Wikimedia-l April 2008

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

132 participants
229 discussions

[Foundation-l] New wiki creation
by Erik Moeller 04 May '08

04 May '08

We're still waiting for the FDL 1.3. Since there's been no resolution within the timeframe we hoped for, we're going to re-allow the creation of new Wikimedia wikis. To make sure that we can safely transition to CC-BY-SA, we're going to dual-license them under CC-BY-SA 3.0: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode We may remove this dual-licensing clause later, depending on what the community decides with regard to licensing of existing and new wikis based on the options that the FDL 1.3 will provide. This dual-licensing of new wikis is purely intended to make sure that we have the _option_ to transition these wikis to CC-BY-SA 3.0 (or later) if we choose to. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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[Foundation-l] The fallacy of power
by Erik Moeller 02 May '08

02 May '08

The Board restructuring appears to have triggered discontent among some community members. This seems to be in part motivated by the fact that previous community propositions for the Board to encourage the exploration of a Volunteer Council by means of a Board resolution were declined, while at the same time, the structure of the Board was changed to designate the responsibility for two seats to the chapters. Another part of the dissatisfaction appears to be rooted in the perceived lack of public communication about these changes. I was not part of the Board meeting in San Francisco, and I'm not speaking from an organizational position, nor am I writing this on the basis of inside information about the meeting. Based on my own experience as a former member of the Board and a longtime member of this community, I would like to offer an alternative interpretation for what I think is happening here. My own understanding of this decision is exactly the opposite of what some people seem to interpret it as: The Board has, through its decision not to create a Volunteer Council but to encourage community exploration of self-governance, made an explicit statement that it is up to volunteers working on the projects to explore and propose processes to decide what new projects & languages to create, what decision making processes to use to resolve disputes, what major software changes to enable, and so forth. The Board and the organization will be minimally prescriptive in these processes. This is in the organization's interest, as the top-down method of implementing decisions affecting the projects doesn't scale well. I interpret it as encouragement to "be bold" and develop scalable volunteer-driven processes on all levels. The Board, through its commitment to bringing in new Board members with expertise in relevant legal, accounting, fundraising and governance issues, has made it clear that it understands its governance obligation and its fiduciary responsibility towards a tax-exempt non-profit organization. Through its commitment to bringing in chapters into the governance process, it has made an important attempt to share lessons and recognize the chapters' role in the international Wikimedia movement. Through its clear, continuing commitment to community membership on the Board, it has stated its long term view that, in order to guard and nurture our values, we need individuals on the Board who live and breathe these values. So, what I get from this is: * The Board has given the community a clear "go" signal to explore models of self-governance and decision making processes, be they councils, direct voting, committees, or other processes which work. This allows for the rapid, parallel evolution of mechanisms of self-governance and a "survival of the fittest" decision-making processes. That's a very real alternative to a top-down decision to explore one particular model (Volunteer Council) and, arguably, preferable. * The Board has attempted to develop a reasonable balance in its own composition to address the challenge of running a multi-million dollar non-profit organization while preserving the key values that allow it to exist. But, the Board is _meant_ to not get involved in daily operations, it is _meant_ to not try to make project-level decisions that cannot scale, it is _meant_ to structure itself so that it can competently hire an Executive Director when needed, so that it can evaluate her performance, so that it can raise funds for the organization, so that it can make sure that we are in compliance with the legal requirements for organizations like ours. You will not get a Board that can do that by simply picking the people with the highest edit counts and giving them responsibility over the organization. That's a way to create an organization that has good intentions but which cannot necessarily balance its books or hire competent staff. In other words, it's a way to create purely a social movement and not an organizational support layer for one. But WMF is the support layer: We all are the social movement. Our Board of Trustees is present on wikis, IRC and mailing lists; it's electronically reachable and responsive in ways I would posit no other Board of Trustees of a similarly large organization is. This, and the absence of other decision making bodies, creates a fallacy of power: the false belief that, because the Board exists and participates, it represents an operationally involved ruling body _for_ the social movement, rather than an organizational body for _corporate oversight_. But, really, the primary function of the Board is to sustain and protect the organization. And, if anything, these Board meeting outcomes are the Board's acknowledgment of the fact that the true power rests with the community volunteers, and that the Board should not interfere with community processes. You can disagree, but the easiest way to prove this point is to look at the decisions the Board actually makes: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions The most recent Board resolution that was highly project-facing was the one on our content licensing, from December 2007: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:License_update And this resolution explicitly called for a community decision making process. Other recent resolutions include: * Approval of chapter organizations * Approval of financial statements * Approval of a credit card usage policy * Approval of the job description for the Executive Director * Update of the gift policy What relevance do these decisions have to your daily project work? In contrast, what relevance do they have to WMF as an organization (rather than a social movement)? What qualifications do you need to vote on such resolutions? I believe that the proposed Board structure is a very reasonable response to these questions. It's no coincidence or conspiracy that the current Board, made primarily of respected and trusted community volunteers, has reached the conclusions it has. It's easy to direct negative energy towards listservs and wiki pages. It's much harder to direct positive energy towards solutions that actually work. It seems to me that volunteer energy would now be most usefully guided towards developing mechanisms of self-governance, per project and across projects. Decision-making bodies and processes have arisen, on a small scale, without any Board involvement. The challenge is to scale them up. And it's a challenge to all of us. Erik

