A list of suggestions, kindly sent offling by one of our participant and
reworked to suit our organisation.
I'd like that these are taken into account by the Foundraising committee
(the job of the Fundraising committee is not only to raise money in
summer 2006, but also to organise sustainable Fundraising practices.
Spend no more than 35% of related contributions on fund raising. Related
contributions include donations, legacies, and other gifts received as a
result of fund raising efforts.
-->Compute and publish the cost of fundraising per year
Address privacy concerns of donors by providing a clear, prominent and
easily accessible donor privacy policy that tells donors (i) what
information, if any, is being collected about them and how this
information will be used, (ii) how to contact us to review personal
information collected and request corrections, (iii) how to inform us
(e.g., a check off box) that the donor does not wish his/her personal
information to be shared outside the organization, and (iv) what
security measures we have in place to protect personal information.
Clearly disclose how we benefit from the sale of products (cafepress)
that state or imply that the Foundation will benefit from a consumer
sale or transaction. Such promotions should disclose, at the point of
solicitation:
*the actual or anticipated portion of the purchase price that will
benefit WMF (e.g., 5 cents will be contributed to Foundation for every
xyz company product sold. Make that be not only on the official webshop,
but only any related product sold by a local associaton (in this case,
list the product and mention the benefit goes to the local association)
*the duration of the campaign (e.g., the month of October),
*any maximum, minimum or average contribution amount. Which benefit may
be obtained from giving over 1000 dollars, over 10 000 dollars etc...
Respond promptly to and act on complaints brought to its attention about
fund raising practices (OTRS essentially).
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
On this page, the paragraph ''how your donation will help" is badly
outdated (some of the links go to pages which are no more active).
This has been a very instructive discussion for me, at least.
Unofficially, at least, I would like to make a proposal. I would like to
invite people on this list to email me at _dwool(a)wikimedia.org_
(mailto:dwool@wikimedia.org) if they are
a) interested in volunteering in various capacities,
b) in what particular capacities they are interested
c) what particular skills and experiences they bring to the table
d) when they would be available to volunteer
e) how much time they would be able to devote to this
f) what particular equipment they have that can be used (color printer,
scanner, an amazing long-dstance phone plan, etc.)
f) how they can be contacted
f) any other ideas you might have
I will then begin to create a database with this information.
This does not mean that you will automatically be given something to do. Nor
does it mean that you will be asked to do exactly what you want. It will,
however, help to coordinate some of the many tasks that need doing, such as
stuffing envelopes, coordinating databases, etc.
I think that this can be a first step toward greater involvement.
Remember, send it to my work address: _dwool(a)wikimedia.org_
(mailto:dwool@wikimedia.org) . Do not send it to this address.
Note that I am not doing this in any official capacity whatsoever. I would
be more than happy to have one or two volunteers help organize this.
Thanks,
Danny
Following a long discussion, both publicly and privately, the board of
the foundation voted recently to hire an interim Executive Director and
legal counsel. We offered the position to Brad Patrick, and he
accepted. We have discussed at length the parameters of the
position, including job responsibilities, and so on. (This has been
posted and discussed publicly as well.)
Who is Brad? Brad has been our pro-bono legal counsel for the past
several months, has become very active in foundation matters and in the
projects. He is of course a huge fan of free software, Larry Lessig,
and Wikipedia, and lives and breathes this stuff. Rather than doing
"merely" legal work (nothing mere about it, of course) for us, he has
gotten involved in helping the board think about policy, in helping
Danny deal with various "customer support" issues, etc.
The need for fulltime legal counsel should be obvious to everyone
involved with the projects. We are increasingly approached with
interesting opportunities to partner with various organizations in ways
that are consistent with our community values and missions, and we
really need fulltime legal support to make sure these deals are done in
a way which is safe for the foundation. Additionally, of course there
is an ever increasing burden as we grow more popular of legal complaints
that we continue to try to deal with in a timely and effective manner.
The need for help in the executive arena is also obvious to
most of you... particularly any of you who have had to deal with the
critical lack of human bandwidth at the foundation level to get things
done in a timely fashion.
Brad was selected first and foremost because he is of the community,
actively involved for several months, and deeply committed to our mission.
