It seems that Mr. Merkey is pointing to some corrections that need to be
made to the sidebar of chr.wikipedia.org. If that is the case, then it seems to
be something relevant to Foundation.
Danny
A comment in IRC yesterday raised a concern for me which I would like
to see addressed.
Cormac mentioned that he and Mr Horning had discussed moving
textbooks and curricula from en.Wikibooks to en.Wikiversity. He was
unsure if this meant the textbooks would be deleted from
en.Wikibooks, but he was sure any contributors who preferred working
on en.Wikibooks would be able to copy them back to that project.
This seems extremely odd to me, that deleting a textbook from
Wikibooks would even be contemplated. Educational materials are,
after all, the mission of the project. And dividing a textbook
between projects seems to be forking, both of the book in question
and the potential contributors as well, again something which should
not even be contemplated in my opinion.
Could the Wikiversity project please clarify this?
Amgine
I would like to tentatively suggest that a link between paying money and
membership need not be a bad thing, before this idea is permanently dropped.
I apologize in advance if I'm saying things that have already been
said/rejected.
For me personally membership is about one thing and one thing only: giving
donators something for their money. As it currently stands people are
expected to cough up money with no guarantee as to what purpose their money
will be put, and no guarantee of any future input to the project. Yes there
are currently mechanisms by which any WP/WB/WC etc user has some input
(board elections), but short of a legal guarantee that the bylaws will not
be changed without a community referendum, this does not count for much.
Certainly instituting such a guarantee is one option, but my hunch is that
legally the "community" is on pretty shaky ground.
I know my contributions to Wikimedia projects are safe because of the
license. If the board did suddenly turn evil my contributions would not have
been wasted, as there's a high chance WP/WB/WC etc. would all fork into a
Wikimedia (now evil) branch and Newikimedia (good) branch.
At present though, as far as I can see there is no similar guarantee that my
money will be put to good use. I am sure I am not the only person this has
dissuaded from donating.
Wikimedia can currently be thought of as akin to a corporation in which
shareholders have no right to vote in AGMs, but the board members do conduct
opinion polls of their customers, some of which will no doubt also be
shareholders. Not a particularly good way to run a company, I'd suggest.
Some of the arguments why editing should not automatically result in
membership have already been made. Firstly the user base would be gigantic,
which dilutes the utility of the legal fall back provided by Florida law.
Secondly being an editor, even a competent one, does not go hand in hand
with understanding Wikimedia and what is necessary for its continued
existence and success. Thirdly, setting any kind of equivalence between
edits and paid membership is economically equivalent to paying people to
edit. (Say I have an account with an enough edits to be eligible for
membership. I can sell my membership (or my votes, same thing), for 1c less
than the going rate and be fairly sure of a buyer if there are any
unscrupulous forces trying to buy votes.) As I'm sure you can imagine this
is a bad idea in many ways, not least that it actually provides an economic
incentive for useless edits in the far from impossible situation of
individuals being prepared to pay for votes. (An intermediary stage of
userdom between joining and being an admin has been proposed, which relied
on community support for your edits, and yes if membership was linked to
this stage this problem would be ameliorated. However the concept of having
"community support for your edits" is surely on even shakier legal ground
than the community. The potentials for abuse of such a guideline and
resulting big law suits are not really sound legal grounds for an
organization.)
OK so you are now thinking, but what about the community? We surely do not
want Wikimedia to be controlled by those with money rather than those who
work on it. But this need not be the case even with a paying membership.
There are several ways of giving both the community and the membership
power. For example a community election of the current form could first be
held, with the total number of votes for each candidate being recorded. Each
member would then be asked to veto as many candidates as they deemed
inappropriate. Any candidate having received veto votes from over 50% of the
members who voted would be removed from the running. Of the remaining
candidates, the one(s) with the highest number of community votes would be
deemed to have been elected.
