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!
Well Mr. Wales, if you believe these people have very good ideas for Wikimedia (and they most likely do), then I really don't see the harm of appointing them. However, has something like this worked with other non-profit organizations?
Sincerely, James Hare
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!
-- ####################################################################### # Office: 1-727-231-0101 | Free Culture and Free Knowledge # # http://www.wikipedia.org | Building a free world # #######################################################################
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
James Hare wrote:
Well Mr. Wales, if you believe these people have very good ideas for Wikimedia (and they most likely do), then I really don't see the harm of appointing them. However, has something like this worked with other non-profit organizations?
Yes, it is standard practice at almost all nonprofit organizations.
--Jimbo
On 6/19/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!
Hey, didn't I hear Bill Gates will be free soon. ;-) --LV
On 6/19/06, Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/19/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!
Hey, didn't I hear Bill Gates will be free soon. ;-) --LV
I'd LOVE to see Wikipedia used to force Creative Commons and FSF to work together. We're the 800-pound (or 800000-pound) gorilla in the category "users of the GFDL" and I'd really like to see formal license compatibility.
Using the Wikimedia Foundation board as a mechanism to do so would be wonderful.
Other suggestions (always interested in non-American equivalents):
- Michael Hart or Greg Newby, Project Gutenberg (Newby is *great*) - Karen G. Schneider, kgs@bluehighways.com , (former?) Internet Librarian for American Libraries Online, http://www.ala.org/alonline/and the Coordinator of the Librarian's Index to the Internet (LII), http://lii.org/ (IM: LIIchief) - Roy Tennant, http://escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/ , creator and editor of Current Cites, http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/ - Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Publishing (if we want to get into making a dead-tree version) - Larry Page / Sergey Brin - Al Gore
I don't know the right names, but someone who's been really good at advocating for improved resources/outreach into the third world, third world civil rights etc. would also be a great addition outside of the "obvious" choices.
I'm reminded that when Steve Jobs wanted to start Apple Stores, he got the CEO of The Gap on the board--someone who knows nothing about computing, but everything about retail. So what would be the equivalent for the Wikimedia mission? I would think that, say, a former top UN official could be very good for Wikimedia; someone who would know everyone in all the countries of the world and know how to manage a multicultural coalition. Kofi Annan? Madeleine Albright? I'm sure people can come up with better ideas.
On 6/19/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
- Al Gore
Is having a highly prominent -- and still very active -- political figure on the board such a good idea? Something like that will inevitably raise questions about Wikipedia's neutrality in political issues; particularly if his presence on the board _does_ provide significant benefits to the WMF, it will be assumed that said benefits are a direct result of some quid pro quo political deal on our part.
Yup, we'll be darned if someone raises some kind of Wikimedia-Democrat Conspiracy Theory.
On 6/19/06, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/19/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
- Al Gore
Is having a highly prominent -- and still very active -- political figure on the board such a good idea? Something like that will inevitably raise questions about Wikipedia's neutrality in political issues; particularly if his presence on the board _does_ provide significant benefits to the WMF, it will be assumed that said benefits are a direct result of some quid pro quo political deal on our part.
-- Kirill Lokshin _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 6/19/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
Yup, we'll be darned if someone raises some kind of Wikimedia-Democrat Conspiracy Theory.
They do that kinda junk already... making lists of Jewish admins and the like. I don't think the positions of insane people should be a factor in who we consider talking to...
The qualifications needed in a board, vision, connectedness, experience, dedication to our cause, or whatever should be our primary considerations.
On 6/19/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/19/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
Yup, we'll be darned if someone raises some kind of Wikimedia-Democrat Conspiracy Theory.
They do that kinda junk already... making lists of Jewish admins and the like. I don't think the positions of insane people should be a factor in who we consider talking to...
So long as the people in question are regarded by the majority of our readers as being a little funny in the head, yes. But if the _average_ reader starts to have reasonable doubts about our impartiality -- and I believe that would be the case should we have someone of Al Gore's prominence on the board -- then our credibility as a source of information would suffer.
