On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 17:15:25 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
No, the board emphatically should not handle any of those things you listed. These are decisions to be made by the Wikimedia community, not a committee. Top-down committee decisions are not the wiki way of doing things.
The 'committees' you talk about will be almost entirely composed of non-board members. But the board provides the legal and financial backbone. Somebody has to sign the checks and somebody has to be held responsible for making sure progress is being made on projects. That is where the board comes in.
To amplify this - don't forget the bulk of Wikipedia is being supported by Jimbo/Bomis resources given for free. This cannot last in the long term. Colocation, bandwidth, electricity, hardware and labor are all donated by them because of their kindness, but this is not sustainable or robust. We need to plan right now while Wikipedia is in a state of financial and social healh. This is exactly the time to have designees think about how to achieve this. It is not abandoning wiki principles by imbuing individuals with the responsibility of overseeing this process. The bills have to be paid to keep the project going.
These were all issues that were brought up during the face-to-face Wikimeetup in London, and something several of the Wikipedians discussed over dinner. The conversations were never to hijack the decision-making as the "cabal" of individuals who happened to be there. The question of "What would the community think about this?" was ever-present.
That's what the Trustees vote was for - to designate those individuals with this responsibility. The vision statements, candidate positions and discussion during the election indicate most people feel it was more than simply to satisfy the letter of the law.
-Andrew