The community gets the principal say; the members get to remove
inappropriate candidates. Based on the discussions in this thread I think I
am not the only one who would view this as the "best of both worlds".
What is more, because of the membership the community have a guarantee that
their right to vote etc. will be protected by the board, as the membership
will largely be from the community (though I do not pretend it will be a
statistically random sample necessarily), and as members of the community
always have the option of becoming members if their rights are in danger.
As a final note many of mentioned the unfairness of membership dues on the
unemployed/those in third world countries etc. This is certainly a solvable
problem. (Indeed it is one that almost every multinational charity has
solved.) It is common practice to have an "unwaged" rate, and to adjust
membership fees in line with PPP adjusted GDP per head. The data's ready and
waiting on en.wikipedia...
Anyway just my two cents, sorry for contributing to what is already an
overcrowded discussion.
Tom (User:Cfp everywhere)
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 8/15/06, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote:
>
>> Under the Florida Statutes, the members of a non-profit have a right
>> to remove any board member upon a majority vote. (Florida Statutes
>> 617.0808) So no, legal membership would make a difference if a few
>> board members did something outrageously stupid.
>
> I didn't realize that (note to self: read Florida Statutes). That's a
> pretty compelling argument for membership -- it could be a long term
> safeguard for the Foundation's principles.
I think this overstates the value of such a safeguard. The statute
actually reads, "Any member of the board of directors may be removed
from office with or without cause by the vote or agreement in writing by
a majority of all votes of the membership." Glossing over for a moment
the procedural niceties that follow, equating "a majority of all votes
of the membership" with a majority vote is a little simplistic. If I
read this right, removal requires an absolute majority of the entire
"electorate", not merely a majority of votes cast.
Even if it did seem desirable, does anybody think it would be plausible
to mobilize the necessary votes? Keep in mind that with the kind of
turnover we experience, over time we'll have an increasing number of
members who no longer actively participate. The dissatisfied are
especially likely to be in this group, perhaps undermining their
preferred outcome. I suspect that even in the unlikely possibility of an
unopposed vote for removal, it might not command enough votes. (I'd also
note my guess that the ballots cast in board elections so far probably
have not amounted to a majority of eligible voters.)
The one method I can imagine of preserving this as a useful safeguard is
to regularly prune the membership records. Considering the liberal
eligibility being suggested for membership, and the general culture of
openness in our community, such an approach would seem, to my mind at
least, hypocritical in the extreme.
>> Regarding anonymity, I think that keeping Wikimedia governance
>> separate from Wikipedia editing (for example) increases anonymity. In
>> order to have elections you have to have some sense of identity,
>> otherwise sockpuppetry would run rampant. But that identity doesn't
>> have to be connected to your edit history.
>
> Do membership records have to be public?
They have to be available for inspection and copying to members (or
their agents or attorneys). Given the scope of membership that seems to
be contemplated, that's pretty public. If you're going to solicit a vote
to remove a director (i.e., board member), you need to be able to
contact those who can vote.
--Michael Snow
According to IRC user Connel, there is a rogue admin loose on the
English Wiktionary and several dangerous actions have been performed
(main page deletion, open proxy unblocks etc.). A RfP has been up for
several days and the admin has not been desysopped. I don't have any
evidence of this right now and am trusting the user's words as a
steward is needed *now*.
Thanks,
Xy
--
—Xyrael ~ <xyr>
sean(a)silentflame.com | xyrael.net
(Copy/paste from Meta, yes, I'm lazy)
Following the Boston Board meeting on August 4, we the Election
Officers announce hereby the upcoming September election will fill the
board position of Angela Beesley.
We wish all candidates good luck,
Datrio, Essjay, & Aphaia
19:00, 14 August 2006 (UTC), Election Officials, Wikimedia Election
Committee 2006
Hello:
If you have _ever_ given a public presentation regarding Wikipedia,
Wikimedia, or any of the projects, please send me an OFFLIST email with
details. (Board members are exempt from this request). =)
It would help us tremendously to understand what is being solicited in
the form of speaking engagements and what is being presented by
Wikimedians in those engagements. If you have a copy of slides you
used, that would be nice too.
