Hoi,
It can be argued safely that Domas is a developer. He is also on the board.
Thanks,
GerardM
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 11:54 AM, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly(a)pobox.com> wrote:
> At 15:17 -0400 28/4/08, David Goodman wrote:
> >The staff of this particular project is indeed working in order to
> >facilitate the work of the editors in the project. There is no other
> >reason for their role. This facilitation is extremely important, and i
> >do not want to appear to downgrade it. We do need some monetary and
> >legal and technical support and coordination, and, at our size, it
> >cannot be in practice done on a purely voluntary basis, but requires a
> >few dedicated professionals.
> >
> >The board, however, are not the staff. They exists as a legally
> >responsible body to make the official formulation of policy--for the
> >benefit of the project. The project itself is the work of the editors
> >(in the broad sense, including the programmers and so forth). To the
> >extent they do so in accordance with the aims of the people actually
> >working on the project, they do it correctly., The best people to
> >determine this are not themselves, but those who are doing the actual
> >work and development.
> >
> >
>
> So, is there seat on the board for the programmers who maintain Mediawiki?
>
> Gordo
>
> --
> "Think Feynman"/////////
> http://pobox.com/~gordo/ <http://pobox.com/%7Egordo/>
> gordon.joly(a)pobox.com///
>
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>
Geoffrey writes:
> Mike, the new change has made it?so a majority is unelected.
The Bylaws don't require that a majority be elected. They require that
a majority come from the community, as defined by the Board. In
effect, the Board has now expanded the definition of "community" to
include both the chapters and Jimmy. If Jimmy chooses to serve, the
community seats dominate 6-4. If Jimmy leaves or is not reappointed,
the community seats have a 5-to-4 majority.
And, of course, it is entirely possible that community members may be
appointed to the expertise spots, as someone else has pointed out.
--Mike
Thats lovely for anyone not in the US. Unfortunately, any US chapters are on hold until ChapCom defines the terms.
----- Original Message ----
From: Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 2:35:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring
David Goodman wrote:
> 3) make plain our total repugnance for officers of the
> foundation who talk about the people who create Wikipedia as
> not having or deserving the right to the running of the
> project.
The people who create Wikipedia *do* run the projects, that is,
they run Wikipedia. What they don't run is the Foundation or its
board of trustees. I'm surprised when I hear people on this list
suggest that the community can only get its voice heard every two
years, when we're in fact editing Wikipedia every day, including
the wiki pages that constitute its policies. The volunteer
community also writes the software that is used.
> 4) "Self-selecting fiduciary boards" are a well established way
> of preventing organisations from reflecting the will of their
> actual constituency.
This was discussed already in 2003 when Jimbo set up the Wikimedia
Foundation as it now is, rather than as a "democratic" membership
organization. At the time, the opposition was voiced most
strongly among the Germans, and one year later they founded their
"verein" (membership association), Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.,
that became the role model for how to organize a chapter.
However, still today WM-DE has only about 400 members, which is
far fewer than the volunteer community in that country. The idea,
that all Wikipedia contributors should want to have a say in a
democratic fashion, turned out to be little more than a beautiful
dream. There are some who want this, and they are free to join
the chapter, but they are a minority. Shock and horror, even when
they are given the opportunity, most contributors seem happy to
have no formal influence at all. This could be taken as an
indication that Jimbo was right in 2003. If you claim that people
feel left out on a large scale, this is something you need to
prove. Because Germany is proof of the opposite.
Most countries have yet to organize chapters. Nothing stops them
from doing so, as far as I know, but they don't seem to be in any
hurry. Instead of getting themselves organized, some people cry
out on this list that the WMF board of trustees should do the work
for them. This is a great shame and a waste of time. Democracy
can only grow from below, never be given from above.
Board elections, volunteer councils, chapter seats, or not. They
are only decoration. The WMF was incorporated as something else
than a membership organization. They keep the servers running and
promote free knowledge. I think they do a pretty good job. But
they're not a membership organization. If you want one, you need
to create it yourself. Who's stopping you?
Background: I'm user:LA2. I was present when WM-DE was founded in
Berlin in 2004, but never joined. In 2007 I helped organize the
Swedish chapter and was elected to its board. I'm posting to this
list as an individual.