How is Al Gore politically active? He's on Apple's board, by the way.
On 6/19/06, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/19/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
- Al Gore
Is having a highly prominent -- and still very active -- political figure on the board such a good idea? Something like that will inevitably raise questions about Wikipedia's neutrality in political issues; particularly if his presence on the board _does_ provide significant benefits to the WMF, it will be assumed that said benefits are a direct result of some quid pro quo political deal on our part.
-- Kirill Lokshin _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 6/19/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
How is Al Gore politically active? He's on Apple's board, by the way.
Apple isn't trying to present a neutral description of, say, global warming either ;-)
(And that's assuming he doesn't simply return to open politics; whether that's a safe bet is something you can decide.)
On 6/20/06, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/19/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
- Al Gore
Is having a highly prominent -- and still very active -- political figure on the board such a good idea? Something like that will inevitably raise questions about Wikipedia's neutrality in political issues;
Agreed, and I strongly oppose that idea. Not personally, but all candidates from the US political world. It can be somehow benefical for managing the WMF in the USA, but at the same time it can place a certain tention between other political groups, including the outside the USA both the external of the project and within the community. Please remember, the majority of editors are * not * US citizens, and I convince many of them do never want to US political debates at all. It can even a cause of forks, specially the majority of population against or not favor of US foreign policy, I predict.
The Cunctator wrote:
I'd LOVE to see Wikipedia used to force Creative Commons and FSF to work together. We're the 800-pound (or 800000-pound) gorilla in the category "users of the GFDL" and I'd really like to see formal license compatibility.
Hoi, On the Holland Open conference (last week) Eben Moglen gave a keynote speech on the Saturday. One of the things he mentioned was that on a conference in Barcelona, there will be a first draft of the GFDL 3. He also mentioned that he hoped that it will make it easier to combine both GFDL and specific Creative Commons licenses.. I think I remember he mentioned the 26th.
Eben also mentioned that Jimmy Wales was truly instrumental in many of the changes that will be included in the newer GFDL. :)
Thanks, GerardM
On 6/19/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
I don't know the right names, but someone who's been really good at advocating for improved resources/outreach into the third world, third world civil rights etc. would also be a great addition outside of the "obvious" choices.
Angelina Jolie? Works with U.N. without all the political implications of Kofi Annan. Downside: May give Christine a bit of a stomach ache considering Jolies past experiences with co-workers. ;-) Okay, I'll try and be more serious, I just couldn't help myself. --LV
Hello all,
I think it is very good to think about this kind of stuff, but maybe i missed a more general question, without asking about the exact person. However I do understand the enthousiasm of people when the idea exists to get Eben Moglan or another famous guy (I missed the women, but maybe overlooked them?) on the WMF-board, but I was wondering if someone could inform me why exactly we would need those people. Is it because they have a good insight, because they have certain qualities to *do* stuff, or that they could promote the concept better, as they are more famous, and will network better? Probably all of these reasons will be a part of the redenation Jimmy followed. But I think that with the current way the board is organized, the members of the board do a lot of stuff, and have to spend a very big amount of time on WMF, prevents maybe that the people named are willing to participate, but it would maybe also prevent that their qualities will be fully used. The board is pretty small now, and the percentage of "famous" people, who are *automaticly* buzzy too, will increase quickly when they are admitted to the board. I don't want to say that is bad, but that it might need also then some restructuring in the way the board functions. So I think it might be a good idea to think first of all about if we want prominant persons at all on the board (the answer will probably be yes though) and secondly, as Jimmy mentioned before, we should think about what kind of prominent person we want. Do we want someone with specific knowledge, do we want to bond the WMF through this boardmember to a certain type of organization, do we want someone active in politics so the ideals of the WMF can be spread that way, etc etc etc. Maybe it would be more usefull to think about this kind of questions first before we start with names. The discussion gets quite soon complicated then usually. This way we don't have to say people are bad or not famous enought also, as we are searching to find someone who fits into the profile, after we found a profile :) I hope my two cents are usefull,
greetings, Lodewijk aka effeietsanders (that guy with the long weird name)
2006/6/19, Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com:
On 6/19/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
I don't know the right names, but someone who's been really good at advocating for improved resources/outreach into the third world, third
world
civil rights etc. would also be a great addition outside of the
"obvious"
choices.
