Jimmy Wales wrote:
I do not agree with this reasoning. If it were
legally possible (and
it is not) I would like to see the possibility for board members
to get at least a small paycheck (10,000 euros per year or similar).
I think that board diversity is an important goal. And the practical
reality is that serving on the board of the foundation takes up quite
a bit of time and energy for all of us, and that is not likely to
change. Reimbursement of board expenses is quite important to
ensuring that people are able to serve without their service being a
financial burden.
I agree with reimbursement of expenses being necessary to keep it so not
only wealthy people have the opportunity to serve on the board, but
there's always a balance there. As I've noticed from being in academia
(where traveling to conferences is commonplace), once you start adding
perks as a way of helping people out, for some subset of people the
perks start becoming the main goal---conferences are held in places like
Tahiti and Hawaii, people try to get into certain positions just to get
the $5k honorarium, etc. I'm not saying any of the current board
members would abuse these privileges, but adding too many perks to a
position like board member is something to be careful of.
-Mark