Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 6/3/06, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/4/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Is there an archive somewhere of all the historical board votes? I'd be interested in seeing it.
Overall, it's really hard to find information about what it is the board and its members have been doing.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions
Watching that wiki, and reading Wikizine ( http://cur.wikizine.org/ ) are two good ways of keeping up with the Board's actions. Suggestions on how to improve communications are very welcome.
Angela
I'm trying to think of a major thing that I can suggest, rather than nitpicking minor details. Overall, wikimediafoundation.org is very outdated. Even just looking at the front page the quarterly reports contain nothing from the current year (5 months into it), the projects section starts with a red link, the second feature talks about the Quarto which is a project which was abandoned over a year ago.
One of the higher pageranked pages is http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings, which contains no information about meetings in 2006. One of the meetings I stubled across, http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/October_22%2C_2004, talks about changing membership from opt-out to opt-in. This doesn't seem to have been implemented, and I'm not actually sure whether or not I'm even a member. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Bylaws points to http://wikimediafoundation.org/bylaws.pdf, which seems to be the original bylaws from 2003 (which have apparently changed). http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws is another version, which seems to have been updated, but it doesn't seem to have taken all resolutions into account (besides the opt-in/opt-out one, I remember reading from you or Ant that the notion of "Member Representative to the Board of Trustees" had been dropped). (Interestingly, http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/About_Wikimedia points to *both* versions.)
Anyway, thanks for the links. I guess my "suggestions" were somewhat nitpicky. But I do think it's pretty important that people know a) whether or not they're actually a member of Wikimedia and b) what the bylaws of the foundation are.
Anthony
Vaccum.
A new version of the bylaws were written about 2 months ago. This new version entirely remove the notion of membership (so the notions of opt-in and opt-out disappear). However, the new text recognises the input and importance of the community (it was not the case before).
From a "board election" point of view, the existence of members or not, does not have impact. There are still community representatives on the board. However, there is an-ongoing discussion on the election/appointement modes.
As of today, I am unable to answer to your question (am I a member or not ?). If the new bylaws were to be adopted, the answer would be "no".
As for whether the bylaws will be adopted or not, I posted a resolution regarding the first three parts of the bylaws (including the membership part) on the board wiki 5 weeks ago. As of today, none of the board members have voted on the resolution, nor really made any comment (so I have no idea if the lack of voting is due to opposition, lack of interest, lack of time or whatever).
ant
PS : note that it is not possible to oblige people to vote.