Brion Vibber wrote:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
What can the board and management (whatever its structure) *do* that will be better?
snip some background
I disagree. It is predominantly a participatory informal "democracy/committee" process in the projects and the volunteers in many cases are voting with their feet and manhours.
I disagree with your disagreement here. ;)
The *projects* are participatory informal "democracy/committee" process, but The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is not.
Then they should consider budgeting for an adequate payroll, raise adequate funds, begin defining work processes, and hiring and training staff. Volunteers are not going to do anything for long with which they do not have some kind of input, buyin or warm fuzzy that they are appreciated. Budget for plaques, list the achievements somewhere, coach the paid staff to really appreciate any and all errors as a golden opportunity to help train the volunteer staff while getting away from their normal duties ... paid recess! Many options have been previously devised, some time googling or yacking aimlessly on the community mailing lists or wikis should discover something somewhere.
It sounds to me like one of the chief issues is identifying the boundary between management of the projects and management of the company. Would you agree with this? If not, how would you describe the issue?
Yes, exactly! Some others have made this point very effectively on this thread as well.
snip further agreements
How is Jimbo's historical and ongoing status as default big cheese for all projects related to the composition of the board? (This is not a rhetorical question.)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Huh? You were there! Writing or debugging too much code to pay attention to the politics?
I summarized it a few minutes ago over on textbook-l. It is a low volume list, anyone interested in my crude, grumpy, outline of history can find it there.
Concisely, he screwed up bigtime.
He should have trusted the community of volunteers and stood for election, he would been a shoe in by a landslide ..... he was still picking up most of the cash expenses and everyone recognized he truly was one of two key founders leading the community in establishing/evolving a successful project approach. His timing was good when he unilaterally established the non-profit. Everyone could pretty well tell the wikipedia.org was on the verge of large success. Who wants to abandon an impending gigantic success over a petty point of organizational common sense?
Instead he announced he would stack the Board to protect the project from the feared arrival of the unwashed masses (can not lock them out after all .... most of them know some stuff we want them to give us to publish freely) and proceeded to put two handpicked trustees/employees along with himself and designated two slots to be elected by count of active handles or sock puppets.
I realize that we are supposed to assume good faith and all that but subsequent conflicts of interest really beg the question when combined with the lack of community participation and planning in setting up the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. There were people on the list with legal, business, engineering, education, etc. education and experience that could have helped avoid many of the problems that you folks now face, which were designed into the organization at the onset and allowed to fester.
high regards, lazyquasar