Brian said:
I have also just given -- $15.00 US -- for Angela's travel. I have done
this
as a show of good faith in the board, the individual
members, and the
process
that led to the board's creation and the recent
elections.
*However* I hope that this does not set a precedent, and will not make
such a
contribution again, and I believe that this should be
paid for by the
Wikimedia Foundation -- *not* by individual wikipedians.
Absolutely. This was something I was intending to say in a follow-up mail.
While I've contributed to this (my donation has now been sent to the
foundation via PayPal) that was in order to put my money where my mouth is
and to get things moving for this meet-up. I firmly believe this should not
be a precedent. Such expenses should be a normal part of the budget.
By the way - I think someone mentioned the election results as an example of
non-transparency. However they were given in full on Meta:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_results in response to the
criticism - a good example of the way the board is responding to the
community I think. (This must have been said somewhere or I wouldn't have
known - but perhaps it should have been announced more widely.)
-- sannse