Hello all,
Being back from Wikimania, I have a look at the list of candidates and
here is what I see:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_candidates_2006
I'd like to make a very serious appeal for candidates.
I would hate to discourage some of you, but rather to be frank.
Being on the board is not a game.
It is not about changing the policies on the english wikipedia.
It is not about improving welcome templates for newbies on wikipedia either.
And it is not even about pushing the use of the german userboxes.
What we need (desperately need) is people who understand what the
Foundation is, what our needs are, where the challenges are located.
I listed some of the challenges in my presentation at Wikimania;
(http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:FD1). I have no
idea when the audio will be accessible, but I think any candidate should
at least have a look/ear to it.
What would be best are people who already know and participate to
Wikimedia Foundation issue. I could cite dozen, many of whom were at
wikimania. A couple candidated, but I also know they are controversial
so might end up not being in the top.
I would like that non english editors take the chance to run. Not being
english is certainly an handicap due to the huge number of english
voters. Naturally, if you are mostly known in one community, you'll get
a disadvantage. But if you are also a meta participant, the word can be
disseminated that you are a high quality person. Because meta people
know you and can tell about you in the local communities. You have a
chance !
I will not hide the fact that being on the board is highly frustrating.
It is a lot of work. It costs personal money. It is little rewarded. It
carries its generous load of humiliation.
But... if you care about the projects, if you care about their future,
if you care about giving a chance to the content to stay free for real,
if you care about the risk of being "adopted" by a commercial firm, if
you care about the risk of seeing the freedom being reduced to protect
what is merely a legal entity, if you care about us being an
international entity rather than being a pure american business and
professional foundation, please, do help.
Please.
On 8/12/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
> daniwo59(a)aol.com wrote:
> > 7. The Speaker Subcommittee will also request an honorarium, to be
> > paid to the Foundation, for providing a speaker.
>
> I think this concept of the Foundation receiving speaker's fees makes a
> lot of sense for employees of the foundation, just as it
> might for any organization where speakers are being paid by the
> organization and the speaking is a part of what their salary covers.
> For volunteers, this makes significantly less sense to me.
I believe it does not only make sense, but it seems completely and
totally normal that employees of the Foundation, whenever giving a
speech and offered an honorarium, should *not* be given an honorarium
personally, but rather make sure whatever money is there to take goes
to the Foundation.
> I have for a very long time now stressed to everyone who invites me to
> speak that they are inviting me in my personal capacity. So this
> policy will have no impact on me. But it could have impact on many others.
This is where, in my opinion, we hit the borderline case. If you take
every single speech in your personal capacity, what chance is there
that organisations that would like to help the projects as a whole
ever can? Of course they want Jimmy Wales. But if you never are tasked
with the role of representing the Foundation, and hence bring some of
the honoraria into the organisation, there is a big chance that we'll
never see the first cent of anything. Although I do agree with you
that people should be able to take whatever money is given to them, I
also believe that *some* of it should go to the Foundation.
I am not saying all of it, I am not even putting forward a percentage,
but the Foundation has to see a return on investment in the time and
money they put in providing speakers to the organisations that ask for
them (booking tickets, making sure that the person is there,
reimbursing upfront the speaker while waiting that the conference
organizer reimburse them has a cost in the end), as well as for the
trademarks used to advertise the conferences etc. This includes all
volunteers, and in my opinion, you.
This return on investment could be on an "assume good faith" basis,
ie. if a speaker is offered XXX dollars per year to give speeches,
they might want to make a donation to the Foundation one day or the
other, or at least be in a position where they can attest their talk
has brought something to the Foundation, may it be contacts (and hence
potential sponsors that turn into real sponsors), a great press
coverage (and hence an increase in donations) etc.
Another thing is also, that although I agree with Danny that we should
be in a position where we can refuse to send a speaker, this should
only be keeping in mind the return on investment. We should never find
ourselves in a position where we refuse to send a speaker *because*
there is no money involved. One speech that might cost us money to
arrange can bring millions of dollars in, another that costs nothing
and brings money to one person (the speaker) might bring the
Foundation absolutely nothing. There is a balance to be found.
This said, I would be interested in knowing what speakers and speeches
have actually brought to the Foundation in its 3 years of existence,
whether directly or indirectly. Having an idea of that should give a
good basis to fine tune Danny's proposal.
Delphine
--
~notafish
While I greatly appreciate the discussions which are occurring here,
I note that during the few hours I was at the healthcare with my kid
about 50 messages have been exchanged and, it seems to me, some with
considerable heat.
Would it be possible for everyone to take a break and let others in
the community examine the arguments and consider the issues as well?
Amgine
I am confused by this thread. It is starting with false assumptions (Board
members are required to spend their own money for things) and builds on that to
create further false assumptions (we have enough dot com millionaires on the
Board).
To the best of my knowledge:
1. The expenses of Board members relating to Foundation work are covered by
the Foundation. They do not come from the individual Board members' "personal
savings."
