This thread is based on a comment Florence made on that
update in board of trustees membership
thread above
She was talking about Michael and Eric leaving the board (damn it) and then said, “I feel there are two paths for the future. Either we keep a board mostly made of community members (elected or appointed), who may not be top-notch professionals, who can do mistakes …….., but who can breath and pee wikimedia projects, dedicate their full energy to a project they love, without trying to put their own interest in front. A decentralized organization where chapters will have more room, authority and leadership.
Now we probably all agree that one or the other is not taking the best from both old institutions. But WMF projects have proved that a new one has been born. The idea of a Head Office and National and local chapters might be OK for Rotary and its like, but looking at WMF projects, this is not how the new one works, so I thought it should be made clear.
We live at a time when global groups will gather around an article and edit the hell out of one at a time, coming to a consensus and understanding (of sorts) about it’s meaning. Which makes a nice change from having bureaucrats get on planes to attend talk fests and then say, “We’ve agreed to keep talking” as the ones in Bali just have. The change in the ways WMF-inspired communities organize themselves has proved that a bureaucracy “delivering policy” is just a figment of the dimming past. It’s by talking on threads like this where the belief in “top down” organisation just evaporates. (Constantly reading about CEO’s being rewarded for their incompetence or dishonesty doesn’t hurt either).
Let’s face it, in a democracy all leaders are amateurs. That’s what the concept means. At the same time we want to make sure that they get the best professional advice. If the rest of the English speaking world learns what we’ve just learnt in Australia, when you only talk to PLU (people like us, professionals like us) then “sorry mate you’re out”; our PM even lost his own seat, which shows how irrelevant he’d become.
The main thing is that we have global groups for each of the functions required by an org; each board member of which will keep us across their own learning (like a meeting with a Minister of culture which became a private thing). The detail stuff will occasionally get stuffed up, but if a Board member doesn’t make a doozy (like winning a war and losing its peace), then OK, let them just admit it’s a mistake and let’s move on. So long as we remember as a group and don’t let it happen again.
Now Florence might fear Knol as “probably our biggest threat since the creation of Wikipedia”. But it can only be that if one thinks that aggregating content is the main aim of the WMF (around which ads might be wrapped). I just can’t see that it is. And Florence doesn’t either. As Milos says “.…the community is confused and it needs answers. At least, how do *you* (Board members) see WMF in the next two or five years? If you are not possible to make a collective statement, please make personal statements”. I thought it was a great invitation to find a way of settling on a shade of grey, which would help blacks and white gain an understanding, if not a consensus.
So at this (Christmas) time can I just second Milos’ motion and ask that we all take a step back and talk to our children and friends until the New Year. Ultimately we are building a Next Generation Network, today. To be clear HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Networking%22http://en.wikipedi... .org/wiki/Next_Generation_Networking. If that’s the case, then we are talking about how little groups like this communicate, not how they aggregate stuff at huge portals. Every country has a National Research and Education Network which contain engineers and course builders who would love to help our wiki-orientated content builders. They all communicate, just like us, in little groups of interest. Trouble is, their correspondence gets buried, like here.
Merry Christmas. Simon.
No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.17.4/1188 - Release Date: 17/12/2007 2:13 PM