Angelina Jolie? Works with U.N. without all the political implications of Kofi Annan. Downside: May give Christine a bit of a stomach ache considering Jolies past experiences with co-workers. ;-) Okay, I'll try and be more serious, I just couldn't help myself. --LV _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
The Cunctator wrote:
On 6/19/06, Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/19/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!
Hey, didn't I hear Bill Gates will be free soon. ;-) --LV
I'd LOVE to see Wikipedia used to force Creative Commons and FSF to work together. We're the 800-pound (or 800000-pound) gorilla in the category "users of the GFDL" and I'd really like to see formal license compatibility.
Using the Wikimedia Foundation board as a mechanism to do so would be wonderful.
Other suggestions (always interested in non-American equivalents):
- Michael Hart or Greg Newby, Project Gutenberg (Newby is *great*)
- Karen G. Schneider, kgs@bluehighways.com , (former?) Internet
Librarian for American Libraries Online, http://www.ala.org/alonline/and the Coordinator of the Librarian's Index to the Internet (LII), http://lii.org/ (IM: LIIchief)
- Roy Tennant, http://escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/ , creator and
editor of Current Cites, http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/
- Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Publishing (if we want to get into making a
dead-tree version)
- Larry Page / Sergey Brin
- Al Gore
I don't know the right names, but someone who's been really good at advocating for improved resources/outreach into the third world, third world civil rights etc. would also be a great addition outside of the "obvious" choices.
I'm reminded that when Steve Jobs wanted to start Apple Stores, he got the CEO of The Gap on the board--someone who knows nothing about computing, but everything about retail. So what would be the equivalent for the Wikimedia mission? I would think that, say, a former top UN official could be very good for Wikimedia; someone who would know everyone in all the countries of the world and know how to manage a multicultural coalition. Kofi Annan? Madeleine Albright? I'm sure people can come up with better ideas.
Nod.
One problem I have with your list and with Jimbo's list is that they propose very few great candidates from Korea or Madagascar.
ant
Anthere:
One problem I have with your list and with Jimbo's list is that they propose very few great candidates from Korea or Madagascar.
North or South Korea? Difficult choice: The former will surely add a different perspective from what we have now. Also their system for representing the people is very efficient. The latter has more dotcom millionaires with plenty of free time.
Madagascar gets bonus points for the capital with the most beautiful name: Antananarivo.
Erik Zachte
Erik Zachte wrote:
Anthere:
One problem I have with your list and with Jimbo's list is that they propose very few great candidates from Korea or Madagascar.
North or South Korea? Difficult choice: The former will surely add a different perspective from what we have now. Also their system for representing the people is very efficient.
As I understand it, the North has never activated its top level domain name. Such a board member could have difficulty travelling to on-line meetings. ;-)
eC
Anthere wrote:
One problem I have with your list and with Jimbo's list is that they propose very few great candidates from Korea or Madagascar.
I agree with this concern, but how to address it? I do not know of any prominent leaders either "outside" or "inside" Wikipedia from either Korea or Madagascar... or similar places.
It is not hard to find community leaders in France and Germany and Holland and Italy and... all of the countries where the "international crowd" has good connections. It is harder to find community leaders in Japanese and Chinese... we know a few but there is unfortunately not as much communication there as we would like, etc.
In terms of well known outsiders to bring into the board for oversight and vision and specific talents, again, Korea and Madagascar and similar, hmm, we lack knowledge.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Anthere wrote:
One problem I have with your list and with Jimbo's list is that they propose very few great candidates from Korea or Madagascar.
