On 28/12/06, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
- Could the board please communicate all
decisions which are sensitive
among the wikipedians, timely to all relevent
mailinglists?
I second this request.
- Has there ever been an open call to all
wikipedians to provide
suggestions to the foundationboard of ways to
receive money?
Not formally, I think.
-- Oldak Quill (oldakquill@gmail.com)
5)No, just follow this list.
I was not requesting that the same post be sent to all mailing lists: of course people should look here for this kind of information. I was requesting that such sensitive agreements should be communicated to the community (via this list) in a timely fashion. Apologies if this was unclear: I didn't interpret number 5 as simply sending to all mailing lists.
6)Yes
This is the mailing list you subscribe to to be aware of things that affect all Wikimedia communities. If you are part of another mailing list that you think would be sensitive to an issue here, you should forward the message along to that list. There is also now a summary service on meta which you could point people towards.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives
At the beginning of the drive there was an announcement on this list of the fund raising drive which included many details you seem to have been unaware of. But the general idea of matching donors had been discussed here much earlier.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2006_12_10-16 "Brad Patrick announced the opening of the latest fundraising"
There have been many messages asking for people to help with fundraising. Announcing the creation of the Fundraising Committee and asking interested people to sign up (Certainly an open call). Even more general questions asking for fundraising ideas both before and after the Committee was started. Any fundraising discussions seemed to be met with questions about the audit and budget. It seems to me that the current drive began as soon as the audit was released because of a real need of money that has probably been put off because the community requested the WMF not take part in any overt fundraising until the audit documents were released.
Anyone has been subscribed to this list should be aware of all this. Anyone who wishes to be aware of these sorts of things should subscribe or read the LSS including links. I think most people who have subscribed to list did so because they were blindsided by some decision in the past and wanted to make sure they stayed informed in the future. I know I did. I sympathize that you feel blindsided, but it can only be up to you to ensure that you are informed of these things.
Birgitte SB
I have been subscribed to this list for about a year and read (or skim) everything which passes through it. There has not, before a couple of days ago, been an explicit mention of the agreement with Virgin Unite.