Erik Moeller wrote:
So, Wikimedia is shaped by people who feel that the very philosophy that made WP a success is not applicable to organizations. Wikimedia will become a functioning non-profit with the usual bureucratic processes, some successful fundraising, a few good partnerships here and there, a bunch of "professionals", lots of infighting among volunteers, etc. It will not become the open platform for social and technological change that it could be -- the wide network of people who are interested in building a free knowledge and free culture movement. And who is to blame for that? Not the people who made it so. They have only the best interests of Wikimedia in mind and work their ass of to do what they can to make it a success. The people who are to blame are those who did not participate in turning Wikimedia into something else, something larger, when it mattered.
Well, Jimmy Wales has his vision for the future of Wikimedia, and it doesn't really match with any of my views of what it should be. However, he's in charge and has said in no uncertain terms that he's not going to open up a majority of the board to community elections anytime in the near future. So, I don't see what can really be done about that. I'm pretty resigned to the fact that committees, lawyers, and other random things seem to spring from nowhere without anyone, sometimes even the two elected board members, having heard about them. Clearly we aren't in control of the organization, and I don't see how that's likely to change.
In general, this doesn't feel like a free-culture organization. I don't require Richard Stallman clones to be heading up all such organizations (although at least then there'd be no doubts), but this place feels more like, say, Red Hat---a commercial entity involved in free culture and making concessions to maintain community support---than it feels like a thoroughly free-culture organization like Debian. For the most part the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a fine ISP hosting Wikipedia, but I certainly don't feel like they represent me or reflect my values, besides the single value of "producing a copyleft encyclopedia", the betterment of which strangely rarely seems to be among the various proposals I've been seeing lately. I don't really see what can be done about that besides damage control or, if absolutely necessary, a fork.
Now as for damage control---you *do* see people get quite involved when it looks like the beaurocracy is intruding into the reason we free-content people are here in the first place, Wikipedia. You'll notice the series of WP:OFFICE interventions on en.* attracted considerable community "participation". Failing a WMF that represents my interests, I'll at least work for a WMF that serves as an acceptable ISP for Wikipedia.
Now perhaps it isn't completely impossible, but I think it'll be a continual uphill battle without significant high-level change. I would feel much more comfortable, for example, with a board that consisted of Jimbo, Anthere, Angela, and two other prominent community representatives chosen by some reasonable election process. In principle, influencing things from the minority is possible (Jimbo presumably doesn't want to run everything on 3-2 votes), but it colors the whole process.
Which is, incidentally, my main problem with a paid staff. If they do only technical things like file paperwork, that's fine, but I'm quite sure there will be a slippery slope there, judging from past experience in this organization.
-Mark