Additionally, when I consulted recently with our volunteer attorneys,
including Alex Roshuk, Jean-Baptise Soufron and Michael Snow, as well
as consulting with Eben Moglen of the FSF and Larry Lessig of Creative
Commons, a common refrain was that we need someone who is familiar with
the particulars of Florida law, as well as someone who can effectively
co-ordinate and manage pro-bono legal resources.
This is important to emphasize: we are not hiring an in-house counsel
*instead of* seeking pro-bono help, but hiring in-house counsel *so
that* we can effectively seek and manage pro-bono help. As an example:
when I asked Eben Moglen for help, he said that he can (starting this
fall, most likely) arrange for us the equivalent of a half-time lawyer,
except he was quite adamant that he could do so only if we could manage
the pro-bono hours effectively, and he was very strongly in support of
us having someone fulltime.
Additionally, Brad will be taking on a number of job responsibilities
that fall outside of the strictly legal scope, *on an interim basis*.
We, the board, have been overwhelmed for many months, and we need help
and assistance with business deals, legal matters, finance, audit,
planing, etc., etc., the list goes on and on.
We intend to hire a fulltime Executive Director following a very careful
process of consulting with the community, building support globally,
defining what the foundation needs, and a comprehensive search for a
good candidate, both *within the existing community* and *outside the
community*. It is my intention that we be very very careful in this
process to preserve our fundamentally community-driven model, while at
the same time adding professionalism to the organization in order to
empower and defend the community model. :)
Among Brad's duties will be to assist in co-ordinating and managing that
search process, in conjunction with the board and community leaders of
all kinds.
We expect there to be significant press attention to this hiring, and
significant support and attention from the community. If you have been
following the discussion on foundation-l, you will know that there are
serious excitements and of course concerns in the community about what
this direction means for the future of the foundation and for the community.
I intend to keep repeating my same message strongly and simply: it is my
intention to build upon and extend our radical methods of openness and
community involvement, while at the same time playing close attention to
the needs of the organization which makes all of that possible.
Whatever side any of you personally may come down on, relating to some
of the details of all that, I hope that you will join me in saying that
our similarities and hopes and dreams for the future are more important
than any minor differences, and that we can work our way forward as we
always have... slowly and carefully, with genuine respect for everyone
who is taking part in the discussions in a constructive way...
It is important to emphasize that the ED position is primarily about the
organization, not about the community. That is to say, now is not the
time to start leaving "please unblock me" messages on Brad's talk page. ;-)
Brad is starting work immediately.
--Jimbo
--
#######################################################################
# Office: 1-727-231-0101 | Free Culture and Free Knowledge #
# http://www.wikipedia.org | Building a free world #
#######################################################################
Hello, List-Readers,
A week or so ago I had an idea. I had realised for a while that most casual
viewers of the Wikimedia projects are not really aware about most of the
other projects. A user of Wikipedia does not know of Wikiquote, which is a
real pity and something that needs to be remedied if we want the Wikimedia
Foundation to truly succeed.
I conceived of an idea for a project which ties together the various
projects in such a way as to allow any casual viewer to search for a topic
and get all the relevant information - not just that on Wikipedia. This
would have pages with no content but with links, each page on a topic and
each link to something related to that. This is Wikiscope.
Please take a look at my proposal at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiscope and leave your comments and
suggestions.
Thank you very much,
-Daniel (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dbmag9)
Tim Starling wrote:
> No doubt judging by the flood of positive comments, this decision was
> discussed at length before it was announced. May I ask where, and by
> whom?
I believe Jimmy already addressed this in his original announcement,
where he elaborated about some of the people he consulted before making
this decision, with some obviously unnamed and I'm not sure he'd be able
to reconstruct a complete list. More specifically, I can tell you that
the information was also shared with the Communications committee so it
could prepare a press release. But so far as I know, for some of the
people responding all they would have known beforehand is what was in
the Board's resolution published earlier this month.
--Michael Snow
Tim Starling wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>> On 6/12/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
>>
>>> We intend to hire a fulltime Executive Director following a very
>>> careful
>>> process of consulting with the community, building support globally,
>>> defining what the foundation needs, and a comprehensive search for a
>>> good candidate, both *within the existing community* and *outside the
>>> community*.
>>
>> Is there a timetable for this? Failing that, is there a definite
>> commitment from all sides that this is, indeed, an interim position?
>> When can we expect the first report about the outcome of the search
>> process?
