Yes, we do not need the same old "professionals" telling us how to create a community org.
----- Original Message ----
From: Durova <nadezhda.durova(a)gmail.com>
To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 12:26:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Provisional Volunteer Council - proposal
Now, if I'm wrong and some of the PVC members have experience in
non-profit governance and incorporation, please allow them to step
forward and inform us. Up until now, I see _no_ qualifications other
than being a suck up.
-Chad
I am a former board member of the Columbia University Alumni Association of
Southern California. Another Wikimedian proposed my name and I wasn't aware
it was under consideration until Effe contacted me to see whether I'd be
interested.
I don't know whether "assume good faith" applies to this list formally, but
it would be a good idea to follow it.
-Durova
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Thanks,
Pharos
Hi all,
First of all, thanks a lot to the people that have given their constructive
feedback when there was asked for, I am glad you did not wait until the
resolution was handed in, but joined the process when there was still plenty
of time. </irony>
In the risk of repeating myself and others, I will try to explain why the
resolution is as it is, with some proposals to take away the worst pain with
some.
As you can read in the threads that extensively discussed this topic a few
weeks ago, on this very same list, there has been a call for a volunteer
platform, a council (back then mainly called "wikicouncil", as you might
remember) for years. In that time, I heard, both in public discussions, but
also in private conversations, many times words among the setting of "oh, a
volunteer council would have been very useful here". This is confirmed by
the fact that quite some people put quite a lot effort in writing proposals,
discussing models, to come to a fair representation etc.
The exact reasons why people think a Volunteer Council (the real thing) is
required, differs from person to person. Some reasons are amongst the lines
that the Board could take care of less community issues that way, so that
they can attract more experts, some think it would be good because it could
give a direction to some commonly accepted community policies, some think it
would be better because it would be less of a "who shouts the hardest, gets
it's way". Because if we are honest, even though in the past this list might
have served as a soundboard for opinions, we can hardly say any more that it
is still the case on many issues. A few people tend to dominate several
discussions, and the constructive behavior is in some topics very low. When
the Board members try to get feedback on issues, they often get no or no
useful respons (probably Florence can (dis)confirm my interpretation of
this). This is why I think it is good that the Board establishes a Volunteer
Council in general.
However, in the discussions on this topic, both in public as in private,
every time I found that there was hardly an easy to reach a compromise. To
take an example, me and millosh had/have very different ideas on the aspect
of representivity, and what purpose such a council should practically serve.
That is not bad, but it clearly shows that there is a need for more
discussion, but probably in a more organized way. Because as everybody can
check on meta and in the mailing list archives, the topic comes up, fades
away after a month or so, and several months later, it returns, and starts
all over again. This is why I think that it is not possible to define
exactly how the Volunteer Council should look like.
In the resolution, you will first find an introduction, why it is good to
let the community have a council like this. Then you will find the creation
of the VC. Yes, this is intentionally a VC, and not PVC yet. This VC
however, will be "empty" for the moment, but it does show the intention, and
sets the boundaries between which the PVC will have to formulate their
proposal. There are not many details in it of course, as those are still to
be determined. Mike has a valid point with respect to point 2.3. The exact
wording of this might indeed be changed to something along the lines of
"advising on changes (...) and discussing these with the volunteer
communities". Whether the final VC will have the "power" to
approve/disapprove these, is indeed a point of discussion, and should not be
fixated yet.
Then there might indeed be an unexpected transition in point 4, where we
speak about a PVC. It might have been good/better to have a line between 3
and 4 to define the existance of the PVC first, something along the lines of
"To come to a effective Volunteer Council, the Board creates a Provisional
Volunteer Council, which..." This effectively does not change much to the
resolution, but I see no major objection against this change of wording.
I hope this clarifies things up a bit, and takes away a few of the concerns
that have recently been expressed.
With kind regards,
Lodewijk
On the Commons list, there is a thread about creating IDs for photographers to help with admission to museums for photos. How would I get Foundation permission to use the WMF logo on the cards?
---------------------------------
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The Provisional Volunteer Council is rather controversial, so I
suggest taking the essential idea and stripping out the bureaucracy.
An unofficial working group, consisting of a group of interested
Wikimedians, will work efficiently together on hammering out the
details of a Volunteer Council. This group will not submit
recommendations directly to the board, but will present a complete
proposal to the community. Then the discussion on Foundation-l will
more productively concern relatively minor tweaks, rather than
arguments over principles and vague what-ifs.
