We're still waiting for the FDL 1.3. Since there's been no resolution
within the timeframe we hoped for, we're going to re-allow the
creation of new Wikimedia wikis. To make sure that we can safely
transition to CC-BY-SA, we're going to dual-license them under
CC-BY-SA 3.0:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode
We may remove this dual-licensing clause later, depending on what the
community decides with regard to licensing of existing and new wikis
based on the options that the FDL 1.3 will provide. This
dual-licensing of new wikis is purely intended to make sure that we
have the _option_ to transition these wikis to CC-BY-SA 3.0 (or later)
if we choose to.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
The Board restructuring appears to have triggered discontent among
some community members. This seems to be in part motivated by the fact
that previous community propositions for the Board to encourage the
exploration of a Volunteer Council by means of a Board resolution were
declined, while at the same time, the structure of the Board was
changed to designate the responsibility for two seats to the chapters.
Another part of the dissatisfaction appears to be rooted in the
perceived lack of public communication about these changes.
I was not part of the Board meeting in San Francisco, and I'm not
speaking from an organizational position, nor am I writing this on the
basis of inside information about the meeting. Based on my own
experience as a former member of the Board and a longtime member of
this community, I would like to offer an alternative interpretation
for what I think is happening here.
My own understanding of this decision is exactly the opposite of what
some people seem to interpret it as: The Board has, through its
decision not to create a Volunteer Council but to encourage community
exploration of self-governance, made an explicit statement that it is
up to volunteers working on the projects to explore and propose
processes to decide what new projects & languages to create, what
decision making processes to use to resolve disputes, what major
software changes to enable, and so forth. The Board and the
organization will be minimally prescriptive in these processes. This
is in the organization's interest, as the top-down method of
implementing decisions affecting the projects doesn't scale well. I
interpret it as encouragement to "be bold" and develop scalable
volunteer-driven processes on all levels.
The Board, through its commitment to bringing in new Board members
with expertise in relevant legal, accounting, fundraising and
governance issues, has made it clear that it understands its
governance obligation and its fiduciary responsibility towards a
tax-exempt non-profit organization. Through its commitment to bringing
in chapters into the governance process, it has made an important
attempt to share lessons and recognize the chapters' role in the
international Wikimedia movement. Through its clear, continuing
commitment to community membership on the Board, it has stated its
long term view that, in order to guard and nurture our values, we need
individuals on the Board who live and breathe these values.
So, what I get from this is:
* The Board has given the community a clear "go" signal to explore
models of self-governance and decision making processes, be they
councils, direct voting, committees, or other processes which work.
This allows for the rapid, parallel evolution of mechanisms of
self-governance and a "survival of the fittest" decision-making
processes. That's a very real alternative to a top-down decision to
explore one particular model (Volunteer Council) and, arguably,
preferable.
* The Board has attempted to develop a reasonable balance in its own
composition to address the challenge of running a multi-million dollar
non-profit organization while preserving the key values that allow it
to exist.
But, the Board is _meant_ to not get involved in daily operations, it
is _meant_ to not try to make project-level decisions that cannot
scale, it is _meant_ to structure itself so that it can competently
hire an Executive Director when needed, so that it can evaluate her
performance, so that it can raise funds for the organization, so that
it can make sure that we are in compliance with the legal requirements
for organizations like ours. You will not get a Board that can do that
by simply picking the people with the highest edit counts and giving
them responsibility over the organization. That's a way to create an
organization that has good intentions but which cannot necessarily
balance its books or hire competent staff. In other words, it's a way
to create purely a social movement and not an organizational support
layer for one. But WMF is the support layer: We all are the social
movement.
Our Board of Trustees is present on wikis, IRC and mailing lists; it's
electronically reachable and responsive in ways I would posit no other
Board of Trustees of a similarly large organization is. This, and the
absence of other decision making bodies, creates a fallacy of power:
the false belief that, because the Board exists and participates, it
represents an operationally involved ruling body _for_ the social
movement, rather than an organizational body for _corporate
oversight_. But, really, the primary function of the Board is to
sustain and protect the organization. And, if anything, these Board
meeting outcomes are the Board's acknowledgment of the fact that the
true power rests with the community volunteers, and that the Board
should not interfere with community processes.