>
> Mav assured us that Tim Shell and Michael Davis were temporary
> positions, remember that?
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikilegal-l/2004-January/000254.html
Given that what Mav wrote is liberally laced with qualifiers like "I
imagine", "I can only surmise", and "My understanding is", and he
evinces some confusion about the meaning of the passages he interprets,
I find it surprising that his post would be taken as an assurance of
anything at all. Certainly the bylaws themselves do not say that Tim or
Michael were temporary appointments.
The reference to annual elections deals specifically with the community
representatives. (There's also a section about annual elections for
Chair, Treasurer, etc., but those are the Board electing "from among its
members" for its own internal positions, not elections to seats on the
Board itself.) The section dealing with replacement of board members
calls for an interim appointment if the resigning member was elected,
for the other positions it simply says "the remaining Trustees may elect
a replacement." There's no indication I can find that either the initial
position or the replacement would be limited to a particular term of
service.
--Michael Snow
On Tue, 2006-13-06 at 09:37 +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> > On 6/12/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
> >> We intend to hire a fulltime Executive Director following a very careful
> >> process of consulting with the community, building support globally,
> >> defining what the foundation needs, and a comprehensive search for a
> >> good candidate, both *within the existing community* and *outside the
> >> community*.
> >
> > Is there a timetable for this? Failing that, is there a definite
> > commitment from all sides that this is, indeed, an interim position?
> > When can we expect the first report about the outcome of the search
> > process?
>
> Mav assured us that Tim Shell and Michael Davis were temporary positions,
> remember that?
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikilegal-l/2004-January/000254.html
>
> What optimism we had back then.
>
> -- Tim Starling
Was that when devs were volunteers?
Amgine
Congratulations Brad!
Based on my recent experience, Brad is an excellent choice.
Back to lurking,
FloNight aka Sydney Poore
Georgetown, KY
---- Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
>
> Following a long discussion, both publicly and privately, the board of
> the foundation voted recently to hire an interim Executive Director and
> legal counsel. We offered the position to Brad Patrick, and he
> accepted. We have discussed at length the parameters of the
> position, including job responsibilities, and so on. (This has been
> posted and discussed publicly as well.)
>
> Who is Brad? Brad has been our pro-bono legal counsel for the past
> several months, has become very active in foundation matters and in the
> projects. He is of course a huge fan of free software, Larry Lessig,
> and Wikipedia, and lives and breathes this stuff. Rather than doing
> "merely" legal work (nothing mere about it, of course) for us, he has
> gotten involved in helping the board think about policy, in helping
> Danny deal with various "customer support" issues, etc.
>
> The need for fulltime legal counsel should be obvious to everyone
> involved with the projects. We are increasingly approached with
> interesting opportunities to partner with various organizations in ways
> that are consistent with our community values and missions, and we
> really need fulltime legal support to make sure these deals are done in
> a way which is safe for the foundation. Additionally, of course there
> is an ever increasing burden as we grow more popular of legal complaints
> that we continue to try to deal with in a timely and effective manner.
>
> The need for help in the executive arena is also obvious to
> most of you... particularly any of you who have had to deal with the
> critical lack of human bandwidth at the foundation level to get things
> done in a timely fashion.
>
> Brad was selected first and foremost because he is of the community,
> actively involved for several months, and deeply committed to our mission.
>
> Additionally, when I consulted recently with our volunteer attorneys,
> including Alex Roshuk, Jean-Baptise Soufron and Michael Snow, as well
> as consulting with Eben Moglen of the FSF and Larry Lessig of Creative
> Commons, a common refrain was that we need someone who is familiar with
> the particulars of Florida law, as well as someone who can effectively
> co-ordinate and manage pro-bono legal resources.
>
> This is important to emphasize: we are not hiring an in-house counsel
> *instead of* seeking pro-bono help, but hiring in-house counsel *so
> that* we can effectively seek and manage pro-bono help. As an example:
> when I asked Eben Moglen for help, he said that he can (starting this
> fall, most likely) arrange for us the equivalent of a half-time lawyer,
> except he was quite adamant that he could do so only if we could manage
> the pro-bono hours effectively, and he was very strongly in support of
> us having someone fulltime.
>
> Additionally, Brad will be taking on a number of job responsibilities
> that fall outside of the strictly legal scope, *on an interim basis*.