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[Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring
by Jan-Bart de Vreede 02 May '08

02 May '08

Dear all, As most of you know, the Board of Trustees met at the Foundation's new San Francisco headquarters a few weeks ago. At that meeting, we talked about how best to represent the full array of community members, and how best to provide professional oversight for the work of the staff. As a result of those conversations, we're announcing today some changes to the makeup of the Board, and to the Board member appointment process. We think these are positive changes that will help the Board to safeguard the Wikimedia Foundation's ability to fulfill the mission. We hope you agree. I've laid out the most significant changes below. We are increasing the number of Board positions to 10 overall, comprised of the following: * Three seats elected by you, the community * Two seats to be selected by the chapters * One Board-appointed 'Community Founder' seat * Four 'specific expertise' seats, also to be Board-appointed The most significant change here is probably the addition of two chapters-selected seats. This has been under consideration for a long time, and we are glad to finally be implementing it. We want to acknowledge that the chapters are an important player in the fulfillment of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission, and that they therefore deserve a voice in the governance of the Foundation. Please note that the two chapters-selected seats are not intended to represent the interests of the chapters vis-a-vis the Foundation. The chapters are being asked to pick trustees who they feel will represent the interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, and help it fulfill its mission as well as it possibly can. We are also specifically naming four seats as designated for “specific expertise.” The goal here is to add skills and capacities to the current board. For example, we might decide to actively recruit board members with deep non-profit governance experience, or fundraising expertise. We are also formalizing Jimmy's role as Community Founder, by designating a seat for that purpose. These changes are effective today, but we will not be filling all of these roles immediately. It will take some time -likely several months to a year- before all the changes are implemented. Here's how that will work: Nothing changes immediately. The current Board membership will stay in place, and will fill out the new roles/positions as follows: * Three community-elected seats: - Florence Devouard (seat up for election July 2008; then, next up for election July 2009) - Kat Walsh (seat up for election July 2009) - Frieda Brioschi (seat up for election July 2009) * Chapter-selected seats: - Domas Mituzas, Executive Secretary (to be held until chapters make their own appointment) - Michael Snow (to be held until chapters make their own appointment) * Community Founder - Jimmy Wales (term expires December 31, 2008) * 'Specific expertise' seats - Jan-Bart de Vreede , Vice Chair (term expires December 31, 2008) - Stuart West, Treasurer (term expires December 31, 2008) - Vacant (term expires December 31, 2008) - Vacant (term expires December 31, 2008) The 'specific expertise' seats, and community founder seat, will be re-appointed starting in January 2009. The chapter-selected seats will be filled as soon as the Chapters appoint representatives. Domas Mituzas and Michael Snow, who were originally asked to sit on the Board until June 2008, will be extended in their seats until the chapters make their choices. Both the community-elected and chapter-selected seats have a duration of two years. These seats will expire in alternating years, which means that community-elected seats will be up for renewal on the July 1st 2009, 2011, and 2013, and chapter-selected seats will be up for renewal on July 1st 2010, 2012, 2014, etc. In the short-term, the next significant date for the Board is the election for the one seat, which expires in July of this year. This is the seat currently held by Florence Devouard. The term of that seat will last for one year, to July 2009. This is a shorter term than normal, but the intent is to have the three community-elected seats all line up to one consistent election date in July 2009. You will hear more later today from the elections committee. Once all of these positions are in place, we trust we will have built a strong Board that is well-positioned to safeguard the Wikimedia Foundation's mission, and our ability to fulfill it. We hope you agree. We know this is all pretty complicated and hard to follow, so we asked Jay Walsh, head of communications, to put together an FAQ and a “board makeup” graphic, intended to help make it more understandable. He'll be posting both on the Foundation wiki in about an hour. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board Thanks, Jan-Bart de Vreede Vice-chair, Board of Trustees

