Dear all,
I'd like to thank Florence for bringing the issue up of the
wikicouncil, and I thank Erik for his views. I think that the
discussion has shifted by now so much, that we are no longer
discussing some council that represents the view of hte community
anymore, but we are discussing the very fundamentals of the Wikimedia
Foundation. I am sorry this will become a very long email, but I am
afraight I will need a lot of space to explain what I mean, and also
to go through the whole spectrum I'd like to.
I think Erik has a very valid point to state that we can't see the
Wikicouncil as a seperate structure, just another addendum to our
system of Board of Trustees, Advisory Board, Committees, Staff and
community. If you add a "power", an "authority" to a system, and
Newton's third law of motion comes into play. If you add such an
authority, this will most certainly have influence on the other
authorities present. Hence I do think that the question whether the
community representatives are still required is a valid one. However,
I do not quite agree yet that this also means that they have to
disappear.
But let's begin with the beginning. The Board of Trustees (Please note
the difference with the Board of Directors, I think nomen est omen
here) is the final and uttermost authority within the Wikimedia
Foundation. The Board of Trustees sets rules and guidelines for the
staff to work with, appoints the Executive Director, sets the strategy
for the Foundation, where to go etc, can write and rewrite the bylaws,
can appoint it's own members and can delegate authority to other
bodies (which it did for instance to the Executive Director).
Of course it *is* possible to change the bylaws in such a way, that
this final authority would be with another body. This is for instance
the case with a membership organization, an association. The final
authority is then with the members of that association, the General
Assemblee. However, the Wikimedia Foundation does not have any
membership any more, so I think that for the near future at least, and
I doubt it will change actually, we are bound to a
foundation-structure, with the Board of Trustees as the Final
Authority.
If we consider this, and we bare in mind that the main assets of the
Wikimedia Foundation are the Wikimedia Projects. And we consider that
these projects are mainly build around the communities that belong to
these projects. Especially if we consider how big of an influence the
Wikimedia Foundation has on the lives of these people, who have
dedicated a big part of their free time to these projects, I think it
would only be fair to let these people have a say, even a big say in
the final authority of this Wikimedia Foundation. But of course it is
even more important that these people have a large influence on the
projects, but also have a lot of knowledge about the core mission of
the Wikimedia Foundation, and how to get there. They might very well
know how the projects should run the best. So I think that it is
obvious that these people should have a way to determine at least
partially how the Final Authority functions. The most logical way
would be to let them determine partially who will be a member of that
Final Authority, the Board of Trustees.
This has already become costom, and the community elects yearly board
members. I think this is a way to let the communities have a say in
the membership of the Board of Trustees. However, iit is true of
course that it might be better for the Foundation as a foundation to
have also people with certain expertise in this Board. They can for
instance make sure that the Board pays attention to the right advice,
that the right points are put on the agenda, and that control is
practiced when needed.
The past history showed us that people with this type of expertise
will hardly be elected by the communities, partially because they are
simply not available as candidates from within the communities. This
makes it reasonable to have these people appointed as board members
from outside the wikimedia communities. Actually, there are even more
pro's to have people from outside the community in the Board. These
board members might bring in fresh views on the way things are going,
they might bring in contacts with other organizations, they might
forceus to look outside our traditional scope and might also point us
to opportunities we'd never have thought of ourselves.
I think that both community members and non-community member experts
are very much welcome in the Board. Both have their advantages, and I
think personally that about 50/50 would be an ideal mix for this. This
because that will make it sure that both parties will always have to
try to convice the other side of their right, to get a majority on
their side if it is about very fundamental questions.
Then I hear people thinking, OK, very nice now, we thought about the
Board of Trustees. But what about these other authorities? Well, I
think we all agree on the staff. The staff falls under the authority
of the Executive Director. The executive Director is appointed by the
board, and all other staff is hired within the lines the Board set out
by the ED. No doubt about that I think.
But now we come to the advises. Because a board can never consist of
enough experts to cover every field, I do not think a Board should
even want that, except the very fundamentals, an Advisory Board has
been set up. The advisory Board consists of experts from the Open
Source communities, but not directly from Wikimedia people. The
Advisory Board has, as the name indicates, an advisory function.
Because of the broad spectrum of members, it is likely that there will
always be a kinda expert on board to give advice if the board asks or
needs that. However, it does disturb the balance between the
volunteers and professionals a bit.
Since the creation of the Advisory Board, or even before that
actually, people have been calling for a Wikicouncil. A council which
is different for everybody. Some people would like to see it as an
advisory board counterweight for volunteers, A body that could give
the Board of Trustees advice "from the community". However, there are
also people who would like to see the WC as some kind of tribunal for
the Wikimedia Communities, which would handle disputes, would be an
uberarbcom or could be some type of parliament deciding which policy
is wikimedia wide.
I think we have to be very carefull to share these responsibilities
with one single body, because it will require a different type of
members. For the function of advising, we would need people who can
feel a bit what is good, who are preferrably into organizational
stuff, are prepared to read a lot, and have a good look for the
future, and can form an opinion on where the foundation should go, and
what the implications would be.
For a court-like function, we would require mainly neutral people,
people who can be some type of arbitrator. People who can take a case
solely, and digg into it, form a judgement, and defend that. They
should mainly have experience in how communities work, and how the
relationships between the different communities should be.
For the last possible function, the policy stuff, we would need some
type of parliament-like council. It would require the members to look
at the mid-term effects, and would require very little activity. The
members should mainly be discussing details and specific regulations,
how they should be formulated etc.
These three types of people are not always compatible, and I would not
think it very wise to have these three functions merged together in
one body. For the arbcom-like part, I think it would for instance be
much better to have a non-WMF body, a meta-arbcom for instance, that
could make decisions if needed. There have been plans for that, but
never in a final state.
What the Wikimedia Foundation needs here, is an advisory body that
consists of community members, that can probably represent more or
less the wish of the community, and which can have a say about the
issues the Board of Trustees is about, the strategy etc. This would be
a Wikimedia Council that would consist of somewhat more members the
the Board probably, to make representation possible, and that would be
similar to the Advisory Board.
However, as might be clear by now, this does not mean that the
community representatives are no longer needed in the Board of
Trustees. Because there is quite a difference between representatives
in the Final Authority, and an Advisory Council.
Finally, I'd like to make a small mention about the size of the Board
of Trustees. To make the external experts useful, there will have to
be a few of them. Only one or two will not do. I think three external
experts, three community members and Jimmy would be ideal. This would
be a compromise between having a community majority in the board,
having sufficient external experts and different community
representatives, and keeping the board small enough to have real life
meetups to talk about the strategy. At the same time, Jimmy could
promise again that if all community representatives agree on
something, he will vote with them. (like he did with Angela/Florence
in the past. Actually I am not sure if he still stands with that
promise)
To summarize: It is necessary to have both community representatives
and external experts with their specific skills in the Board of
Trustees. A Wikimedia Council should be comparable with the current
Advisory Board, but then for volunteers. It is not necessary to have
all experts in the Board of Trustees, but they might very well be in
the Advisory Board too. It might though be wise for the Board of
Trustees to involve these experts then somewhat more actively.
I hope you did not loose track, and I did not forget stuff here. Sorry
again for the veyr long email.
Best regards,
Lodewijk