2. We currently have no dot com millionaires on the Board.
3. Paying Board members for Board-related activities can be perceived as a
potential conflict of interests.
4. In many non-profit organizations in the US--but not the WMF--Board
membership is actually contingent upon making a significant donation to the
organization.
Please get the facts right when complaining about the Board and its members.
Danny
In a message dated 8/11/2006 1:25:49 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
erikzachte(a)infodisiac.com writes:
Walter van Kalken:
> I personally feel that one of the big issues is that people are required
> to spend their own money for things. This means that if you life outside
> of the US, even outside of Florida that your costs will be prohibitively
> high. I personally find that one of the most prohibitive requirements.
> Many people whom would have the time and the enthousiasm do not have a
> bankaccount for that. And that is one of the reasons I have a lot of
> respect for Angela and Anthere. They are willing to spend their personal
> savings for the betterment of the projects. People should realize that
> the next time they start complaining with them.
I concur with this entirely. We have enough dot com millionaires on the
Board, and the Advisory Board might add some.
This is not personal to anyone, those concerned probably just got their
priorities right.
What 'saddens' me however is the way Anthere was treated during the Board
session last Sunday when the issue of paying board members was brought up.
Jimbo made a casual remark to the effect of "(I'm not sure) we want to pay
board members, besides it is not allowed by the bylaws" (paraphrasing here).
Easy to say in his position. Then someone made a witty but badly timed joke
about the situation, the chairman of the Board might have intervened at that
moment. I feel it was humiliating for Anthere. Maybe the bylaws allow other
board members than Jimmy to accept well paid invitations for keynote
speeches?
Erik Zachte
On Sat, August 12, 2006 15:52, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I have for a very long time now stressed to everyone who invites me to
> speak that they are inviting me in my personal capacity. So this
> policy will have no impact on me. But it could have impact on many
> others.
I will stick my head above the parapet here, but comment that *nobody* is
inviting you in a 'personal' capacity. They are inviting you because of
WMF, not because of your history at Chicago Options Associates, Bomis or
anything else whatsoever, and to suggest you can separate yourself from
WMF in this way is rather misleading.
> I believe, and my memory might be weak here so someone can correct me,
> that this question first came up when David Gerard gave a
> talk in the UK, a talk for which there was an honorarium (small)
> associated with it. The small amount of money involved, it seems to me,
> quite properly
> should go to David for his efforts. And why not?
The UK Chapter reviewed that (it was for the BBC) and concluded that where
WMUK is the body contacted then any fees received will go to WMUK and the
person(s) concerned would be covered for their expenses. In this instance,
David was representing the WMF directly (the contact came via WMF) and so
it is up to the WMF to decide on such things. AIUI in this instance the
'fee' was basically sufficient to cover the costs involved, so effectively
balanced what would have been claimed anyway.
This is all about how professional we wish to behave and how we wish the
WMF to grow and mature in the future. If we are looking at it as a cash
cow for a select few individuals then outwith the short term there will
clearly be problems in maintaining credibility and capability in delth.
Alison Wheeler
I completely agree,
when I have seen the candidatures, I have had this first feeling:
"a lot of candidates only english speaking (with a little knowledge
of another language)".
The board should have a good communication and should be
representative... this don't mean that the members should be
polyglot, but these are little signs... how many languages has got
Wikipedia? Why?
Ilario
----Messaggio originale----
Da: notafishz(a)gmail.com
Data: 10.08.06 19.58
A: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"<foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] board candidacies
On 8/10/06, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote:
> On 8/10/06, Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> Internationally, it means that countries where the English
languages
> is widespread are probably going to have a greater
representation.
> Changing this would be likely be extremely difficult and/or
expensive.
> And it's somewhat of a catch-22: Wikimedia probably won't have
very
> much representation from non-English speakers until it's easy
for
> Wikimedians of different languages to communicate with each
other, but
> until Wikimedia has more representation from non-English
speakers
> translation issues will probably remain a relatively low
priority.
>
> As for project representation, I don't think board members should
be
> representing individual projects in the first place. Wikipedia
is by
> far the largest and most successful project, so it doesn't
surprise me
> that board candidates use that project for their discussion
pages.
I think you are missing the point entirely.
What we are asking is for this election to be representative of
the
Wiki*m*edia community in its entirety, ie. all languages and all
projects. Being on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation as
Florence
pointed out, does not mean changing policies in the English
Wikipedia,
no more than in Wikisource or the Chinese Wikipedia for that
matter.
It means seeing the greater vision, understanding, or be ready to
understand what's at stake in all projects and all languages,
making
sure the projects are able to flourish regardless of their size or
fame in the outside world. It means taking the right decisions as
to
where Wikimedia will use the money it has, the right decision on
which
partners to choose so as to allow to pursue our mission, ie.
support
free and open knowledge and access to information.
