Administrator of Russian Wikibooks hid banners of WMF and MediaWiki in
default skin (Monobook).
May he did it or banners should be visible?
----
Sergey Leschina
I think this is a very interesting proposal. The concept of an
ondernemingsraad works great in a lot of companies. I believe that the role
an ondernemingsraad has, describes pretty good the role a Volunteer Council
should have, although the comparison doesn't go all the way; the
ondernemingsraad looks after the interests of the company, with the
interests of the employees in mind; I guess the Volunteer Council would look
after the interests of the Foundation and it's projects (the "company"),
with the mission of the Foundation/projects in mind. The interests of
(individual) employees should not really matter (that might be something for
the meta-arbcom), but of course the Volunteer Council would advise from a
volunteer's perspective, and would guarantee that the volunteers (and their
ideas and wishes) are taken seriously.
-Fruggo
> effe iets anders schreef:
>
> -knip-
> However, I would like to propose something else. I am not sure if it
> is a known system in companies abroad, but in the Netherlands the
> larger companies (>50 employees) are obliged to have a
> "ondernemingsraad". This is a council of employees that has four
> rights:
> * The right to discuss with the employer about decisions. The employer
> is obliged to cooperate with this with a certain group of defined
> decisions.
> * The right to be asked for advice. The employer is obliged to ask the
> advice of this council for certain decisions. He is not obliged to
> follow this advice. However, he will have to consider it seriously,
> and has to motivate if he does not follow it.
> * The right to be asked for approval. In decisions which have a direct
> impact on the employees, the employer is obliged to ask approval of
> the council. He can only ignore this through legal procedures.
> * The right of initiative. The Council can make proposals for the
> employer, which will have to consider these seriously.
> (derived from: nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/ondernemingsraad , GFDL, see the
> url for the authors and license information)
> -knip-
>
>
Dear all,
I'd like to thank Florence for bringing the issue up of the
wikicouncil, and I thank Erik for his views. I think that the
discussion has shifted by now so much, that we are no longer
discussing some council that represents the view of hte community
anymore, but we are discussing the very fundamentals of the Wikimedia
Foundation. I am sorry this will become a very long email, but I am
afraight I will need a lot of space to explain what I mean, and also
to go through the whole spectrum I'd like to.
I think Erik has a very valid point to state that we can't see the
Wikicouncil as a seperate structure, just another addendum to our
system of Board of Trustees, Advisory Board, Committees, Staff and
community. If you add a "power", an "authority" to a system, and
Newton's third law of motion comes into play. If you add such an
authority, this will most certainly have influence on the other
authorities present. Hence I do think that the question whether the
community representatives are still required is a valid one. However,
I do not quite agree yet that this also means that they have to
disappear.
But let's begin with the beginning. The Board of Trustees (Please note
the difference with the Board of Directors, I think nomen est omen
here) is the final and uttermost authority within the Wikimedia
Foundation. The Board of Trustees sets rules and guidelines for the
staff to work with, appoints the Executive Director, sets the strategy
for the Foundation, where to go etc, can write and rewrite the bylaws,
can appoint it's own members and can delegate authority to other
bodies (which it did for instance to the Executive Director).
Of course it *is* possible to change the bylaws in such a way, that
this final authority would be with another body. This is for instance
the case with a membership organization, an association. The final
authority is then with the members of that association, the General
Assemblee. However, the Wikimedia Foundation does not have any
membership any more, so I think that for the near future at least, and
I doubt it will change actually, we are bound to a
foundation-structure, with the Board of Trustees as the Final
Authority.
If we consider this, and we bare in mind that the main assets of the
Wikimedia Foundation are the Wikimedia Projects. And we consider that
these projects are mainly build around the communities that belong to
these projects. Especially if we consider how big of an influence the
Wikimedia Foundation has on the lives of these people, who have
dedicated a big part of their free time to these projects, I think it
would only be fair to let these people have a say, even a big say in
the final authority of this Wikimedia Foundation. But of course it is
even more important that these people have a large influence on the
projects, but also have a lot of knowledge about the core mission of
the Wikimedia Foundation, and how to get there. They might very well
know how the projects should run the best. So I think that it is
obvious that these people should have a way to determine at least
partially how the Final Authority functions. The most logical way
would be to let them determine partially who will be a member of that
Final Authority, the Board of Trustees.
