On 6/14/06, Michael R. Irwin michael_irwin@verizon.net wrote:
Instead he announced he would stack the Board to protect the project from the feared arrival of the unwashed masses (can not lock them out after all .... most of them know some stuff we want them to give us to publish freely) and proceeded to put two handpicked trustees/employees along with himself and designated two slots to be elected by count of active handles or sock puppets.
Are you saying that the election of Anthere and Angela was not legitimate ("active handles or sock puppets")? I would beg to differ on that point. While I sympathize with Tim Starling's point that membership would be a reasonable method to guarantee the organization's long term independence, I think the elections that took place were unquestionably fair and open, and reasonable measures were taken to deal with manipulation.
Again, I would also like to remind you that wikipedia.org is wikipedia.ORG today. We take this for granted today, but it was by no means a guaranteed outcome, especially for a project created by an Ayn Rand objectivist. ;-) I would even go so far to say that Wikipedia could be _very_ successful (not as successful as it is, but still) while being proprietary. And it could have made Jimmy _lots_ of money. Instead he put a lot of his own money into Nupedia and Wikipedia, and is unlikely to get much, if any, of it back. As often as I may disagree with him, it is absurd to assume greed as a factor in his principal actions. If Jimmy wanted to be "filthy rich" (rather than independently wealthy), he would already _be_ filthy rich, and Wikipedia would be Wikipedia.COM.
That is not to say that there aren't conflicts of interest. Certainly Jimmy wants to make Wikia succeed, and it is important for the organization to be set up and run in such a way that people associated with Wikia (Michael, Angela and Jimmy) can (yes, _can_) recuse themselves when there is an obvious COI. The fact that 3 out of 5 Board members are associated with a for-profit that stands to benefit from certain actions of the non-profit they lead does of course lend a lot of weight to arguments for a larger and more diverse Board, and more community involvement in the executive body. But these arguments should be made under the full assumption of good faith of everyone involved.
Erik