[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation Ombudsman

[Thomas Dalton]

It sounds like you are talking more about an inspection than an
ombudsman. The problem with your proposal is that disagreements
between the Foundation and community are usually due to it being very
unclear what the roles of each are. There isn't a rulebook that
someone can make sure the WMF is following. There is a committee
working on clearing up the roles of different parts of the movement,
but I don't know if they'll actually come up with anything specific
enough to be inspected against.

On 21 November 2010 06:16, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
> Hi.
>
> The mailing list archives still aren't really searchable, but I have a
> question about whether the topic of having a Wikimedia Foundation Ombudsman
> has been discussed previously.
>
> To be clear, I'm not talking about a CheckUser/Privacy policy Ombudsman.[1]
> I'm talking about someone who would work within the Wikimedia Foundation for
> a fixed period of time to ensure that the Wikimedia Foundation is following
> its own guidelines and procedures and sticking to its principles.
>
> National Public Radio has an Ombudsman (as do other news agencies and
> organizations). The NPR Ombudsman works within the organization and blogs
> about any actions that the organization takes that she feels need to be
> discussed on her blog.[2]
>
> In theory, the Board of Trustees is responsible for ensuring the Wikimedia
> Foundation staff act in the best interests of the community, however the
> Board (as I understand it) (a) does not meet very often; and (b) obviously
> is not located in San Francisco and cannot be a part of daily operations.
>
> Has the idea of having a Wikimedia Foundation Ombudsman been discussed
> previously? If so, can someone shoot me some links to the past discussion
> (on the mailing list or perhaps on Meta-Wiki)? If not, is there any virtue
> to this idea?
>
> If there is virtue to this idea, it seems like it might be reasonable to
> investigate whether a "Wikimedia fellow" could hold this position.[3]
>
> MZMcBride
>
> [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission
> [2] http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/
> [3] http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/?p=2398
>
>
>
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