This has already become costom, and the community elects yearly board
members. I think this is a way to let the communities have a say in
the membership of the Board of Trustees. However, iit is true of
course that it might be better for the Foundation as a foundation to
have also people with certain expertise in this Board. They can for
instance make sure that the Board pays attention to the right advice,
that the right points are put on the agenda, and that control is
practiced when needed.
The past history showed us that people with this type of expertise
will hardly be elected by the communities, partially because they are
simply not available as candidates from within the communities. This
makes it reasonable to have these people appointed as board members
from outside the wikimedia communities. Actually, there are even more
pro's to have people from outside the community in the Board. These
board members might bring in fresh views on the way things are going,
they might bring in contacts with other organizations, they might
forceus to look outside our traditional scope and might also point us
to opportunities we'd never have thought of ourselves.
I think that both community members and non-community member experts
are very much welcome in the Board. Both have their advantages, and I
think personally that about 50/50 would be an ideal mix for this. This
because that will make it sure that both parties will always have to
try to convice the other side of their right, to get a majority on
their side if it is about very fundamental questions.
Then I hear people thinking, OK, very nice now, we thought about the
Board of Trustees. But what about these other authorities? Well, I
think we all agree on the staff. The staff falls under the authority
of the Executive Director. The executive Director is appointed by the
board, and all other staff is hired within the lines the Board set out
by the ED. No doubt about that I think.
But now we come to the advises. Because a board can never consist of
enough experts to cover every field, I do not think a Board should
even want that, except the very fundamentals, an Advisory Board has
been set up. The advisory Board consists of experts from the Open
Source communities, but not directly from Wikimedia people. The
Advisory Board has, as the name indicates, an advisory function.
Because of the broad spectrum of members, it is likely that there will
always be a kinda expert on board to give advice if the board asks or
needs that. However, it does disturb the balance between the
volunteers and professionals a bit.
Since the creation of the Advisory Board, or even before that
actually, people have been calling for a Wikicouncil. A council which
is different for everybody. Some people would like to see it as an
advisory board counterweight for volunteers, A body that could give
the Board of Trustees advice "from the community". However, there are
also people who would like to see the WC as some kind of tribunal for
the Wikimedia Communities, which would handle disputes, would be an
uberarbcom or could be some type of parliament deciding which policy
is wikimedia wide.
I think we have to be very carefull to share these responsibilities
with one single body, because it will require a different type of
members. For the function of advising, we would need people who can
feel a bit what is good, who are preferrably into organizational
stuff, are prepared to read a lot, and have a good look for the
future, and can form an opinion on where the foundation should go, and
what the implications would be.
For a court-like function, we would require mainly neutral people,
people who can be some type of arbitrator. People who can take a case
solely, and digg into it, form a judgement, and defend that. They
should mainly have experience in how communities work, and how the
relationships between the different communities should be.
For the last possible function, the policy stuff, we would need some
type of parliament-like council. It would require the members to look
at the mid-term effects, and would require very little activity. The
members should mainly be discussing details and specific regulations,
how they should be formulated etc.
These three types of people are not always compatible, and I would not
think it very wise to have these three functions merged together in
one body. For the arbcom-like part, I think it would for instance be
much better to have a non-WMF body, a meta-arbcom for instance, that
could make decisions if needed. There have been plans for that, but
never in a final state.
What the Wikimedia Foundation needs here, is an advisory body that
consists of community members, that can probably represent more or
less the wish of the community, and which can have a say about the
issues the Board of Trustees is about, the strategy etc. This would be
a Wikimedia Council that would consist of somewhat more members the
the Board probably, to make representation possible, and that would be
similar to the Advisory Board.
