On 27/10/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Oldak Quill wrote:
P.S. Just as a point of discussion: the Foundation was created to make certain processes easier and to centralise fundraising, &c. Why is a non-Foundation decision or initiative somehow less valid than one led by the Foundation?
Yes, the Foundation holds the purse strings (and does a very important job), but the Foundation has been given too much primacy and authority on Wikimedia issues. The Foundation also has a tendency to consolidate power and remove community-based decision making processes (e.g. the lack of consultation in the latest fundraising drive).
The key word there is "given". You use a passive verb. Who did the giving? How often do you see someone saying that we should first seek the authority of the Foundation before taking action. The tendency to consolidate power is not new to the Foundation. Ruling bodies tend to step in and make decisions when an organization which proclaims democracy is paralyzed by indecisiveness, and that paralysis would result in a default decision that nobody wants. I don't blame the Foundation in this, but on the community that fails to realize that its own inability to make decisions defaults to small groups with the courage to impose their own agendas. The Foundation is not the only such group in WP.
Ec
Indecisiveness in Wikipedia arises from the methods of determination we use (our policies, &c). The community can go some length in correcting these, but the Foundation should encourage decisiveness and decisionmaking-in-the-community. The way to ensure that this occurs is to make the Foundation more accountable to the Wikimedia community, define (limit) it's capacity to interfere in project issues and define the relationship between projects and the Foundation.