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
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David, fair points. Moreover, these stats are for amusement purposes only,
and tell little more than the email-prone nature of the community, since
almost all meaningful interchange on any projects this size take place
on-wiki. There's at least two orders of magnitude more traffic through
on-wiki fora and pages, which would be more worth investigating.
wikispecies : last real post by Brianna, may 2007. (2k/mo, mid-2006)
wikiquote : 3k/mo (slight decline since founding, mid-2006)
wiktionary : 3k/mo (30k/mo, mid-2005)
wikibooks: 7k/mo (40k/mo, mid-2003; later peak at 20k/mo, mid-2006)
(textbook-l)
wikiversity : 20k/mo (back at peak, similar traffic on its founding, late
2006)
wikinews : 20k/mo (30k/mo, late 2007, after a long decline)
commons : 30k/mo (100k/mo, late 2007)
wiki-
de: 20k/mo (300k/mo from 2004 to early 2005)
fr: 15k/mo (100k/mo in late 2005/early 2006)
ja: 60k/mo (90k/mo in fall 2007)
pl: 125k/mo (200+k/mo in late 2004/2005)
it: 10k/mo (40k/mo in late 2005/2006)
nl: 5k/mo (12k/mo in early 2007)
sv: ?
pt: ?
wiki-research-l : 25k/mo (at peak)
pywikipedia-l : 200k/mo (steady since founding in August 2007)
mediawiki-l : 150k/mo (250k/mo, late 2005 to late 2007)
mediawiki-cvs : 9MB/mo (at peak)
On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 7:49 AM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/4/27 Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com>:
>
> > Wikipedia-l traffic is down to 15k a month; wikien will drop below 300k
> this
> > month for the first time since the Indian Ocean Earthquake.
>
>
> Just on lists -
>
> wikipedia-l is all but moribund; project discussion happens on the
> project lists, cross-project discussion here. What are the numbers for
> all the public lists?
>
> wikien-l's drop in traffic can IMO be attributed to having moderated
> the most querulous contributors, and their contributions tend to have
> more substance per message now. I'm also still at work on encouraging
> wikien-l toward being an actually useful place that an encyclopedist
> would *want* to read and write on. I'm happy to say it's probably
> better than useless at present, after a long time of frequently being
> worse than useless.
>
>
> - d.
>
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>
Samuel Klein writes:
> I
> think the board's primary fiduciary responsibility is in ensuring
> that the
> oversight of the projects not fall into the hands of any special
> interests,
> something which giving outside experts seats on the board makes more
> likely.
The board has many fiduciary responsibilities, and the one you name
here is not "primary" -- it's not the nature of fiduciary
responsibilities that one is primary over the others. As to what is
"more likely," it is worth noting that the appointed seats have one-
year terms, while the chapters and community-elected seats have two
year terms (in general) -- whoever is elected to the seat currently
held by Florence will serve only a one-year term, but the seat will
have two-year terms thereafter.
> How is adding Board members with expertise more suitable than having a
> deeply trusted Board acquire and rely on a more broadly talented
> advisory
> board?
You could ask the opposite of this question -- why shouldn't someone
who qualifies as a member of a broadly talented advisory board not be
eligible to be appointed to the Foundation board. Either you trust
your talented resources or you do not. The restructuring assumes that
trustworthy people can be found, either within the community (however
you choose to understand "community") or outside it.
> My case for the converse is a worry about corruption. Community
> members who
> have devoted a significant portion of their lives to the project and
> demonstrated their gut-level appreciation of the value and necessity
> of the
> projects are far less corruptible than interested and talented
> outsiders;
> while the breadth of the projects' appeal has granted us the benefit
> of
> contributions from experts from all walks of life.
I am not sure what kind of "corruption" you fear. I'm not sure I
grasp what kind of corruption is even possible.
> This is a strawman. The current board is a good one, and
> recognizes that
> the power to organize, inform, and guide the projects' social and
> creative
> content movements lies with the community.
If this is true, then it is within the realm of possibility that the
current, good board made a wise set of decisions and ought to be given
the benefit of the doubt. I tend to be an empiricist about such
matters -- if there are changes, I try to keep an open mind and
observe whether the changes are generating good or bad results. Human
enterprises being as complex and unpredictable as they are, I've often
found that my greatest sense of doom was associated with changes that
turned out to be for the best, while I've been blase about what I
thought were minor changes that turned out to have grave
consequences. Nowadays, I try not to assume I know in advance how
everything is going to turn out.
> 1. When the board changes the bylaws on short notice, it sets a
> precedent
> for future boards to do the same.
The board restructuring and the concerns it addresses have been
concerns of the Board for a long time, and not secretly either. I
don't think "short notice" is justified.
> As an aside -- the Foundation is coming to see itself as "a multi-
> million
> dollar non-profit" and not "a foundation to support and expand a
> polylingual
> collaborative the size and output of the Marshall Islands".
These two notions do not stand in any logical opposition to each other.
--Mike
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 10:05 AM, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly(a)pobox.com> wrote:
> >Just to clarify one point, the chapters committee is not an
> >inter-chapter structure, but a committee appointed by the Board of
> >Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, which lends a hand to the Board
> >and chapters coordinator (myself) on the Foundation side, as well as
> >helps new and existing chapters when it comes to chapters matters.
> >
> >Its main task in the past months has been the guidance of new would-be
> >chapters in their first steps towards officialisation as Wikimedia
> >chapters.
