Jimmy Wales wrote:
To continue the ongoing board development
conversation....
The board is considering adding some prominent person from outside the
core Wikipedia community to the board and seeks brainstorming ideas of
what type of person could be good, as well as mentions of names who we
might want to approach.
Larry Lessig - head of Creative Commons
Mitch Kapor - head of Mozilla Foundation (Firefox), founder of EFF, and
extremely passionate about the Wikipedia mission (and he edits
Wikipedia, and he is absolutely fascinated by and supportive of our
community model)
Richard Stallman - needs no introduction
Eben Moglen - main legal mastermind of the FSF
Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!
I think appointment to the Board of outsiders is going to be a disaster
which discourages participation in the middle level tasks between the
casual dropin participants and the Board.
I would be interested in what experience people think is unavailable
from the existing participants. If a summary of the skills and
experience desired for specific tasks or responsibilities became
available I suspect we could find people within the existing projects to
run for election to the Board or for appointment to special committees.
If we need input from people who are famous for some reason we can
invite them to address the mailing list or stand for election.
I would also be curious about how much time and effort these famous
people have to apply to the Wikimedia Foundation Board's
responsibilities. Are they finished with their prior responsibilities
or they are so excellent that they can juggle responsibilities
effectively on several Boards?
regards,
lazyquasar