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[Foundation-l] Election rules modification regarding suffrage issues raised on this list
by Philippe Beaudette 01 May '08

01 May '08

Based on concerns raised on this list, the elections committee is changing the requirement from "at least 50 edits between April 1, 2008 and June 1, 2008" to "at least 50 edits between January 1, 2008 and June 1, 2008". We hope this will avoid disenfranchising active community members, while ensuring that longtime-inactive users cannot vote on this important current issue. The relevant election pages will be updated within the next several hours. Thank you for your considered feedback and input into this very important decision. For the election committee, Philippe ________________________ Philippe Beaudette Tulsa, OK http://www.freerice.com - play the game, feed a hungry person.

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Re: [Foundation-l] The fallacy of power
by Mike Godwin 01 May '08

01 May '08

Samuel writes: > What is the scope of these responsibilities? I have heard the term > "fiduciary responsibilities" used in Wikimedia circles as a way of > shutting > down conversation -- thought not for some time -- and as a result I > would > appreciate a proper definition. See for example <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiduciary_duty>. > Trusting someone to give good topical advice and trusting them to > make good > long-term decisions and remain true to their principles are rather > different. Well, sure, but that's why the law imposes fiduciary responsibilities on the Board of Trustees (even the appointed ones). The checks and balances you are concerned about are built into the law itself. > As long as we are using extra quotation marks... the Board is in a > position > to attempt to "optimize fundraising" by taking on advertising, tying > the > brand[s] to specific companies, or starting a > censorship^B^B^Bcontent safety > campaign to make the sites more friendly to potential donor groups. The Board has always been in the position of taking action that would destroy the community responsible for making the projects as vital and rich as they are. No Board has been stupid enough to do so, and I can't see how the restructured Board would suddenly become stupid enough to do so. > Of particular concern to me is that there is no mechanism for passing > extraordinary measures or referenda, no matter how overwhelmingly > desired by > the collected Wikimedians; and that there is no trusted eminence > that could > veto board actions in extraordinary circumstances. A simple > majority of > board members could alter the bylaws however they saw fit, and then do > anything at all. This has always been the case. Nothing about the restructuring changes this. > You have been around for longer than I have, but I have seen my > share of > good governing bodies that fail to prepare for a future in which > they are > replaced by not-so-good boards, and regret the results. The way to > avoid > this is to prepare checks and balances, not to give everyone the > benefit of > the doubt until something goes wrong -- by when it is often too late. As a constitutional lawyer, I think about "checks and balances" as a feature of government, not of a nonprofit corporate board. In a government, there are strong arguments for checks and balances (this is a primary topic in the Federalist Papers), but with corporate governance, the checks are primarily external ones (corporate law, the legal system, etc.). If you want to paralyze a non-profit (and almost all of my entire career has been working for nonprofits), by all means ensure that every single action the entity takes is subject to a referendum. > You suggested no limits on what is acceptable for the board to carry > out > without explicit notice. Is there a legal restriction that I'm overlooking? Please advise. The Board certainly has to operate within the constraints of the law. > By this reasoning, a future board, after a general > discusion about structural change, could alter its composition by > 30%, with > an arbitrary reshuffling of community, external, voted and appointed > seats. There's a difference between "could" and "is likely to." No one can make policy based on the worst imaginable cases. You have to assume most people will act well most of the time, or this whole enterprise collapses. --Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Searchability of non-mainspace pages
by Jimmy Wales 01 May '08

01 May '08

Charles Matthews wrote: > Well, maybe we should discuss the downside first. Not having project > pages on Google would certainly impede my work. You know, some of us > still develop articles, and so on. This is a valid point, and I think it needs to be addressed in a couple of ways: 1. First, narrowing the scope of the noindex request. 2. Second, finding out what it would take to improve internal search to make it more usable for people developing articles and so on. > Ah, but I do. Isn't it a better solution to blank some AfDs, than to > say "the mission has to come second"? After all, really negative > material should be off the site, not just harder to find. I would support that for some kinds of pages, blanking should be the default upon the close of discussion. ----- I wonder how hard it would be to have a technical change whereby articles could be tagged with a {{noindex}} template which would set the meta headers appropriately. This could be liberally applied to project pages that may be magnets for bad behavior. And then user space could be the only thing removed from google by default. Thoughts? --Jimbo

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[Foundation-l] [OT] Top posting
by Delphine Ménard 01 May '08

