<edit this page>
Dear all,
In the next few weeks, we will be holding the 4th elections to the board
of Trustees of Wikimedia Foundation, to replace 3 board members.
Since the creation of the Foundation in 2003, and its first elections in
june 2004, a lot of things have changed with regards to board membership.
Jimbo created the Foundation in 2003 with the help of two business
partners. He could have set up an organization in which no community
members would have been involved and where he would have kept for
himself this role of benevolent dictator for the rest of his life. But
this is not what he did. He voluntarily decided to involve the community
in reserving two seats for members to be elected from within the community.
I remember criticisms at that time, some editors saying that the board
was stacked, that the two business partners would only do what Jimbo
would tell them to do, and that we should have a majority of people from
the community.
Looking back in the past, I find these comments a bit amusing, and I am
glad Jimbo made the decision he made. He acted prudently and I think he
was right to do so. His two business partners, Tim and Michael, were
deeply commited to our values and I have no memory of them suggesting
anything that would have lead us on a dangerous path. Contrariwise to
what the critics said, they were (are) pretty independantly minded and
did not hesitate opposing Jimbo when they felt it was needed. Tim left
us when he felt we were on the right path and it was time for someone
else to replace him. Michael is pretty much thinking the same, and will
be willing to be replaced as soon as he is sure we have someone with
good accounting skills/financial background to replace him as treasurer.
Last year, we updated the bylaws, to have them better reflect what we
really are, what we want to be. Jimbo, member for life till the creation
of the Foundation, is now a regular (well, special person, but regular
member), with limited term. Jimbo actually wanted to candidate for a
elected seat this month, but we suggested it was a bad idea since the
turnover is already pretty high. The big lesson though, is that we are
now all equals.
Last fall, Tim, Michael, Jimbo, Erik and I, decided to change several
parameters on the board membership, clarifying the length of terms, the
appointed versus elected, the expansion of the board, giving more room
for community representative, but also clarifying how we would appoint
people.
All these changes led to, I hope, a more functional board, and probably
a happier board.
With more seats to elect, we also have more room for diversity of skills
and for diversity of countries and languages.
Whilst we first elect people, please keep in mind skills as well. The
ideal Board has a mix of different skills: it is composed of big picture
thinkers and leaders, non-profit veterans with accounting or legal
experience, fundraising experts, and public figures. It is culturally
diverse, mirroring the diversity found in WMF's project communities. It
takes the corporate governance of WMF seriously while inspiring staff to
strive for ambitious, but realistic long term goals.
----------
Thank you for our official election committee members
* Kizu Naoko (Aphaia)
* Benjamin Mako Hill
* Newyorkbrad
* Philippe Beaudette
* Jon Harald Søby
* Tim Starling
for the hard work they will provide.
As a reminder, to ensure independancy, we try to avoid as much as
possible, communication on election issues between the board and the
commitee. Their contact on the board is Jan-Bart (non elected member).
Our only involvement as I can remember it was to give our opinion on the
voting system (opinion) and on the length of the statement allowed to
candidates. The committee will not tell us any results before the end of
the elections. The board as a whole will not give recommandations (but
individual members are free of course to support or oppose specific
candidates).
----------
During the last board meeting, the board discussed the future elections.
Here is what was agreed:
AGREED: Public statement to be made about what the expectations are of
Board members
AGREED: Election 07 still going to use approval voting
AGREED: Resolution on election committee powers & responsibilitites to
be drafted by Jan-Bart de Vreede
AGREED: Workgroup to research election methods to be set up before the
end of 2007
You may find the public statement about the role of board members here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Elections_to_the_board_%28June_2007%29
A later discussion regarding the resolution about the election committee
showed undecision, so no resolution was drafted. But in case anyone
tries to somehow imply that the election committee is not approved, that
would be incorrect. Official committee is made of the 6 people listed
above, and these guys have the power to make the elections happen :-)
Last, please note the suggestion of a workgroup creation to research
election methods for next time. If you are interested in joining such a
group, or even better to steer this group, please speak up !