Will this be less controversial?
--
Yours cordially,
Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
This group has no power over the board! We should use the best experts we have to develop community governance, those who are familiar with the community.
----- Original Message ----
From: Dan Rosenthal <swatjester(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 1:38:20 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Provisional Volunteer Council - proposal
Really? We don't? Yet we cry out for them when we want professionals
on the board of trustees. A group theoretically with power over the
board should not be carefully formed with expert advice? Perhaps the
professionals are telling you how to create a community organization
because that's what they have experience in and they know the legal,
structural, and personal difficulties in developing such a group, that
you don't. But what do they know, we know better, right? We don't need
them to tell us what to do, right?
-Dan
On Apr 2, 2008, at 3:44 PM, Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
> Yes, we do not need the same old "professionals" telling us how to
> create a community org.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Durova <nadezhda.durova(a)gmail.com>
> To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 12:26:12 PM
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Provisional Volunteer Council - proposal
>
> Now, if I'm wrong and some of the PVC members have experience in
> non-profit governance and incorporation, please allow them to step
> forward and inform us. Up until now, I see _no_ qualifications other
> than being a suck up.
>
> -Chad
>
> I am a former board member of the Columbia University Alumni
> Association of
> Southern California. Another Wikimedian proposed my name and I
> wasn't aware
> it was under consideration until Effe contacted me to see whether
> I'd be
> interested.
>
> I don't know whether "assume good faith" applies to this list
> formally, but
> it would be a good idea to follow it.
>
> -Durova
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
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> Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.
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Never say never ;) There is nothing barring Am-wiki.
----- Original Message ----
From: Jason Safoutin <jason.safoutin(a)wikinewsie.org>
To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 12:57:02 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] A question for the Wikimania jury
foundation-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
> If you're interested in establishing a more regular North American or
> Europe-wide conference the for years when we don't have Wikimania in the
> area, then great! We can certainly use more local organization of this
> sort in the US, and at the Europe-wide level in addition to the numerous
> country-wide groups there.
>
> - -- brion vibber
>
Well that would be nice but would WMF pay for all these conferences? Who
would organize them other than one person? This isn't a task for one or
two people much less someone with no experience in doing so.
Last I heard the "Conference of The America's" is not happening. Why?
Not too sure why but if I cannot afford a trip to Buenos Aires or Egypt
I certainly cannot afford to make my own conference.
Jason Safoutin (DragonFire1024)
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Yes, to finally create a community structure.
----- Original Message ----
From: Chad <innocentkiller(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 12:41:09 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Provisional Volunteer Council - proposal sent to the Board
Does the name really matter?
You can call the staff Grand Pubahs and the board
the Great Potentates if you like, but it doesn't change
their role.
-Chad
On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Geoffrey Plourde <geo.plrd(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> Or the Working Group on Community Relations?
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111(a)gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 7:02:58 AM
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Provisional Volunteer Council - proposal sent to the Board
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 2:48 AM, Geoffrey Plourde <geo.plrd(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> > What if this Volunteer Council has no real offficial standing and solely regulates the Community? No tax problems, right?
>
> This is more along the lines of what I've been thinking about. If the
> VC is a community-based structure, and does not change the governance
> structure of the foundation, it's a moot point entirely. Th VC
> shouldn't change the structure of the foundation any more then the
> chapcom or the languages subcommittee or any other advisory committee
> do. If terminology is a problem, perhaps we should rename it to
>
> something more benign, like "volunteer committee", or "community
> advisory board" or something.
>
> --Andrew Whitworth
>
>
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>
>
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>
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Or the Working Group on Community Relations?
----- Original Message ----
From: Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 7:02:58 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Provisional Volunteer Council - proposal sent to the Board
On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 2:48 AM, Geoffrey Plourde <geo.plrd(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> What if this Volunteer Council has no real offficial standing and solely regulates the Community? No tax problems, right?
This is more along the lines of what I've been thinking about. If the
VC is a community-based structure, and does not change the governance
structure of the foundation, it's a moot point entirely. Th VC
shouldn't change the structure of the foundation any more then the
chapcom or the languages subcommittee or any other advisory committee
do. If terminology is a problem, perhaps we should rename it to
something more benign, like "volunteer committee", or "community
advisory board" or something.
--Andrew Whitworth
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Just a quick question -- has anyone here conducted a legal review of
the proposal for a Volunteer Council (including review of the Florida
"Corporations Not For Profit" statute)?
--Mike