Thanks,
Brad
On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
...snippage...
<lots of valuable analysis of the bylaws>
>
> The current section on "Community" is nothing more than an exercise in
> condescension. It purports to support communities without saying what
> that really means.
Indeed. I am not fully clear how well the law understands what we mean
by community, when we do not necessarily agree between ourselves. One
thing which would help give the concept at least a modicum of tangible
meaning might be if we created a user status of "regular user". Along
with voting rights in foundation elections, they might be given some
extra non-dangerous bells and whistles to their editing tool-set.
>
> TRUSTEES
> The key issue now is number and composition. I'm not dealing now with
> some of the issues in this part, but this should not imp[ly that I am
> without opinions.
>
> I am not entirely opposed to an open-ended maximum for the number of
> trustees, but there needs to be some recognition that if the total
> number of trustees becomes too high the Board could become unmanageable.
Better than a strict limit would be a heuristic of checks and balances.
>
> If the total number of Trustees is to be flexible it is not appropriate
> that the number of member elected trustees could remain stuck at two. I
> would suggest that at least 2/3 of the Trustees be from the community,
> and that at least 1/3 of the Trustees be elected by the community. (To
> be clear, hat 1/3 would be included in the previous 2/3.) This would
> leave the remainder as potentially from outside. It should be noted
> that if a 3/4 vote is required for certain fundamental changes it would
> be very difficult for rogue membership to subvert the purposes of the
> Foundation.
Personally I don't think a fixed minimum ratio of elected Trustees is
the best way to go. Only one vote over the necessary threshold for a
given vote to pass is necessary for it to pass. Personally I would
like to see a composition of the board which required that for board
sizes up to 9 members, the number of elected Trustees should exceed
the number of appointed trustees by at least one but no more than two;
from 10 members (if it should ever grow to that size) upwards, at
least two elected trustees more than the number of appointed trustees
but never more than three should be the rule. I think such an
arrangement would also function as a useful curb on the growth of the
board, if the two were to be in lockstep.
In my view more important than thinking about the ratio of appointed
members coming from the community would be a requirement that all
appointed *permanent* members of the board be from the community. This
would effectively prevent a hijacking or "staking of a corner" of the
board by outside interests. To put it more clearly, all appointed
members from outside the community should serve for a fixed term,
just as elected Trustees do.
Supermajorities for certain actions would be a very good idea.
>
> The other restriction would be to forbid the appointment of any person
> to the Board if that would result in the majority of the Board being
> citizens of any one country.
I will note in passing that this state of affairs does not obtain at
present, although it could change in the very near future.
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, AKA. Cimon Avaro
I had no idea of the maelstrom point seven in my proposal would lead to.
That said, I want to remove that point as contentious, and resubmit the proposal
without it for now.
In response to some of Anthere's questions, I believe that most speaking
requests continue to come through the office or the communications committee.
Many of the private requests were actually directed to individuals through the
office or the comcom.
Although I admit that we cannot enforce it, in the event that people are
asked privately, we can ask them to inform the Foundation. For one thing, it is
good to know where people are speaking, while we also stand to benefit from
their experiences and can provide support if we have a repository of speeches,
questions, AV material, etc. available for them.
While I believe that we can turn down speaking engagements, the reason
should never be because the requesting group has no money.
As for budgeting talks, I have no problem at all if the order of 3 and 4 are
reversed. My feeling is, however, that for talks in Europe, it is probably
wiser to send someone locally than to send someone from the US. Nevertheless,
this also involves costs and questions. If a free talk is requested in
Romania, is it cheaper to send someone from Serbia or from England. That should be a
consideration too (until we find an ideal Romanian speaker--this is only an
example).