You can disagree, but the easiest way to prove this point is to look
at the decisions the Board actually makes:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions
The most recent Board resolution that was highly project-facing was
the one on our content licensing, from December 2007:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:License_update
And this resolution explicitly called for a community decision making
process. Other recent resolutions include:
* Approval of chapter organizations
* Approval of financial statements
* Approval of a credit card usage policy
* Approval of the job description for the Executive Director
* Update of the gift policy
What relevance do these decisions have to your daily project work? In
contrast, what relevance do they have to WMF as an organization
(rather than a social movement)? What qualifications do you need to
vote on such resolutions? I believe that the proposed Board structure
is a very reasonable response to these questions. It's no coincidence
or conspiracy that the current Board, made primarily of respected and
trusted community volunteers, has reached the conclusions it has.
It's easy to direct negative energy towards listservs and wiki pages.
It's much harder to direct positive energy towards solutions that
actually work. It seems to me that volunteer energy would now be most
usefully guided towards developing mechanisms of self-governance, per
project and across projects. Decision-making bodies and processes have
arisen, on a small scale, without any Board involvement. The challenge
is to scale them up. And it's a challenge to all of us.
Erik
Dear all,
As most of you know, the Board of Trustees met at the Foundation's new
San Francisco headquarters a few weeks ago. At that meeting, we talked
about how best to represent the full array of community members, and how
best to provide professional oversight for the work of the staff. As a
result of those conversations, we're announcing today some changes to
the makeup of the Board, and to the Board member appointment process. We
think these are positive changes that will help the Board to safeguard
the Wikimedia Foundation's ability to fulfill the mission. We hope you
agree.
I've laid out the most significant changes below.
We are increasing the number of Board positions to 10 overall, comprised
of the following:
* Three seats elected by you, the community
* Two seats to be selected by the chapters
* One Board-appointed 'Community Founder' seat
* Four 'specific expertise' seats, also to be Board-appointed
The most significant change here is probably the addition of two
chapters-selected seats. This has been under consideration for a long
time, and we are glad to finally be implementing it. We want to
acknowledge that the chapters are an important player in the fulfillment
of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission, and that they therefore deserve a
voice in the governance of the Foundation. Please note that the two
chapters-selected seats are not intended to represent the interests of
the chapters vis-a-vis the Foundation. The chapters are being asked to
pick trustees who they feel will represent the interests of the
Wikimedia Foundation, and help it fulfill its mission as well as it
possibly can.
We are also specifically naming four seats as designated for “specific
expertise.” The goal here is to add skills and capacities to the current
board. For example, we might decide to actively recruit board members
with deep non-profit governance experience, or fundraising expertise.
We are also formalizing Jimmy's role as Community Founder, by
designating a seat for that purpose.
These changes are effective today, but we will not be filling all of
these roles immediately. It will take some time -likely several months
to a year- before all the changes are implemented. Here's how that will
work:
Nothing changes immediately. The current Board membership will stay in
place, and will fill out the new roles/positions as follows:
* Three community-elected seats:
- Florence Devouard (seat up for election July 2008; then, next up for
election July 2009)
- Kat Walsh (seat up for election July 2009)
- Frieda Brioschi (seat up for election July 2009)
* Chapter-selected seats:
- Domas Mituzas, Executive Secretary (to be held until chapters make
their own appointment)
- Michael Snow (to be held until chapters make their own appointment)
* Community Founder
- Jimmy Wales (term expires December 31, 2008)
* 'Specific expertise' seats
- Jan-Bart de Vreede , Vice Chair (term expires December 31, 2008)
- Stuart West, Treasurer (term expires December 31, 2008)
- Vacant (term expires December 31, 2008)
- Vacant (term expires December 31, 2008)
The 'specific expertise' seats, and community founder seat, will be
re-appointed starting in January 2009. The chapter-selected seats will
be filled as soon as the Chapters appoint representatives. Domas Mituzas
and Michael Snow, who were originally asked to sit on the Board until
June 2008, will be extended in their seats until the chapters make their
choices.
Both the community-elected and chapter-selected seats have a duration of
two years. These seats will expire in alternating years, which means
that community-elected seats will be up for renewal on the July 1st
2009, 2011, and 2013, and chapter-selected seats will be up for renewal
on July 1st 2010, 2012, 2014, etc.
In the short-term, the next significant date for the Board is the
election for the one seat, which expires in July of this year. This is
the seat currently held by Florence Devouard. The term of that seat will
last for one year, to July 2009. This is a shorter term than normal, but
the intent is to have the three community-elected seats all line up to
one consistent election date in July 2009. You will hear more later
today from the elections committee.
Once all of these positions are in place, we trust we will have built a
strong Board that is well-positioned to safeguard the Wikimedia
Foundation's mission, and our ability to fulfill it. We hope you agree.
