authoritarian. “I find it really scary,” wrote one. “The essence of any election lies in the community’s trust and its ability to choose the most suitable candidates,” wrote another, “not in pre-filtering choices for the sake of ‘unity’ or ‘alignment.’”
The very first comment was perhaps the most forceful of all:
“[I]t is not the board’s function to be a united front. Limiting choices in an election (before or after the vote) vitiates the entire election except for the exclusion of obviously unsuitable candidates … Please rescind this decision and let the community vote.”
Within days, an editor who was the 2024 Wikimedian of the Year organized a reform petition receiving over 100 signatures, and affiliate organizations released their own statements of concern. Some called for boycotting the election. A former community trustee1 proposed structural reforms:
“I believe we need an independent group of elected community members, who have signed non-disclosure agreements, and are provided details by the WMF legal team and trust and safety, to oversee who is and is not eligible to stand for election.”
Jimmy Wales’s user talk page filled with questions about the Board’s decision. Wales remained conspicuously silent, even as he responded to other questions on the page. The issue came up IRL when Wikimedia CEO Maryana Iskander and two (appointed) trustees spoke at last week’s WikiConference North America2—some editors were displeased with her take, others more cautiously open-minded.
Voting opened on schedule on October 8 with four balloted candidates: Bobby Shabangu, James Alexander, Michał Buczyński, and Wojciech Pędzich. Despite everything, turnout appears comparable to previous years. Results will be announced shortly after voting closes October 23.
Main Character Energy
So what changed between August and September? While little overt campaigning was happening on-wiki—there’s no such thing as yard signs on Wikipedia—elsewhere on the Internet, a political storm was gathering.
On August 10, the Jerusalem Post published an article about finalist Ravan al-Taie, an Arabic Wikipedia editor, spotlighting her apparently numerous inflammatory social media posts about October 7 and the war in Gaza. It circulated mostly on pro-Israeli, conservative, and low-quality news sites.
The Post’s headline—“Wikimedia Foundation trustee candidate denies use of rape on Oct. 7, posts Hamas symbol”—is slightly misleading, specifically referring to her repost of Jackson Hinkle, a small-time Gen Z provocateur who champions something he calls “MAGA communism,” disputing the evidence of sexual violence during the October 7 attacks.
But there was a lot more.
“Israel is committing a new Holocaust added to a new Hiroshima,” she allegedly wrote on X/Twitter. Another post seemed to justify the October 7 Hamas attacks: “What happened on October 7 was for everything that happened during the 75 years before October 7!” Her Instagram account displayed a red triangle—identified by Wikipedia’s own article as a Hamas symbol.
Though the Board didn’t name Ravan in their letter, phrases like “a candidate’s judgment” and “reputational risk” were plenty for editors to make the connection.
After the controversy erupted, Ravan deleted her social media accounts and mostly stayed quiet. Then on October 11, amid the ongoing outcry, she posted a defense on Meta-Wiki. It called the Wikipedia article on the red triangle “problematic”, without explaining how. It went off in a strange tangent about whether “Jesus was a Palestinian”, citing pop culture references as evidence. But most concerning, it doubled down on the dismissal of October 7 sexual violence—cherry-picking a UN report’s caution about verification limits in war zones—despite numerous eyewitness accounts, many cited on Wikipedia itself. Ravan’s allies were quick to offer support, but as an effective rebuttal, it’s unconvincing.
Wikipedia editors regarded the report cagily, citing the Post’s conservative reputation, but they shouldn’t have. Regardless of one’s views on Middle Eastern politics, the posts reflect poorly on her judgment and suggest a temperament ill-suited for the role. But the question isn’t whether the Board was right to have concerns. The question is why they wouldn’t say so.
The Decoy
Lane Rasberry’s removal is more puzzling. A longtime English Wikipedia editor, Wikimedian-in-Residence, and a familiar presence at Wikimedia conferences, Rasberry has long been a consistent advocate for transparency and community empowerment. The Board’s official explanation—insufficient experience—struck many as pretextual, especially given his many years of contributions.
In careful, measured public responses, including an interview with the volunteer-edited The Wikipedia Signpost—with which he is also involved—Rasberry expressed confusion about the Board’s assessment. The community response was largely supportive, with many viewing him as exactly the kind of thoughtful, community-minded editor they wanted on the Board.
In whispers, darkest imaginations, and group chats, it has been suggested that Rasberry’s removal was less about his supposed disqualifications and more about not wanting to single out Ravan—or rather, the Board not wanting to be seen as singling her out. In this view, removing both candidates was an attempt to create plausible deniability, allowing the Board to claim it was simply applying rigorous new standards rather than responding to political pressure about one controversial finalist.
If true, this would make Lane Rasberry collateral damage in the Board’s attempt to avoid making a politically charged decision look politically charged. Whatever the case, no one seems to be buying it.
No Other Choice
On October 9, Doronina—the trustee who had originally announced the election process—did something rather unusual: she told the truth. Late-20th-century American politics had a term for this: a Kinsley gaffe,3 named for the editor Michael Kinsley, who once wrote: “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.”
Writing to a public email list for Wikimedians, she explained her personal reasoning for opposing both candidates. Regarding Ravan, Doronina wrote bluntly: “[F]uture candidates should be more cautious about what they post on social media, as some posts pose significant risks to the WMF’s reputation...”
As for Lane, she pointed to statements in his candidate materials about creating a “Right to Information” project and encouraging “the user community to organize to make public information requests to me.” She interpreted this as seeking Board membership for nefarious purposes: “As a trustee, I cannot support anyone who wishes to disclose non-public information, which is in direct contravention of the trustee’s duties and responsibilities.”
Although editors responding to her message largely disagreed with her reasoning, several still thanked Doronina for her transparency. Which also highlights the central dilemma facing the Board: the informal, human explanation the community craved was also a violation of governance protocols trustees are expected to follow. Other trustees hastily followed up to clarify her words did not represent the Board’s views.
The saying “discretion is the better part of valor” suggests that restraint is central to responsible stewardship. But that only works when there is trust, of which the community is presently in short supply.
CYA vs FYI
The Board’s actions cannot be fully understood without considering political climate. As The Wikipedian has previously covered, Wikipedia and the WMF are indeed facing “global headwinds”—from legal challenges in India to intensified criticism from pro-Israel and right-wing activists to subpoenas from Republican officials. While the nastygram from acting U.S. attorney Ed Martin went away when his candidacy was withdrawn this summer, it has returned in the form of a subpoena from Ted Cruz and the Senate Commerce Committee demanding records that the WMF doesn’t really have.
This is a board in a defensive crouch, and it’s hard to say they’re wrong to feel that way. But the Board’s greatest mistake was thinking it had something to lose by being transparent. By rewriting the rules late in the game and then failing to honestly state what everyone could figure out for themselves, the Board created the very problem it sought to avoid.
The silver lining—if there is one—is that the Board’s work barely touches the daily contributions of editors who keep Wikipedia running. Articles will still be written, vandalism reverted, debates will rage on Talk pages. But institutional legitimacy depends on more than optics. Whether the WMF will remember October 2025 when it again has to choose between FYI and CYA is anyone’s guess. More likely, they’ll walk into the same trap again.
Incidentally, one who was once removed from the Board, albeit in very different circumstances. More on that here.
Yes, I know what happened. No, this post doesn’t have space for it.
Which reminds me: some readers may be unaware that October surprise is also U.S. political vernacular.