I agree with this concern, but how to address it? I do not know of any prominent leaders either "outside" or "inside" Wikipedia from either Korea or Madagascar... or similar places.
It is not hard to find community leaders in France and Germany and Holland and Italy and... all of the countries where the "international crowd" has good connections.
Since you have been travelling all over the world for now 2 years at least, I suppose you met some of those community leaders yourself.
Have you some names to suggest which we could hack ?
ant
Anthere wrote:
One problem I have with your list and with Jimbo's list is that they propose very few great candidates from Korea or Madagascar.
I agree with this concern, but how to address it? I do not know of any prominent leaders either "outside" or "inside" Wikipedia from either Korea or Madagascar... or similar places.
It is not hard to find community leaders in France and Germany and Holland and Italy and... all of the countries where the "international crowd" has good connections.
Since you have been travelling all over the world for now 2 years at least, I suppose you met some of those community leaders yourself.
Have you some names to suggest which we could hack ?
Well, I haven't been to Korea or Madagascar. :)
My travels have been mostly in Europe and the US.
In Taiwan, I met and liked very much Theodoranian and KJ. (I met many more Wikimedians there too, but those are the two with whom I spent the most time).
In India, I met no Wikipedians who are very active.
In Brazil, I met no Wikipedians at all... but I am going there next week (so is Soufron) and hopefully there will be a meetup in Rio.
The truth is, I am as Eurocentric as anyone, both in my travels and in my community friendships.... with possibly a bit more as mentioned above.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Anthere wrote:
One problem I have with your list and with Jimbo's list is that they propose very few great candidates from Korea or Madagascar.
I agree with this concern, but how to address it? I do not know of any prominent leaders either "outside" or "inside" Wikipedia from either Korea or Madagascar... or similar places.
It is not hard to find community leaders in France and Germany and Holland and Italy and... all of the countries where the "international crowd" has good connections.
Since you have been travelling all over the world for now 2 years at least, I suppose you met some of those community leaders yourself.
Have you some names to suggest which we could hack ?
Well, I haven't been to Korea or Madagascar. :)
My travels have been mostly in Europe and the US.
In Taiwan, I met and liked very much Theodoranian and KJ. (I met many more Wikimedians there too, but those are the two with whom I spent the most time).
In India, I met no Wikipedians who are very active.
In Brazil, I met no Wikipedians at all... but I am going there next week (so is Soufron) and hopefully there will be a meetup in Rio.
The truth is, I am as Eurocentric as anyone, both in my travels and in my community friendships.... with possibly a bit more as mentioned above.
Okay. But all the people you suggested to put on the board are americans (unless I am wrong about one). If you are Eurocentric, you surely have met some interesting personnalities whose experience would be valuable for us. Can you cite some names ?
Ant
Anthere wrote:
If you are Eurocentric, you surely have met some interesting personnalities whose experience would be valuable for us. Can you cite some names ?
For community members, I can easily come up with several names... basically, each of the top people in each of the chapters, for example. (For some of the new chapters, there are people I do not know.)
Kurt, Arne from Germany. Ryo, Soufron from France Alison from the UK Frieda from Italy
There are also the newer chapters which have wonderful and talented people. (And I should add that it is 1:15 AM and my mention of specific people above was not meant to leave out other people... these are a few who I have worked with a lot, and recently, but there are many others.)
For non-community people, people with an outside perspective, I am not sure that there are people of such global stature and fame as Lessig, Stallman, Moglen, Kapor, etc. I am very open to ideas to be sure (and some ideas have been offered... good ones.)
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Anthere wrote:
One problem I have with your list and with Jimbo's list is that they propose very few great candidates from Korea or Madagascar.
I agree with this concern, but how to address it? I do not know of any prominent leaders either "outside" or "inside" Wikipedia from either Korea or Madagascar... or similar places.
It is not hard to find community leaders in France and Germany and Holland and Italy and... all of the countries where the "international crowd" has good connections. It is harder to find community leaders in Japanese and Chinese... we know a few but there is unfortunately not as much communication there as we would like, etc.