Finally, I believe that we should be as wary of the use of our logo and tm
in talks as we are when it is used online.
Having said all that, I submit an amended proposal.
1. Requests for speakers from the Foundation will be approved by a
subcommittee of the Communications Committee to be known as the "Speakers
Subcommittee."
2. The Speakers Subcommittee will determine whether and how fulfilling the
request furthers the goals of the Foundation. This will be called Speaker
Objectives.
3. The Speakers Subcommittee will then determine whether the Speaker
Objectives are equal or greater to the costs involved in sending a speaker
to the
event.
4. The Speaker Subcommittee will then determine which representative of the
WMF is best suited to deliver the talk, based on considerations of language,
geography, skills, conference needs, availability, etc.
5. Basic costs for speakers will include
a. transportation
b. per diem (hotel, food)
c. ancillary (babysitting, formal wear such as renting a tux, other)
6. The Speaker Subcommittee will negotiate with the requesting organization
to ensure that they cover as much of these costs as possible. Should the
event
be deemed worthwhile, but the requesting organization is unable to cover
these basic costs, the Speakers Committee will determine a budget for the
speaker to participate.
7. A calendar of speaking engagements and speakers will be maintained in a
public space, such as wikimediafoundation.org.
8. The Foundation will discourage the use of logos, registered tms, etc.,
except by speakers approved and appointed by the Speakers Subcommittee.
9. Upon completing their speaking engagement, speakers will provide a
written report to the Speakers Subcommittee in which they describe whether
and how
the Speaker Objectives were met.
10. The written report will include a summary of the talk, major questions
asked, and a copy of handouts, PowerPoint presentations, etc. as necessary.
11. These materials will be made easily available to other speakers so as
to
enhance their own presentations.
12. Upon completing their speaking engagement, speakers will also submit
any
receipts for *approved* expenses.
13. Upon submission of receipts, the written report, and ancillary
materials--and only upon their submission--the speaker will be reimbursed
for any
out-of-pocket expenses.
In a message dated 8/12/2006 4:53:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
beesley(a)gmail.com writes:
On 8/12/06, daniwo59(a)aol.com <daniwo59(a)aol.com> wrote:
> This conversation had jumped back and forth from single-instance expenses
> (eg. babysitting costs) to much larger issues such as speakers fees. With
the
> number of speaking requests pouring in to the Foundation (and they come in
at
> an ever increasing rate), I want to suggest the following guidelines for
board
> members and others giving talks about the Foundation.
What about the requests that don't come in via an official Foundation
address? If individuals are approached, are you expecting them to
follow these guidelines, or would those not count as official
Foundation talks? Do we have any way of knowing which events are
expecting an official representative of the Foundation?
All speaking requests in which people go out and represent the Foundation
should be under the auspicies and supervision of the Foundation. The Foundation
should know who is going out speaking on its behalf, what they are saying,
and to whom--especially when registered trademarks and logos are concerned. We
are wary of people misusing our logo and trademark on websites--why should we
not be equally wary of people misusing our logo and trademark in the real
world? Finally, when people contact the Foundation asking for a speaker, it is
safe to assume that they expect an "official representative."
> 7. The Speaker Subcommittee will also request an honorarium
> , to be paid to the Foundation, for providing a speaker.
Are you suggesting that this Subcommittee would only send people if an
honorarium was to be received? Or would you just be requesting it on
the slim chance there is one? Considering I've only ever once been
offered one, it doesn't seem very likely most speakers are going to
get this, unless you want to start turning down the opportunity to
promote the projects except in the very rare cases where money will be
involved.
No, I am suggesting that the Subcommittee request an honorarium as well as
expenses. It is possible that none will be available. The Subcommittee will
then decide whether or not to send someone. Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier,
not every request for a speaker must be met. It is also okay to say no for
any number of reasons.
An additional point to consider is whether this subcommittee will be
the ones booking the transport.
That would depend on who is paying for teh transportation.
Danny
Angela.