Hi, sorry for top posting.
A quick historical note, really early on some chapters had a WMF representative with a lot of power. We moved from that next to a lawyer recommandation as it created legal links between WMF and chapters hence increasing the legal risks for all the organizations and the safety/sustainability of the whole movement.
If the issue is communication between WMF and chapters there used to be a position at the foundation dedicated to this very purpose, the chapter coordinator. Perhaps it is time to revive this position.
Christophe Envoye depuis mon Blackberry
-----Original Message----- From: Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia-inc.com Sender: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:37:42 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia Brasil + WMF
On 8/28/11 1:00 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
I think that developing such a legal entity should be a high priority for Brazilian Wikipedians to ensure that Wiki activities in Brazil are controlled by Brazilians. At the same time I don't think there is any value to having a WMF appointee on your board; such a person would find it difficult to function under circumstances of perpetual conflict of interest. No other chapter has such a clause.
I had never thought of this before, but now that it has been mentioned, I just wanted to disagree, quite respectfully because Ray is awesome of course, and say that I think it is a very interesting idea to have a WMF appointee on the boards of chapters.
There should be very few cases where there is a "conflict of interest" since chapters and the Foundation are deeply tied together always (and that's a good thing). I think having a Foundation representative on the board of chapters does present some possibly insurmountable logistical issues (who will they be?) but I actually think such an arrangement might be incredibly valuable for improving communication and *decreasing* perceived conflicts of interest.
--Jimbo
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