We know this is all pretty complicated and hard to follow, so we asked
Jay Walsh, head of communications, to put together an FAQ and a “board
makeup” graphic, intended to help make it more understandable. He'll be
posting both on the Foundation wiki in about an hour.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board
Thanks,
Jan-Bart de Vreede
Vice-chair, Board of Trustees
Based on concerns raised on this list, the elections committee is changing the requirement from "at least 50 edits between April 1, 2008 and June 1, 2008" to "at least 50 edits between January 1, 2008 and June 1, 2008". We hope this will avoid disenfranchising active community members, while ensuring that longtime-inactive users cannot vote on this important current issue.
The relevant election pages will be updated within the next several hours.
Thank you for your considered feedback and input into this very important decision.
For the election committee,
Philippe
________________________
Philippe Beaudette
Tulsa, OK
http://www.freerice.com - play the game, feed a hungry person.
Samuel writes:
> What is the scope of these responsibilities? I have heard the term
> "fiduciary responsibilities" used in Wikimedia circles as a way of
> shutting
> down conversation -- thought not for some time -- and as a result I
> would
> appreciate a proper definition.
See for example <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiduciary_duty>.
> Trusting someone to give good topical advice and trusting them to
> make good
> long-term decisions and remain true to their principles are rather
> different.
Well, sure, but that's why the law imposes fiduciary responsibilities
on the Board of Trustees (even the appointed ones). The checks and
balances you are concerned about are built into the law itself.
> As long as we are using extra quotation marks... the Board is in a
> position
> to attempt to "optimize fundraising" by taking on advertising, tying
> the
> brand[s] to specific companies, or starting a
> censorship^B^B^Bcontent safety
> campaign to make the sites more friendly to potential donor groups.
The Board has always been in the position of taking action that would
destroy the community responsible for making the projects as vital and
rich as they are. No Board has been stupid enough to do so, and I
can't see how the restructured Board would suddenly become stupid
enough to do so.
> Of particular concern to me is that there is no mechanism for passing
> extraordinary measures or referenda, no matter how overwhelmingly
> desired by
> the collected Wikimedians; and that there is no trusted eminence
> that could
> veto board actions in extraordinary circumstances. A simple
> majority of
> board members could alter the bylaws however they saw fit, and then do
> anything at all.
This has always been the case. Nothing about the restructuring changes
this.
> You have been around for longer than I have, but I have seen my
> share of
> good governing bodies that fail to prepare for a future in which
> they are
> replaced by not-so-good boards, and regret the results. The way to
> avoid
> this is to prepare checks and balances, not to give everyone the
> benefit of
> the doubt until something goes wrong -- by when it is often too late.
As a constitutional lawyer, I think about "checks and balances" as a
feature of government, not of a nonprofit corporate board. In a
government, there are strong arguments for checks and balances (this
is a primary topic in the Federalist Papers), but with corporate
governance, the checks are primarily external ones (corporate law, the
legal system, etc.). If you want to paralyze a non-profit (and almost
all of my entire career has been working for nonprofits), by all means
ensure that every single action the entity takes is subject to a
referendum.
> You suggested no limits on what is acceptable for the board to carry
> out
> without explicit notice.
Is there a legal restriction that I'm overlooking? Please advise. The
Board certainly has to operate within the constraints of the law.
> By this reasoning, a future board, after a general
> discusion about structural change, could alter its composition by
> 30%, with
> an arbitrary reshuffling of community, external, voted and appointed
> seats.
There's a difference between "could" and "is likely to." No one can
make policy based on the worst imaginable cases. You have to assume
most people will act well most of the time, or this whole enterprise
collapses.
--Mike
Charles Matthews wrote:
> Well, maybe we should discuss the downside first. Not having project
> pages on Google would certainly impede my work. You know, some of us
> still develop articles, and so on.
This is a valid point, and I think it needs to be addressed in a couple
of ways:
1. First, narrowing the scope of the noindex request.
2. Second, finding out what it would take to improve internal search to
make it more usable for people developing articles and so on.
> Ah, but I do. Isn't it a better solution to blank some AfDs, than to
> say "the mission has to come second"? After all, really negative
> material should be off the site, not just harder to find.
I would support that for some kinds of pages, blanking should be the
default upon the close of discussion.
-----
I wonder how hard it would be to have a technical change whereby
articles could be tagged with a {{noindex}} template which would set the
meta headers appropriately. This could be liberally applied to project
pages that may be magnets for bad behavior.
And then user space could be the only thing removed from google by default.
Thoughts?
