Dear community members,
Though it was a (very) difficult decision to make, I have decided not to
be a candidate to the coming elections of the board of trustees of
Wikimedia Foundation as a community representative.
After four years on the board, and over one year and a half as its
chair, I observe that the organization has matured a lot.
In 2004 the Wikimedia Foundation was a tiny organization (total expenses
23 000 dollars) set up and led by Jimmy, running three servers from
remote Florida and hosting projects with frequent denial of services due
to unsufficient technical support, Wikimedia has now grown into a six
million dollars organization, operating over 300 servers, led by an
accountable board, with a new office in San Francisco and a staff of 15.
Operations are now guided by a brand new mission statement, with defined
values, procedures, policies, and charters. Fully independently audited,
the Wikimedia Foundation receive the financial support of thousand of
small donors, as well as support from commercial companies and major
foundations.
Wikimania, our annual conference was first held in 2005, one year after
I joined the board. Wikimania then travelled from Frankfurt to Boston,
Taipei, and Egypt, with the great honor of being hosted by the New
Library of Alexandria this year.
In the past four years, new projects were started (eg, Wikimedia
Commons, Wikinews). Wikipedia rose from rank 500 in october 2004 to rank
8 in october 2007 of most popular websites in the world. As of April
2008, Wikipedia attracts 683 million visitors annually, reading over 10
millions articles in 253 languages. Other projects are thriving and made
available in more and more languages every year (eg, Wikibooks,
Wiktionary etc…). All Wikimedia projects are now freely available
worldwide on the internet with an excellent quality of service.
Those are fantastic, tremendous achievements!
I am proud I was part of it.
Of course, all this was not my own doing, but was made possible by the
dedication of all board members, of previous and current staff members,
contractors, and most of all, of community volunteers. Good job, everyone!
I want to thank the 2004 voters, who elected me to participate at the
organization level, and the 2005 voters, who confirmed me on the board
for two additional years. My nomination as chair in 2006 and renewal in
2007 was probably more a stroke of luck :-) I was given the difficult
task to help Wikimedia to mature from a Founder-led group to a mature
organization with a dual board/executive set-up, various policies and
procedures, as well as controls to prevent or limit damages. In short, I
had a position of interim chair :-) The 2007 board trusted me to
stabilize the transition to the new Executive Director. Twenty months
later, I consider the job done. The disappearance of the previously
recurring question "but what if Jimbo is hit by a bus this morning ?" is
in itself a sufficient sign :-) The organization is more solid than it
has ever been.
I would like to offer a special "thank you" note to Jan-Bart, the
vice-chair, for the highly valuable work on the board. Jan-Bart is one
of these “outsiders”, that some think should not be on the board. I
could not disagree more. Outsiders may share our values deeply, bring
expertise that does not exist within the active community, and provide
an external view sometimes very refreshing on our in-house debates.
Building an organization that could accompany the exponential growth of
the Wikimedia projects was, as you can imagine, quite a challenge, and
did not always go without tensions. I read with much attention the
community petition started after the board reorganization announcement.
It would be a serious misconception to imagine that board members always
fully agree on what is decided by the board as a whole. Board members
can (and do) disagree. Sometimes, no decision is made because there are
irreconcilable factions. But often, they agree to a compromise, so that
a needed collective decision can be made. Directions are not set in
stone and it will be the responsibility of the next board to deal with
the future. Various trends are showing up right now, as pointed out in
the petition or by various emails to this list.
After the decision over reorganization of the board, I was placed in a
rather impossible situation. New blood is highly necessary to the board,
but the unique position opened to an elected community representative
places me in direct competition with these new, “third” generation
leaders currently being candidates. If three positions had been opened,
it would have been an entirely different matter, but this one position
truly deserves to go to a brand new member, with fresh energy and ideas.
I wish the candidates all the best of luck. The new board member can
count on my support to welcome him or her after the elections, during
our roughly 2 weeks of overlapping presence on the board.
Though I will reduce my participation, I will certainly not quit the
projects. My heart is dedicated to them and to our love of knowledge. I
intend to keep on “thinking global”, even if I act more “local”. Since
my first days on the projects (February 2002), my focus has been on
transparency, volunteer involvement, decentralization, bottom-up
decision making, and love for cultural and linguistic diversity. I will
stay available to share my time and energy with those who are, with
pride but modesty, supporting our projects as well as their values. An
organization is at the service of a cause, and the primary interest and
focus of its members should not be the organization itself, but its
mission and, even more important, the vision behind the mission and the
values shared between all members. Our vision should be our credo, day
after day: bringing knowledge to every single human being on Earth.
Love
Anthere / Florence Devouard