For fun and nostalgia, and because half of the people mentioned below are on the original list, here is a very old, speculative and good-humoured meta discussion of an "ideal Wikipedia board" before Wikimedia existed*.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_ideal_Wikipedia_board
These old discussions can be refreshing; WP and the WMF have followed one course, but there were many other sister roads that might have been followed, each with its own tone.
SJ
* The "less dreamy, but more practical, version" mentioned at the top was something this (a cross between nostalgia and deja-vu... if you look at the people involved in the conversation) : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Archive1
On 6/19/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
To continue the ongoing board development conversation....
The board is considering adding some prominent person from outside the core Wikipedia community to the board and seeks brainstorming ideas of what type of person could be good, as well as mentions of names who we might want to approach.
Larry Lessig - head of Creative Commons
Mitch Kapor - head of Mozilla Foundation (Firefox), founder of EFF, and extremely passionate about the Wikipedia mission (and he edits Wikipedia, and he is absolutely fascinated by and supportive of our community model)
Richard Stallman - needs no introduction
Eben Moglen - main legal mastermind of the FSF
Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!
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