----------
A short reminder for I am sure not everyone remember this
* Michael, Jimbo are on board since 2003
* I am on the board since june 2004, as elected, till june 2007
* Erik, Kat and Oscar (elected) are on board since fall 2006, till june 2007
* Jan-Bart (appointed) is on board since december 2006
* The board is made of 7 people (with the expectation to go to 9 later)
* Jimbo, Michael and Jan-Bart terms end up in december 2007
* my term end up in june 2008 (as appointed)
* within the board, positions or chair, treasurer and secretary are for
a term of one year. Next renewal in october 2007
The current elections are for a term of 2 years, for three people.
The next elections will be for a term of 2 years, for three people in
june <bold>2008</bold>
---------
Let me finish in wishing good luck to anyone. There are currently 10
candidates
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/Candidates/en) and
I hope we'll see even more. Boldly, there are not enough women, and too
many americans/europeans.
Please use the next two weeks as an opportunity to discuss what you
think would be best for the future of the Foundation on all the talk pages.
I would love it if you selected a candidate not only on his/her good
looks or good standing within the community, but also because you think
s/he has the right mix of skills (most necessary right now, legal,
accounting, fundraising, knowledge of non profit world). Also if you
could choose people who conveys opinions which are fitting with yours. A
right mix of energetic people (to make things move forward) and of more
lymphatic people (to avoid they move forward too quickly and unwisely).
And please choose someone who will be a pleasant fellow for other board
members and staff to work with.
I would like to also ask those who are interested in the job, but do not
dare candidating because they believe they will never be able to win
against Erik or Kat, to candidate nevertheless. Elections are a useful
moment in that we have the opportunity to discuss together the future of
the Foundation, for the strength of the democracy, we need candidates
and provocative thinking (thanks Kate :-))
The board can also identify people to possibly appoint, who we did not
imagine would be interested in the job, and we can at least have an idea
of the amount of support appointing them would have within the community.
I guess that's it :-)
ant
</edit this page>
/me done
Please find below the text of a blog I just published. It is the logical
consequence following out of a chat of today. No, I don't want and I am
not going to discuss it - the decision was just based on what happened
today ...
What I would like to ask you if you do "new things" or start to add
bureaucratic rules etc. to a wiki: think about what consequences this
could have before you really do it. Often rules hinder more than they
can do good, in particular on small projects. And it.wikt is a fairly
small project.
Well normally Saturday is my day to work on another free project, yes,
you know it ... it will wait to next Saturday then.
Thanks for your understanding.
Best, Sabine
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
... or: when things get crazy and you have to draw a line
I still remember my first steps on it.wiktionary
<http://it.wiktionary.org> ... 16th of June 2004, yes, exactly three
years ago – the first term I edited was lunedì
<http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/luned%C3%AC> (Monday). The almost only
user that was seen online in these days was Paulo. He wanted to pull up
the project, but shortly after he saw that I took things seriously he
went away.
On 30th August 2004 the idea of an universal Wiktionary was born –
thanks to Gerard Meijssen who then created articles of languages with
loads of templates in there – well... the whole story would be too much
now, but thanks to some misunderstandings and a following very long
skype conversation today we have OmegaWiki <http://omegawiki.org>.
The Italian wiktionary was always subject to loads of spam. So at a
certain stage, I don't remember exactly when, I became adminship ...
well the only one then working there was me, so I was the only one who
could have done some clean-up.
Well the spam load got more and more and it became almost impossible for
me to do good work there ... so I started to ask for help ... some
registered, became admins, went away. Again I went ahead alone. If it
was not for the pywikipediabot <http://pywikipediabot.sourceforge.net/>
I would not have been able to add so many entries to it.wikipedia since
always the main work on it was to keep it clean from spam.
Last year then I became Bureaucrat ... well I was not really present
anymore, but I cared about a very particular user group that before that
started to edit it.wiktionary – most of them teens, great and wonderful
young people dedicating their free time to free projects. I am not
naming them one by one here, because I could forget someone and I don't
want to do this.