01 May '08

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Top-posting For what it's worth, I would find it productive if some participants on this list thought about sometimes *not* top-posting, but trimming the message they're responding to so as to make it clear *what* and *who* it is they're responding to. In threads with 50+ emails and delayed responses, it makes reading much easier. Thank you, Delphine -- ~notafish http://blog.notanendive.org NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring
by Jason Safoutin 01 May '08

01 May '08

Domas Mituzas wrote: > >> Out of curiosity: If the entire Board and staff were put up to a >> public vote >> across /all/ projects (assuming good representation could be assured), >> I wonder how many of them would be with the WMF at the end of the day. >> > > Unfortunately, not all aspects of running an organization are a > popularity contest. > > Fortunately for us, the board is a popularity contest. And whether the board likes it or not, we elected you. And those who were appointed have the same obligation as those elected and can face the same criticism as such. If we, the communities see you guys are not doing your job in the best interest of Wikimedia, then we have the right to say we think you guys should resign. You are the board of trustees. And as I see it, the board has done nothing but abuse the word 'trustee'. They have made, as a whole, no attempt to get any community input on anything from this, to Kaltura. The constantly leave the communities out of the loop and make decisions with total disregard as to what we might think. From what I see, the only board member doing anything around here, or making the slightest attempt to communicate with the communities as much as possible, is Florence. And what a surprise, her seat is up for grabs. Like it or not board, you work for us. Not for yourselves. I think this is a wake up call and I think now the communities are sick of it, and not going totake it anymore. Sorry if this sound rude or confrontational, but it seems that this is the only way to get anyone's attention, who is on the board these days as they seem to only pay attention to whats said on here and on meta. So that being the case, it gets increasingly frustrating to have to be civil and not get anything in return. So please see where I am coming from, and the others who feel the same way. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Community_petition Jason Safoutin (DragonFire1024)

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[Foundation-l] Searchability of non-mainspace pages
by Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) 01 May '08

01 May '08

My attention has repeatedly been drawn to serious negative effects created by the ability of Google and other searches to search and display pages outside the mainspace, including pages such as XfD's, DRV's, AN/I discussions, and the like. Some of these discussions have taken place on-wiki and others, I am advised, on discussion of OTRS tickets posted by affected persons. Given the visibility of Wikipedia results on Google and other searches, and consistent with the overall intent of [[WP:BLP]] on En-Wiki (and what I hope is its equivalent on other projects), we have a serious responsibility to ensure that the overall effect of Wikipedia content is a responsible one. This includes eliminating the likelihood that the first hit on the Google search for a living person is not (for example) a deletion discussion on how insignificant and non-notable that individual is, or a page discussing the ban of that individual (who might be a minor, for example) who chose to edit Wikipedia under his or her real name and made some mistakes in doing so and was criticized or even banned as a result. There has been discussion from time to time about implementing a technical modification such that only mainspace pages (or such other pages as the community might consciously choose) would be visible to searches. In view of the number of concerns raised about the current situation where everything is searchable, it seems to me that the necessary changes should be developed and implemented quickly. The main argument in opposition to this change that I have seen is that the internal Wikipedia search capability is not as strong as the external search engines, so that it is desirable that the ability to conduct a complete external search be maintained. I know that I have sometimes found it useful to be able to search all spaces within the site in, for example, looking for precedent cases while drafting EnWiki arbitration decisions. It therefore would probably be desirable to upgrade our internal search capability. However, in view of the number of third parties affected by the current practice, I do not believe that implementation of the non-search capability should await this development. As a matter of disclosure, although I have raised this concern in passing on prior occasions, my attention has been focused (this is something of an understatement) on it again by an ongoing and extremely unpleasant thread concerning me on the Wikipedia Review site. I understand that my concerns in this matter might be discounted for that reason. Nonetheless, they are sincere, of long standing, and I urge that they receive priority attention. Newyorkbrad

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image dumps, html dumps, and static copies missing
by Mike Godwin 30 Apr '08

30 Apr '08

Phoebe Ayers writes: > Arguably, however, providing solid dumps is the backbone for getting > most of this research getting done, since having project data to > manipulate is necessary for many possible studies. So not only are > regular dumps critical for fulfilling our free content > responsibilities and mission, but they are critical for future > research. Which is to say: we all really want to see them happen! And > agreed, the Foundation is the only one that can make it so (even > though it's not an easy task); and this is the sort of infrastructure > task that should be absolutely core. We at the Foundation want to see this happen too. We regard increasing the frequency and reliability of the dumps as mission-critical, and we're working toward that goal. --Mike

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Wikimedia-l April 2008