Native Cherokee Language XML Dumps have been posted to
ftp.wikigadugi.org/wiki/xml
phwiki-20060810-pages-articles.xml.bz2 - Cherokee Language XML Dump in
Text Phonetics
sylwiki-20060810-pages-articles.xml.bz2 - Cherokee Language XML Dump in
Sequoyah Syllabary
The Native Cherokee Language Project is a work in progress.
Jeff V. Merkey
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
<...snip...>
>>--- Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>> So rrrrright, so much for the false assumptions. The expenses of Board
>> members relating to Foundation work are not entirely covered by the
>> Foundation. That's not a false assumption. That's a fact.
>As far as I know (and I should know a thing or two about this), being
>reimbursed for Wikimedia-related expenses is just a matter of requesting
>reimbursement and providing the necessary documentation where needed.
>If you have been denied reimbursement for Wikimedia-related expenses after
>submitting a reimbursement form, then PLEASE tell me (for the form, see
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Reimbursement_request_form.xls ).
>Setting up an explicit per diem policy to cover food/lodging/transit would
>only make such requests easier (no need to get many small receipts).
>> This said, Michael wrote yesterday that I should ask for my child care
>> costs to be covered. Does that need a resolution ?
> It seems perfectly reasonable to be reimbursed for child care obtained to
> cover times you are traveling on Wikimedia-related business. I don't see
> why reimbursement of
> that expense would need a resolution.
>
>-- mav
<..snip..>
To quote from the IRS web site about Exempt Organizations (EO, WMF = EO):
"Many exempt organizations have officers who are volunteers and not paid for
their services. These officers may receive reimbursement or an allowance
for out-of-pocket expenses. For example, if an officer is required to
attend a convention representing the EO, the EO might pay for the trip.
Similarly, an EO may provide a monthly allowance to an officer for
automobile use."
- http://www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=131083,00.html (accessed
today)
The basic rule for NPOs is that while someone is not compensated for serving
as a director/trustee on an NPO they can be compensated for being employed
by the NPO (subject to the rules on
Intermediate Sanctions). And for all work of officers as volunteers, such
volunteers can receive reimbursement or an allowance for expenses that can
either be "accountable" or "unaccountable".
The important issue is that it is allowable by the organization if the
organization wishes to make such compensation, it is not mandatory under
the law.
IRS publication P535 deals with business expenses, see Chapter 13
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p535.pdf , and strangely enough in this
context Wikimedia is considered to be no different than another business in
how travel, lodging and entertainment expenses are related to the
"business" (in the US interstate commerce includes activities of charitable
organizations this is how WMF's TM can be registered as a "mark of
commerce")
of the Wikimedia Foundation.
It would seem that babysitting expenses incurred as a cost of Anthere
attending any activity as WMF volunteer board member are "out of pocket
expenses" that _may_ be reimbursed by WMF.
Perhaps the expense should be submitted to see if the executive staff pays
it
or asks for the board's approbation before payment is made. I don't think
every board member should be required to remember every board resolution,
usually it is the staff of an NPO that has the job of submitting payment
vouchers
and dealing with day-to-day bookeeping issues such as reimbursement of
trustee/officer meeting/travel related expenses/reimbursement.
Alex T. Roshuk
Lawyer/avocat (and former NPO Executive Director/coordinateur generale)
Dear Fred,
He appears to be in the UK, not Canada as you mentioned.
en.wikigadugi.org
See recent changes for Willy's visit.
I think this guy is one of your admins. Here's his IP log for an ISP
report. This is a good test of your new policy. Since
this person is a bane not only on Wikimedia, but anyone on any projects
supporting Wikimedia content, would be a good
test.
80-195-236-221.cable.ubr02.hari.blueyonder.co.uk
:-)
Jeff
I assume Garion96 & Larberg were speaking of the album covers Jimbo
mentioned in his post. If not, please let us know.
I'm no expert about copyright law, but I don't see how it would be possible
for a record company to give us such a 'free' image without compromising the
integrity of their copyright. All that they would be able to give us would
be an alternative image that they had no interest in protecting, which
wouldn't be useful to us. Maybe we could get free photos of bands from Sony,
but that amounts to the publicity photos mentioned earlier. I doubt that
Time Warner or UMG would give us a suitable substitute for the album
cover for Nirvana's Nevermind.
On Aug 9, 2006, at 6:45 PM, Christopher Larberg wrote:
On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 23:43 +0200, Garion96 wrote:
Would it be a good idea if the foundation would ask for 'free' images from
big record companies (like Sony music entertainment), actor agencies etc. I
know any editor can do this, but it would definitely have a greater
chance of success if it is coming from the foundation.
Just to interject here, I think it's worth a shot (if someone at the
Foundation is willing to do it), but I'd be willing to bet that most of
those publicity photos are only offered under non-free licenses (limited
redistribution, no derivative works, etc.). I still think it wouldn't
hurt to at least try, though.
--
Christopher Larberg [[w:en:User:Slowking Man]]
<christopherlarberg(a)gmail.com>
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