Now many of you will ask themselves why I did not immediately leave
Wiktionary when I was working on OmegaWiki (time ago called Ultimate
Wiktionary and then WiktionaryZ). Well ... it is a bit like with a baby
... you feed it, see it grow and then it goes, but in some way there is
still part of your life connected to it.
But back to our very particular user group: they are most of all teens,
partly very young, but dedicated ... and they did good. Of course not
always, but it's a wiki, right? So you do what you can when you can. I
admire them – they did great work. They gave part of their live to the
project. A good group of them became admins – they came while others who
today claim to be the only ones to be able to give rules to the project
then were present, but did not care at all when I said: hey guys, I
can't deal with all that anymore, I need help. No, I will never again
allow people to say that the youth of this country is no good – they are
great! You just need to trust them to do good and they will do it. They
put their heart in it.
Now today I was called through my discussion pag
<http://www.omegawiki.org/User_talk:SabineCretella>e
<http://www.omegawiki.org/User_talk:SabineCretella> on OmegaWiki since
someone asked for the desysop of one of the admins. He was accused of
being not active, not cleaning up spam and copyviolations ... ok, so I
went to the chat (yes, I have the log, but anyway it is not relevant for
me anymore ... so: it doesn't make a difference to publish it). So I
asked for several things, most of them not really so tragic, but a
desysop to one of the most valuable people at the time he joined ...
well, that was something to really talk about.
Now what I learnt is that some wikipedians (well, yes, the one asking
for desysop is quite new to wiktionary) assume that when you become and
admin you assume the responsibility to regularly clean up the wiki ...
well I would say: this is perceived completely wrong. If the admins were
paid and had to sign a contract, well then this is a different thing,
but they are not – they DONATE their free time. Ok, then I got the
following as the reason for "desysop": ... ma di aver lasciato
wikizionario senza policy, senza controllo copyviol, senza importare
decine di lemmi da altri progetti... (but to have left Wiktionary
without policy, without checking copyviol, whtout importing tens of
lemmas from other projects) .... UHMMMMMM ....
Is there a contract where it is written down that who is elected Admin
(well, ok, Sysop) or Bureaucrat has to do this and otherwise he gets
desysoped? That is plain stupid – against any sense of collaborative
projects, against any sense of humanity. Another nice sentence I got in
these answers was (fairly at the beginning): " invasa di bambini che
giocavano, può bastare come spiegazione?" (invaded by kids who were
playing, isn't this enough of an explanation?)
I can't believe it ... well maybe these teens were not perfect, but they
did their best, nobody is perfect. I would very much like to remind some
poeople of what the Wikimedia Foundation aims to do: provide free
knowledge to all people in the world in their language.
Now does this stop with the contents or are we here as well to transmit
what Free Content, Free Software, Wikis and Collaborative Projects are
to people, young and old, who are new to it. Also this is a kind of
education, of giving knowledge – this is social knowledge. Well it seems
that some do not like to invest in their future ... because instead of
starting a desysop procedure this person could have talked to them,
explaining them and if the explanation would have been logic enough they
probably would have agreed and co-operated. But now? How can people feel
good to work in such an environment? Does this really reflect the
community spirit? I would clearly say: no.
I am not willing to co-operate in future on it.wiktionary since
obviously under these circumstances I cannot be of any help. Therefore I
resign from my being Bureaucrat and Sysop on the Italian Wiktionary. It
is sad and part of my life is in that project ... I don't want to see it
die ... it would be too much. So: I am not going to go back there ...
well with two exeptions, one of which is: just my user page will contain
a link to this article and to the place where people can find me if they
want to talk to me – that's all.
One word to the new Amdins and Bureaucrats: according to what I learnt
from the chat today it seems you signed for some kind of a contract by
being elected Admin or Bureaucrat. I will have a look in one years time
and hopefully you will all be there happily doing what you are expected
to do ... well: it is a responsibility you took according to your new
policies ... so the project is waiting for you – people are expecting
you to do your job now.