In terms of well known outsiders to bring into the board for oversight and vision and specific talents, again, Korea and Madagascar and similar, hmm, we lack knowledge.
This is where contacts from within Wikimedia projects are very valuable. zh.wikipedia has a great many contriburors and interested participants, many of whom have "credentials" that I believe are exactly what you are looking for as well.
You seem to have discounted that Wikimedia users have a single mindset or background, but from my experience there is such a huge diversity in backgrounds and environments that there shouldn't be too much difficulty finding a few people from other places to be involved.
How about this list as potential "leaders" to represent Wikimedia projects from a chinese perspective:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Listusers/sysop
I'm sure the list can be narrowed, but it would be a place for me to at least start from.
I would argue that it would be very difficult to find a greater variety of individuals on this planet than lists of admins on the various Wikimedia projects. Indeed I would issue that as a challenge to anybody who might want to suggest any other group of approx 10,000 individuals that has more diversity in terms of languages spoken, political and religious backgrounds, and economic status.
Lord Voldemort wrote:
On 6/19/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!
Hey, didn't I hear Bill Gates will be free soon. ;-) --LV
I suggest we try to get _both_ Bill Gates _and_ RMS, just to see what would happen.
-- Neil
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!
-- ####################################################################### # Office: 1-727-231-0101 | Free Culture and Free Knowledge # # http://www.wikipedia.org | Building a free world # #######################################################################
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I'm sure I could do a google search for Richard Stallman and find out who he is, but as a newer member of the Wikimedia community, I have no clue who he is. The "needs no introduction" assumes that everyone is of a certain level regarding whose who in the world.
I know who Larry Lessig is because of his connection to the John Edwards campaign in 2004, but otherwise I'd be lost as to who he is to.
Sue Annesreed1234@yahoo.com
----- Original Message ---- From: Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 4:07:40 AM Subject: [Foundation-l] Opinions/suggestions for "outside" members of the board?
Richard Stallman - needs no introduction
On 6/19/06, Sue Reed sreed1234@yahoo.com wrote:
I'm sure I could do a google search for Richard Stallman and find out who he is, but as a newer member of the Wikimedia community, I have no clue who he is. The "needs no introduction" assumes that everyone is of a certain level regarding whose who in the world.
I know who Larry Lessig is because of his connection to the John Edwards campaign in 2004, but otherwise I'd be lost as to who he is to.
You should google then...
No offense intended, but if you don't know who most (if not all) of those people are, you're probably not informed enough about the sort of people we're looking for to provide meaningful input.
In any case, I think finding people involved with free content will be easy and all the people mentioned are reasonable choices (eben eben eben eben). Can we also find and consider people with experience in media/publishing and experience with large non-profits? I.e. any bored ex-NPR executives out there anyplace?
On 2006/6/19, Sue Reed sreed1234@yahoo.com:
I'm sure I could do a google search for Richard Stallman and find out who he is, but as a newer member of the Wikimedia community, I have no clue who he is. The "needs no introduction" assumes that everyone is of a certain level regarding whose who in the world.
According to Wikipedia (first paragraph of a much longer article:
Richard Matthew Stallman (frequently abbreviated to RMS) (born March 16, 1953) is the founder of the free software movement, the GNU Project, and the Free Software Foundation. An acclaimed hacker, his major accomplishments include Emacs (and the later GNU Emacs), the GNU C Compiler, and the GNU Debugger. He is also the author of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or GPL), the most widely-used free software license, which pioneered the concept of the copyleft.
I know who Larry Lessig is because of his connection to the John Edwards campaign in 2004, but otherwise I'd be lost as to who he is to.
Again from Wikipedia, but this time a bit deeper in the article: He is founder and chair of the Creative Commons and a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
And on those organisations: The Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others legally to build upon and share.
The Creative Commons website enables copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information.
