[Foundation-l] Business Related List

[Michael Bimmler]

Off-list-reply, following Aphaia's plea

On 9/5/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> Michael Bimmler wrote:
>
> >
> >If you have a high-priority and/or important business question, which
> >you want to be answered by nobody but Foundation officials, why don't
> >you just write an email to the Foundation? There is board at wikimedia
> >dot org and bpatrick at wikimedia dot org (Brad Patrick, general
> >counsel & Interim Executive Director WMF) for your convenience.
> >
> I do this all the time with Brad and those emails dont make it to this list.
>
Well, okay, so you can handle your questions with Brad and everything
is fine. Why do send them to the list then?
> >I
> >don't think that you can prohibit community members from expressing
> >themselves when using a mailing list. There is private email for
> >business purposes.
> >
> >
>
> I am not trying to prohibit anyone from expressing themselves, in fact,
> it's the other way
> around, I am often the target of folks oppressing my expressions for
> purely political reasons.
It might rather be for on-/offtopic reasons...

> I have no problem using the foundation list for progress on African
> languages and other programs, but a business
> oriented list would be a better solution. The problem with the community
> moderator concept
> here is there may be other businesses spring up and when a non-employee
> threatens to moderate
> or does moderate someone on such a list, there are some issues
> potentially created for the foundation.
> Issues I would rather not deal with.
>
I beg your pardon? Are you implying that the foundation may get legal
problems (my translation of your word "issue") as they allow
experienced members (not everybody gets list-moderator...) to moderate
the mailinglists? If the Foundation decides. that its mailing list
shall rather be administered by volunteers chosen by them than by e.g.
office employees, I don't see any problem in that solution. And if
these volunteer admins hence moderate or threaten to moderate posts to
the lists, they are just using the powers given to them by the
Foundation. If serious concerns about the actions of a list admin are
raised, they will reach the foundation and the foundation *might* if
they deem it appropriate consider the removal of the administrator
functions of the user in question. As said, this is quite unlikely, as
the list administrators are without exception distinguished users.
So I see no problem whatsoever with having non-foundation-employees
administering this list.

Michael