--Jimbo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Top-posting
For what it's worth, I would find it productive if some participants
on this list thought about sometimes *not* top-posting, but trimming
the message they're responding to so as to make it clear *what* and
*who* it is they're responding to. In threads with 50+ emails and
delayed responses, it makes reading much easier.
Thank you,
Delphine
--
~notafish
http://blog.notanendive.org
NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent
to this address will probably get lost.
Domas Mituzas
wrote:
>
>> Out of curiosity: If the entire Board and staff were put up to a
>> public vote
>> across /all/ projects (assuming good representation could be assured),
>> I wonder how many of them would be with the WMF at the end of the day.
>>
>
> Unfortunately, not all aspects of running an organization are a
> popularity contest.
>
>
Fortunately for us, the board is a popularity contest. And whether the
board likes it or not, we elected you. And those who were appointed have
the same obligation as those elected and can face the same criticism as
such. If we, the communities see you guys are not doing your job in the
best interest of Wikimedia, then we have the right to say we think you
guys should resign.
You are the board of trustees. And as I see it, the board has done
nothing but abuse the word 'trustee'. They have made, as a whole, no
attempt to get any community input on anything from this, to Kaltura.
The constantly leave the communities out of the loop and make decisions
with total disregard as to what we might think.
From what I see, the only board member doing anything around here, or
making the slightest attempt to communicate with the communities as much
as possible, is Florence. And what a surprise, her seat is up for grabs.
Like it or not board, you work for us. Not for yourselves. I think this
is a wake up call and I think now the communities are sick of it, and
not going totake it anymore.
Sorry if this sound rude or confrontational, but it seems that this is
the only way to get anyone's attention, who is on the board these days
as they seem to only pay attention to whats said on here and on meta. So
that being the case, it gets increasingly frustrating to have to be
civil and not get anything in return. So please see where I am coming
from, and the others who feel the same way.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Community_petition
Jason Safoutin (DragonFire1024)
My attention has repeatedly been drawn to serious negative effects created
by the ability of Google and other searches to search and display pages
outside the mainspace, including pages such as XfD's, DRV's, AN/I
discussions, and the like. Some of these discussions have taken place
on-wiki and others, I am advised, on discussion of OTRS tickets posted by
affected persons.
Given the visibility of Wikipedia results on Google and other searches, and
consistent with the overall intent of [[WP:BLP]] on En-Wiki (and what I hope
is its equivalent on other projects), we have a serious responsibility to
ensure that the overall effect of Wikipedia content is a responsible one.
This includes eliminating the likelihood that the first hit on the Google
search for a living person is not (for example) a deletion discussion on how
insignificant and non-notable that individual is, or a page discussing the
ban of that individual (who might be a minor, for example) who chose to edit
Wikipedia under his or her real name and made some mistakes in doing so and
was criticized or even banned as a result.
There has been discussion from time to time about implementing a technical
modification such that only mainspace pages (or such other pages as the
community might consciously choose) would be visible to searches. In view
of the number of concerns raised about the current situation where
everything is searchable, it seems to me that the necessary changes should
be developed and implemented quickly.
The main argument in opposition to this change that I have seen is that the
internal Wikipedia search capability is not as strong as the external search
engines, so that it is desirable that the ability to conduct a complete
external search be maintained. I know that I have sometimes found it useful
to be able to search all spaces within the site in, for example, looking for
precedent cases while drafting EnWiki arbitration decisions. It therefore
would probably be desirable to upgrade our internal search capability.
However, in view of the number of third parties affected by the current
practice, I do not believe that implementation of the non-search capability
should await this development.
As a matter of disclosure, although I have raised this concern in passing on
prior occasions, my attention has been focused (this is something of an
understatement) on it again by an ongoing and extremely unpleasant thread
concerning me on the Wikipedia Review site. I understand that my concerns
in this matter might be discounted for that reason. Nonetheless, they are
sincere, of long standing, and I urge that they receive priority attention.
Newyorkbrad
Phoebe Ayers writes:
> Arguably, however, providing solid dumps is the backbone for getting
> most of this research getting done, since having project data to
> manipulate is necessary for many possible studies. So not only are
> regular dumps critical for fulfilling our free content
> responsibilities and mission, but they are critical for future
> research. Which is to say: we all really want to see them happen! And
> agreed, the Foundation is the only one that can make it so (even
> though it's not an easy task); and this is the sort of infrastructure
> task that should be absolutely core.
We at the Foundation want to see this happen too. We regard increasing
the frequency and reliability of the dumps as mission-critical, and
we're working toward that goal.
--Mike