> >
> >Cheers,
> >
> >Delphine
>
> If there is no "inter-chapter structure", how
> will the Chapters vote on two people for the new
> positions?
>
We make something up that works, by trial and error. Very much similar to
how Wikipedia works.
The way I see it is this: the foundation offers the chapters to select two
of the seats on the board of trustees. Now it's our (the chapters') job to
figure out what way of choosing the people for those two seats works best
for us. I see this as an outstanding opportunity for chapters to grow closer
together and improve communication among themselves. There's always been
talk about how valuable it would be for chapters to work closer together.
Now there's yet another good incentive to do so.
Sebastian
I agree. I didn't even know I was eligible to vote until someone sent me an email.
----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Snow <wikipedia(a)verizon.net>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 9:59:45 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Official Election Notice -- concerns about suffrage requirements
phoebe ayers wrote:
> I have two suggestions:
> Either
> a) drop this part of the requirement
> or
> b) start a site notice now for logged-in users on all projects,
> reminding them of the candidacy cut-off date and suffrage requirements
> for the election.
>
> A site notice, if not already planned for, is probably useful anyway
> as potential candidates may not read the mailing list or catch the
> election posts to it.
>
If there's a need to give people notices, this could also be a good time
to prompt some of the people who took an interest during the last
election in identifying eligible voters and delivering messages to them.
That might even be more effective than using the site notice. And with
the data-crunching and mass-notifications started earlier, hopefully
that work wouldn't draw some of the objections from last time. (By
saying this I'm not trying to favor b) over a); my comment applies even
if a notice isn't required for this particular issue.)
--Michael Snow
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Mike, the new change has made it so a majority is unelected.
----- Original Message ----
From: Mike Godwin <mgodwin(a)wikimedia.org>
To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 1:04:05 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring
David Goodman writes:
> 3) make plain our total repugnance for officers of the foundation who
> talk about the people who create Wikipedia as not having or deserving
> the right to the running of the project.
I don't know of any officers of the Foundation who are dismissive of
the people who create Wikipedia. Both Board and staff regard the
volunteer community as essential. That is not the least of the
reasons this organization has chosen to have the community select a
majority of the Board members. That hasn't changed. At the same time,
the Board has attempted to address two weaknesses -- (1) integrating
the chapters more formally into the Board selection process, and (2)
filling out the Board with the kind of professional expertise the
Foundation and its projects need for the next stage of their
development.
The fact that the pre-existing bylaws referred to the chapters as part
of the Foundation's structure but gave no formal role to the chapters
in the selection of Board members has seemed anomalous to many people,
including me. If I can say so without seeming dismissive of some
complaints here, the Board's effort to restructure itself so that
chapters are properly recognized seems to me to be a positive
development.
--Mike
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A majority is 50% plus 1, correct? If the board is being expanded to 10, thats half, not a majority.
----- Original Message ----
From: Kwan Ting Chan <ktc(a)ktchan.info>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 4:57:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring
On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 16:39 -0700, Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
> Mike, the new change has made it so a majority is unelected.
You are assuming the Chapters decide its 2 seats are filled with a
method other than some form of election, which may or may not be true.
The Board present the new structure as the holders of a majority of
seats to have come from the community (3 direct election, 2 chapters, &
Jimbo), not that the majority will be elected, which isn't the case even
currently.
KTC
--
Experience is a good school but the fees are high.
- Heinrich Heine
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And in regard to the right way, I will be working on a model of community governance that I hope will be a compromise between VC and CWF.
----- Original Message ----
From: Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 5:38:02 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring
2008/4/29 Geoffrey Plourde <geo.plrd(a)yahoo.com>:
> First, the Board sent the ball on Wikicouncil back to the Community, then the Board made community elected seats a minority.
? It was not exactly clear that the Wikicouncil concept *as presented
to the Board at that time* was something that was supported by "the
Community" at large. They have expressed support for the concept, but
not that particular instantiation. I am sure that if they had accepted
it there would probably be *more* outrage! (possibly directed slightly
differently)
Secondly seats for community members are still a majority: 5 + Jimmy.
If a vote goes 5-5, it fails. So there is no "power bloc of
outsiders".
If you are really concerned that "the chapters" are going to somehow
choose the wrong people, then why not pipe up with suggestions about
what "the right way" would be.
> Because of our principles, we attract a lot of people who are suspicious of authoritarian structures. This move seems kind of authoritarian.
Yeah, so getting outraged by default - regardless of the merit of a
proposal - is definitely a good move!
Put it this way, throwing a hissy fit is not a good argument that the
community should have more input. We should demonstrate we deserve
more input by making that input reasoned and sensible.
Clearly, no one is too happy about surprises like this. Florence has
apologised, more input from the other Board members would be nice.
regards
Brianna
--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/
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