However, as might be clear by now, this does not mean that the
community representatives are no longer needed in the Board of
Trustees. Because there is quite a difference between representatives
in the Final Authority, and an Advisory Council.
Finally, I'd like to make a small mention about the size of the Board
of Trustees. To make the external experts useful, there will have to
be a few of them. Only one or two will not do. I think three external
experts, three community members and Jimmy would be ideal. This would
be a compromise between having a community majority in the board,
having sufficient external experts and different community
representatives, and keeping the board small enough to have real life
meetups to talk about the strategy. At the same time, Jimmy could
promise again that if all community representatives agree on
something, he will vote with them. (like he did with Angela/Florence
in the past. Actually I am not sure if he still stands with that
promise)
To summarize: It is necessary to have both community representatives
and external experts with their specific skills in the Board of
Trustees. A Wikimedia Council should be comparable with the current
Advisory Board, but then for volunteers. It is not necessary to have
all experts in the Board of Trustees, but they might very well be in
the Advisory Board too. It might though be wise for the Board of
Trustees to involve these experts then somewhat more actively.
I hope you did not loose track, and I did not forget stuff here. Sorry
again for the veyr long email.
Best regards,
Lodewijk
Hello colleagues and shareholders (community :) !
etc...
As already said this morning on irc, great report Domas. Easy to
understand. Complete. Giving credit where credit is due. Love it :-)
Ant
Yes, I think that is a great idea.
D
In a message dated 1/4/2008 6:21:38 PM Eastern Standard Time,
sydney.poore(a)gmail.com writes:
I was thinking of a combination of stewards and members from elected
ArbComs.
Having a blend might work best. Keep some connection to the local
community as well as meta.
Maybe the steward members would be permanent and the ArbCom members
would serve as a pool that could be called to work on a particular
case.
I think we can think creatively to come up with a formula that best
serves the needs of the Foundation and the Community.
Sydney
**************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape.
http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489
Thank you for this eleborate and interesting report.
-Fruggo
Domas Mituzas schreef:
>
> Hello colleagues and shareholders (community :)!
>
> Has been a while since my last review of operations (aka hosting
> report) - so I will try to overview some of things we've been doing =)
> First of all, I'd like to thank mr.Moore for his fabulous law. It
> allowed Wikipedia to stay alive - even though we had to grow again in
> all directions.
>
> -knip-
>
Hoi,
Currently the Allemannic Wikipedia is known under the name als.wikipedia.org.
This code is wrong as the code is reserved for Tosk, the main Albanian
language. We are about to give Gheg, another Albanian language conditional
approval. As it will be hard to explain to some why we give Tosk conditional
approval, it is decidedly awkward that Allemanic is using the wrong code.
I want to propose that the Allemanic Wikipedia is renamed to
gsw.wikipedia.org and thereby associate the language with the correct
ISO-639 code. The rename is opposed by people in the Allemanic Wikipedia
because they do not agree with how their language is perceived.
However, gsw<http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=gsw>has
Alemannisch as a synonym for Schwyzerdütsch and it is therefore
obvious
that the same language is meant.
Given that there was no contention in the language committee, the request
for a Gheg Wikipedia is given conditional approval.
Thanks,
GerardM
R+R is a legitimate air force interest. I emailed my Army JAG friend,
I'm waiting on a response. However, from my own experiences in both
Army and USAF computer facilities in Iraq and other middle east
countries, we're all arguing about a complete non-issue. Here's the
rub: The military, ALL branches of the military, regularly set up and
authorize the use of computer labs and stations for off-duty
browsing. The navy has them installed on their ships. The Air Force
sets them up at air bases, and the army comes in and mooches off of
them until we get our own. These facilities are at the discretion of
the installation commander and he can always take them back and shut
them down. But in practice, that never happens.
******
The *clean* part of Dan's message states it very well. I'm surprised this
was ever under discussion.
-Durova
Dear all.
