2009/12/20 Laura Hale laura@fanhistory.com:
This was posted to the Strategy wiki but I don't think I ever mentioned it on list. The case study itself can be found at http://www.fanhistory.com/FHproposal.pdf . The blog entry about the case study can be found at http://blog.fanhistory.com/?p=1103 .
I think the study shows the old problems, which mainly comes from Wikimedia/Wikipedia history.
Meta wiki was first created as a place for meta-cross-project discussions including strategy planning as well. Then there was an assumption (IMHO false) that there is some sort of meta-cross-language-cross-projects-community which is allowed to make vital decisions by the system of consensus process mixed with voting system.It was soon found silly and many decisions were moved to Wikimedia committees that theoretically were created just as "advisory bodies" for Wikimedia Board of Trustees, but in fact the advice given by the committees was usually accepted by the Board. Than - when the process of increase of power and size of Foundation's office started many vital decisions were transferred to the office from the Board of Trustees, which only is expected to lead the general Wikimedia Foundation direction and do not interfere with everyday single issue decision making process. Therefore we have now a kind of power structure which looks like a square. On one corner (the most powerful a the moment IMHO) - we have an Office with paid staff, on the other we have a Board of Trustees, on the third there are a set of existing committees, and on the fourth there is use to be meta-cross-language-cross-projects-community and no one knows who really have a decision power in this or another issue, so if potentially difficult decision is about to be made all corners of the square are just playing some sort of table tennis just hitting a ball with rackets back and forth to each other on a table untill the ball is broken or end up forgotten in the net or on the floor :-)