In the interests of not letting this thread die:
I'd suggest that Wikimedia look at similar (as close as possible) foundations in the United States, and possibly elsewhere as well, for ideas on how to move forward. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel when you have a design that works - Wikimedia adopted a fairly conventional structure for its board, and it should continue to rely on governance concepts that have been proven. Organizations like Mozilla, EPIC, EFF, the ACLU and others might be targets not only for adapting their governance style but also for attracting outside members of the Wikimedia Board of Trustees. Additionally, you could investigate recruiting Board members from academic and encyclopedic organizations with similar missions.
A sensible structure has to be one that values expertise and maintains the centrality of the Wikimedia community, as well as represents the interests of chapters outside en.wiki. I think you could achieve this simply by expanding the board and assigning decision making authority to different committees - i.e. audit, governance, executive, financial. I think this is a fairly standard Board design, and I'd be interested to see proposals from Mike Godwin on this topic (assuming he has experience in the field of non-profit management aside from Wikimedia).
Nathan
On Dec 17, 2007 10:54 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 17/12/2007, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
How is that Wikipedia movie going, by the way?
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page_%28movie%29
- d.
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