There would be so much more to say .... please, if you work on other
projects: don't follow this example – it destroys the community. We need
to build community, bring over the spirit of free projects, of all free
projects. The teens of today will be among the best editors of tomorrow.
Never consider a kid, even a 5 year old, to be too young to do something
– they are all well able, if they have an interest and they want to do.
Trust them to do good. They need it – they are our very own future.
And to the editors who worked on it.wiktionary during my short period
... well during the last three years: thank you so much for your efforts
and help – and a very special thanks to our young ones – I find it
really special that you dedicate your free time to free projects ...
like I already said: you are our future and the day will come, if it is
not already here, that we will learn from you.
Thanks for your attention. And yes, of course: you will always find me
on the Neapolitan Wikipedia <http://nap.wikipedia.org> but mainly
working on the connection of various free projects in order to maximise
results with the donations in time people give us. Yes, we must value
each minute highly.
Thank you!!!
--
Posted By Sabine Cretella to words & more
<http://sabinecretella.blogspot.com/2007/06/resignation-as-bureaucrat-and-ad…>
at 6/16/2007 10:07:00 PM
Hello all,
I am writing to introduce a number of changes to #wikipedia. The aim
of this is to improve the channel's image and to make it more useful
for everyone. The changes are being initiated this afternoon (GMT) and
I hope to have them done pretty quickly.
1: New contacts
The channel will now be managed by Mark_Ryan and Dmcdevit (their IRC
nicks, as most of us probably know them). At the moment it's pretty ad
hoc and so we (the [[m:IRC Group Contacts]]) that it might be a good
idea to put someone and a deputy very clearly with the responsibility
so that we don't get "who do I go to for this...?" with the response
"not me" from everyone, a common online scenario, or so I've observed.
2: New guidelines/rules
Together with some community input (although of course more is
welcomed - it's a wiki, so let's take advantage of that) we have
written some new guidelines for user and operator conduct at
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_guidelines/wikipedia>. These are a
lot more enforcable than the old ones. The key thing is that operators
will try and resolve issues with words rather than powers whenever
possible.
3: New operators
We realised that the op list was becoming a bit messy. Additionally,
we're not sure that all operators are in agreement on the above
guidelines. We decided that it would be a bit pointless to ask them to
enforce guidelines they didn't support and do so using methods they
preferred not to use and so we have opted to clear out the access list
and start afresh. We welcome new applications from our experienced
operators to rejoin the team. On this note we are going to be a little
more formal on application for this, as only the contacts named above
will have the authority to manage the ops team. The key thing with all
these changes is to make #wikimedia-ops more useful, and to ensure
that operators use words rather than technological 'force' wherever
possible (as a rule of thumb, in the majority of cases where their
intervention is required). We aim to keep a list on meta of these ops
too to make it easier for people to get in touch with them.
You may be wondering if this applies to places other than #wikipedia:
not now, but we are considering rolling it out elsewhere if it proves
a success. Stay tuned!
Thank you for your support.
Yours,
Sean Whitton
Wikimedia IRC Group Contact
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sean_Whitton
--
—Sean Whitton (seanw)
<sean(a)silentflame.com>
http://seanwhitton.com/
Hello,
The Wikimedia Board Election Steering Committee invites all community
members to endorse candidates they support. Endorsements may be submitted
on meta now till next Saturday, 23:59 June 23, 2007.
Each qualified community member can submit up to three endorsements.
Please note several things:
- Only confirmed candidates are listed by Election Committee or its
delegate, so the list can be updated during the endorsements phase.
- You need an account on meta, not just the project that you are
qualified to vote under, unless you meet the criteria on meta too.
- Please link your meta user page and your home wiki page. Detailed
procedure can be found on the meta endorsement page.