> We, the board, have been overwhelmed for many months, and we need help
> and assistance with business deals, legal matters, finance, audit,
> planing, etc., etc., the list goes on and on.
>
> We intend to hire a fulltime Executive Director following a very careful
> process of consulting with the community, building support globally,
> defining what the foundation needs, and a comprehensive search for a
> good candidate, both *within the existing community* and *outside the
> community*. It is my intention that we be very very careful in this
> process to preserve our fundamentally community-driven model, while at
> the same time adding professionalism to the organization in order to
> empower and defend the community model. :)
>
> Among Brad's duties will be to assist in co-ordinating and managing that
> search process, in conjunction with the board and community leaders of
> all kinds.
>
> We expect there to be significant press attention to this hiring, and
> significant support and attention from the community. If you have been
> following the discussion on foundation-l, you will know that there are
> serious excitements and of course concerns in the community about what
> this direction means for the future of the foundation and for the community.
>
> I intend to keep repeating my same message strongly and simply: it is my
> intention to build upon and extend our radical methods of openness and
> community involvement, while at the same time playing close attention to
> the needs of the organization which makes all of that possible.
> Whatever side any of you personally may come down on, relating to some
> of the details of all that, I hope that you will join me in saying that
> our similarities and hopes and dreams for the future are more important
> than any minor differences, and that we can work our way forward as we
> always have... slowly and carefully, with genuine respect for everyone
> who is taking part in the discussions in a constructive way...
>
> It is important to emphasize that the ED position is primarily about the
> organization, not about the community. That is to say, now is not the
> time to start leaving "please unblock me" messages on Brad's talk page. ;-)
>
> Brad is starting work immediately.
>
> --Jimbo
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> #######################################################################
> # Office: 1-727-231-0101 | Free Culture and Free Knowledge #
> # http://www.wikipedia.org | Building a free world #
> #######################################################################
Press release:
First Wikipedia Day at ETH Zurich
Zurich, June 12th 2006 - Even though it exists just since five years
the free online encyclopedia "Wikipedia" is known to many internet
users throughout the world. These days there will be a presentation to
the interested public in Switzerland. Talks and Workshops will be
offered at the Wikipedia Day Saturday, June 17th from 10 AM to 6 PM at
the ETH Zurich. Especially people with non-IT-background and
occassional internet users are invited.
The GEP pavillon at the top station of the Polybahn is open all day
for people who would like to learn more about the Wikipedia and other
Wikimedia projects. One subject will be the usage of Wikipedia in
school and science. Prof. Dr. Betrand Meyer (Referent of Software
Development at ETH Zurich) and Prof. Dr. Beat Döbeli Honegger
(Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz) will hold talks on this. Additionally
to further talks there will take place a panel discussion about Free
Knowledge on the programme. All visitors are invited to make their
first edits at the free encyclopedia. The best article will be awarded
at the Writing Contest.
This first public event is organised by Wikimedia CH, Association for
the Advancement of Free Knowledge - which was found at May 14th at
Olten and is under the patronage of VIS - Verein der
Informatik-Studierenden der ETH Zürich. This is also the first
Wikipedia event in Switzerland, at the same day Wikimedia Deutschland
e.V. hosts at Goettingen the "Wikipedia Academy".
For further information look at
http://wikimedia.ch/wikipedia-day-2006/lang-pref/en/
.
--
Regards
Michael Bimmler
Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement of free knowledge
www.wikimedia.ch
on Thu, 8 June 20:43:11 Erik Moeller explained
==================== Quote ====================
See [[John Seigenthaler, Sr.]]. We publish potentially libelous
information alongside a huge collection of well-referenced quality
material, under the same logo, without any distinction for the reader
between one and the other. We make that information available as free
content, and allow anyone to scrape it off our site or download our
database, meaning that the libelous information gets copied all over
the place. Legally speaking, if Wikipedia didn't exist, no lawyer
would ever approve it.
================== END Quote ==================
Thanks so much for your excellent example of the problem.
It leaves me aching to know:
1) How & why was WP structured so fragile in the first place?
2) What can be done to protect WP from this vulnerability?
3) Who is developing plans to address such issues?
4) Is any subject more crucial to our future??
5) What do YOU feel is the ideal solution?
Awaiting with bated breath,
Z.Clark