We had some differences today in interpretion of the actual
[[m:Checkuser policy]]. It says here
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Checkuser_policy#Removal_of_access)
that <citation>"any user account with checkuser status that is
inactive for more than a year will see their checkuser access be
removed."</citation> I tend to read this as "the user account has to
be totally inactive", thus no edits for >1 year. If this is the
correct interpretation, it should be made clearer, since other users
don't interpret it this way. If the suggested reading is rather "no
checkuser activity for more than a year" the policy must be rewritten
on this. Anyway, there should be a clarification.
Opinions on this are much appreciated, especially from Anthere who
wrote that part of the policy as it seems.
Best regards,
Thomas.
p.s. Since I'm not yet subscribed to checkuser-l, I can't read answers
there, so please write via foundation-l. Thank you.
> Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:15:44 +0100
> From: Yann Forget <yann(a)forget-me.net>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Promotion of lesser known projects
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Cc: "discussion list for Wikisource, the free library"
> <wikisource-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <477CEE10.9060401(a)forget-me.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Hello,
>
> I agree with Ray here, and I think that Klaus' mail does not report
> exactly the reality. The French Wikisource has the greatest numbers of
> scanned texts so far,
Is there a proof for this claim?
but does not make mandatory to have them to
> publish a text there. It is only a suggestion, which many contributors
> follow.
>
> I think that the important point is not scanned texts, but notation on
> whether and how the texts are proofread by editors, whatever means the
> editors use to proofread the texts.
I am monitoring discussions on digitization projects as archival
professional since years. It's standard to give not only e-texts but
scans. Wikisource demands no scans when a permanent web adress (e.g.
library project) for the scans outside Commons is given.
I think the average quality of other Wikisource branches is very poor.
In most cases there is no source given: one cannot know which source
is used, and for scholarly purposes the e-text is worthless.
Klaus Graf
> Regards,
>
> Yann
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > Klaus Graf wrote:
> >> One can add de.Wikisource which is a project making historical Public
> >> Domain texts in German available with high quality standards. These
> >> standards are NOT (yet) shared by the other Wikisource projects, see
> >> also
> >>
> >> http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Scriptorium#The_huge_leap
> >>
> >> Only de.Wikisource demands scanned texts (or digital photos) for
> >> contributions, most other Wikisource branches have a lot of texts
> >> which are unsourced. De.Wikisource has notes commenting the texts for
> >> lots of texts.
> > Much of what you suggest is not about to happen any time soon. The fact
> > is that splitting up the Wikisource communities created circumstances
> > where each Wikisource develops its own standards and criteria. The
> > discussions which may have taken place leading up to these policies on
> > de:Wikisource either did not take place elsewhere or did not have the
> > same results. At best, there have been few determined contributors
> > willing to lead by example. Simply telling people to do these gets nowhere.
> >
> > There is a clear benefit to having to having our texts supported by
> > scanned texts, but many of us who may work well with textual material,
> > may not have the same technical ease when working with images of any
> > kind. Even adding a small number of illustrations that may otherwise
> > accompany a text can be a problematic chore. I am quite prepared to
> > identify where I found my material, but I am quite content to have
> > others do the work of digitization.
> >
> > Commenting on texts is a great idea that could stand to be encouraged more.
> >
> > I agree with the premise that we cannot hope to keep up with the massive
> > digitization projects undertaken by well-funded institutions, but a lot
> > of restrictive requirements is self-defeating. The need is really for a
> > balance somewhere between the minutiae of quality and the feeling that
> > contributors are seeing a lot of growth. Wikisource will not become
> > great by trying to beat the big institutions at their own game. Thus we
> > need to ask oursaelves what we can do to add value that no other similar
> > project can do. In doing so we cannot afford to get bogged down in
> > standardized headings that do not allow for easy expansion without a
> > complete understanding of tranclusion technology. We need to allow our
> > imaginations the freedom to find new ways of connecting data without
> > being tied to formal structures that are so strict as to close off these
> > paths.
> >
> > Ec
>
> --
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> http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
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