All information is available on meta at:
On endorsements:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/Endorsements/en
On candidates each:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/Candidates/en
Election general: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/en
FAQ: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/FAQ/en
Questions about election are welcome at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2007/FAQ
Thanks to devoted volunteering translators, those pages are also
available in some languages other than English. We thank those
translators as well editors who have helped to disseminate the news
about this Election, including the latest sitenotice updates on several wikis.
Please consider forwarding to the project(s) you take part in
as well the mailing list(s) you belong to.
Sitenotice update and localization would also be appreciated.
Thank you for your attention, we look forward to your participation.
--
KIZU Naoko
Wikimedia Board Election Steering Committee, Chair
Candidate endorsements for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees are now open at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/Endorsements.
For the committee,
Philippe
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Tulsa, OK
philippebeaudette(a)gmail.com
And my support as well. These were up on the list of "proposed
changes" with zero consultation to the channel users, of which quite
a few are indeed against it.
The rules are FAR too draconian, and far too bureaucratic: it's
bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy.
I can understand no "off topic" chat, because of wikipedia-social,
even if I MASSIVELY disagree with it. But no discussion of individual
projects? What then? Everything is an individual project. Really,
what purpose does the channel have then?
-Swatjester/Dan Rosenthal
On Jun 16, 2007, at 4:06 PM, foundation-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org
wrote:
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 21:05:49 +0100
> From: Tim Starling <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] #wikipedia changes
> To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <f51fqt$le4$1(a)sea.gmane.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>
> Gurch wrote:
>> Sean has casually neglected to mention that "off-topic" discussion
>> is no
>> longer permitted in the channel. And by that I literally mean that
>> entering the channel and sending one-line greetings to a couple of
>> users
>> will get you told, in-channel and via a bombardment of PMs, to stop
>> talking off-topic.
>
> Let me add my support to this: off-topic chat is important and
> should be
> allowed. A variety of forums for off-topic chat between Wikipedians
> should
> be provided. Wikipedians are humans, not machines, and just like
> all other
> humans have a deep-seated need to socialise with their colleagues,
> and to
> discuss matters of shared importance.
>
> -- Tim Starling
Quoted from the archives listserv:
"Inspired by the listserv's Wikipedia discussion a few months back, I
began adding links to our finding aids, as well as occasional content,
to relevant Wikipedia articles. I followed the advice given on here the
list and created an account, and put a short note on my talk page
explaining what types of articles I would be contributing to.
When I checked my watchlist yesterday, I found a message asking me to
view this discussion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#Unusual_univer…
I, along with 2 or 3 other library/archives types, have been flagged as
a possible spammer for adding these links. Another contributor
attempted to explain how libraries are trying to reach out to users, how
links to actual primary sources are useful, etc., but the argument
doesn't seem to be getting through. I have not yet contributed to the
conversation but feel I should, and am trying to figure out the best
tack to take.
Does anyone know if this discussion has already taken place elsewhere
on Wikipedia? It seems unlikely that these users are the first to raise
the question, and if it's been discussed (and resolved?) elsewhere on
the site it would be nice to point them toward that conversation.
Otherwise I was thinking of pointing them to the D-Lib article by Ann
Lally and Carolyn Dunford
(http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may07/lally/05lally.html), which more fully
explains the reasons libraries and archives are doing this.
It seems that the trend of libraries and archives contributing to
Wikipedia is only going to keep growing, so people like this objector
are probably fighting a losing battle. But in the meantime, it would be
nice to be able to convince them that telling people about primary
sources related to the article topic is actually a useful exercise (not
to mention convincing them not to delete all the links they find from
archives).
Any advice from you Wikipedia-savvy types out there would be greatly
appreciated!
Julie Kerssen, Archivist
Seattle Municipal Archives"
My opinion: It is a legitimate aim of archives or libraries to hint
users to primary sources. We should be glad to get such contributions
which are in no way spam.
Dr. Klaus Graf
University archivist at the RWTH Aachen
Here is the background:
To publicize wikipedia, the Wiki philosophy etc. in Bangladesh, and to
create new users and help them in editing in Bengali and English
wikipedias, we have been conducting Workshop sessions as part of Open
Source Workshops.
Since many users are not familiar with editing, the workshop involves
showing them how to create an account, how to set up the unicode
Bengali rendering and typing tools, basic wiki markup etc. However, it
came to our notice that from a single IP address, no more than 6 new
accounts could be created.
Is there any setting that allows modification of this limit? I looked
up MediaWiki system messages, but didn't find the setting. We need
more people for Bengali wikipedia, but it is frustrating if our wiki
evangelism workshops fail to guide them properly.
Thanks in advance ...
Ragib
bn:User:Ragib
en:User:Ragib
--
Ragib Hasan
PhD Student
Dept of Computer Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
201 N Goodwin Avenue
Urbana IL 61801
Website:
http://www.ragibhasan.comhttp://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rhasan/www
Posted on behalf of the election committee,
Philippe
This page can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/Endorsements/en
_____________________________
==Endorsements==
===Introduction===
The purpose of the endorsement requirement is to try to make sure that the election only includes serious candidates. We need to do this because this election is being conducted for Wikimedia which includes many languages, and therefore we are trying to have every candidate's statement translated into as many languages as we can. This work is done by volunteer translators and can only be done only if the number of candidates is limited to a reasonable number.
The requirements for time-on-wiki and edit-count requirements help to make sure that only serious candidates participate, but the Elections Committee did not wish to raise these requirements too high because then some genuine candidates might be excluded, so we have added the requirement for endorsements. Because the Elections Committee believes that the endorsement requirement is important to the Board election process, we urge that reasonable requests and discussion concerning endorsements should '''not be considered a violation of any local anti-canvassing guidelines or norms.'''
===Criteria for Endorsement===
All candidates standing for election are required to obtain 12 endorsements for their candidacy. Criteria for endorsement are the same as criteria to vote: users endorsing must have 400 edits in any namespace or combination of namespaces on a single Wikimedia project and at least 3 months edit history prior to June 1, 2007. Candidates who have not received the required number of endorsements will not be allowed to stand for the election.
===Qualified candidates only===
Only qualified candidates may be submitted for endorsements. If you are not willing to be confirmed through the candidacy process (including verifying your identity to the Foundation, and meeting the minimum qualifications for candidacy), your name will not be submitted for endorsements.
===How to endorse===
In order to endorse a candidate, locate their endorsement section on the endorsements page [NOT YET AVAILABLE, ENDORSEMENTS HAVE NOT OPENED YET], and "sign" it using four tildes <nowiki>(~~~~)</nowiki>. You may also leave a very brief (up to '''100 characters''', roughly equivalent to 25 word in many languages) statement for the reason of your endorsement. Statements longer than 100 characters '''may be removed''' at the discretion of the [[Board elections/2007/Committee/en|Election Committee]], though the endorsement will remain valid. Endorsements will open 0:00 June 17, 2007 (UTC) and can only be withdrawn during the endorsement period, which closes 23:59 June 23, 2007 (UTC). After 23:59 June 23, 2007 (UTC) you may not submit or withdraw any endorsements. Endorsements may be removed '''by members of the election committee only''', and ''only if the endorser is found to not be a qualified voter in this election'' or the endorser has endorsed too many candidates in the election. In that case, all endorsements by that endorser will be withdrawn by the committee and the endorser notified so that they can re-submit endorsements up to the maximum number allowed.
===How many candidates may I endorse? I'm a candidate, how many others may I endorse?===
Each qualified voter may endorse up to 3 candidates for election. Candidates may only endorse two others (their endorsement of themselves is implied by virtue of their self-nomination). Candidates should not "sign" their own endorsement section, and their own endorsement will not count toward their required number of endorsements.
===When may I endorse a candidate?===
The endorsement period will begin 7 days after we begin accepting candidates for office. On the current timeline, you may begin endorsing on June 17, 2007, at 0:00UTC.
===A candidate received an invalid endorsement! What do I do?===
Please contact a member of the [[Board elections/2007/Committee/en|Election Committee]] who will investigate the claim.`