The project provides several free licenses that copyright holders can use when releasing their works on the Web. They also provide RDF/XML metadata that describes the license and the work that makes it easier to automatically process and locate licensed works. They also provide a "Founders' Copyright" [1] contract, intended to re-create the effects of the original U.S. Copyright created by the founders of the U.S. Constitution.
All these efforts, and more, are done to counter the effects of what Creative Commons considers to be, in the words of chairman of the board Lawrence Lessig, a dominant and increasingly restrictive permission culture, "a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past".[2] Lessig maintains that modern culture is dominated by traditional content distributors in order to maintain and strengthen their monopolies on cultural products such as popular music and popular cinema, and that Creative Commons can provide alternatives to these restrictions.[3][4]
and: The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a non-profit advocacy and legal organization based in the United States with the stated purpose of being dedicated to preserving free speech rights such as those protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in the context of today's digital age. Its stated main goal is to educate the press, policymakers and the general public about civil liberties issues related to technology; and to act as a defender of those liberties.
Jimmy Wales 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!
I think appointment to the Board of outsiders is going to be a disaster which discourages participation in the middle level tasks between the casual dropin participants and the Board.
I would be interested in what experience people think is unavailable from the existing participants. If a summary of the skills and experience desired for specific tasks or responsibilities became available I suspect we could find people within the existing projects to run for election to the Board or for appointment to special committees.
If we need input from people who are famous for some reason we can invite them to address the mailing list or stand for election.
I would also be curious about how much time and effort these famous people have to apply to the Wikimedia Foundation Board's responsibilities. Are they finished with their prior responsibilities or they are so excellent that they can juggle responsibilities effectively on several Boards?
regards, lazyquasar
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
Seems to be a great guy. I've read his book "Free Culture" which I'd recommend to anyone who wants to know more about his perspective on what it is the free content movement is fighting for.
That said, I think one need only look to the license of that book (Creative Commons Attribution/Non-commercial) to see where there's room for concern as to whether his philosophy fits with Wikimedia.
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)
Don't know much about him.
Richard Stallman - needs no introduction
Could be interesting. I certainly like the idea behind his (abandoned) Gnupedia project currently at http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/free-encyclopedia.html. But putting him on the board, especially in an appointed as opposed to elected position, could very well cause a culture clash with the community.
Eben Moglen - main legal mastermind of the FSF
It's hard for me to tell what his philosophy is with regard to free content other than free software. I'd definitely love to see him on an advisory board.
Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!
How 'bout the guy who came up with the idea to use wiki software to build an encyclopedia? Larry Sanger! (yes Jimbo, that last comment was "trolling")
Anthony
All of these names, and several of those named later on in this thread, would be admirably suitable candidates for the advisory board. Whether they'd fit on the governing board or not is a touchier issue.
Kelly
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!
-- ####################################################################### # Office: 1-727-231-0101 | Free Culture and Free Knowledge # # http://www.wikipedia.org | Building a free world # #######################################################################
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I'll suggest three people who I think are great candidates for our board.
First, Brewster Kahle, founder of Alexa and the Internet Archive. According to our own article on Brewster, his personal goal is "Universal Access to all Knowledge", which seems pretty darn compatible. His actions consistently show that he takes this goal very seriously, and he would bring a huge wealth of practical experience in making knowledge distribution viable.
Second, Mike Godwin (of EFF, and Godwin's Law fame) might be a good choice. A prominent legal scholar with a dedication to freedom of speech, a great knowledge of the Internet, Mike could bring a solid and practical legal view to our board.
Finally, I suggest Mark Shuttleworth. An African citizen who was one of the first to form a business dedicated to privacy and security on the Internet, Mark is active in the Linux world and is involved in educational and access-to-knowledge projects. His presence could not only further internationalize our board, but it could help us work better with potential future business partners in actually delivering the knowledge our projects document.
-ilya
On 6/19/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!
Ilya Haykinson wrote:
First, Brewster Kahle, [...]
Second, Mike Godwin [...]
Finally, I suggest Mark Shuttleworth. [...]
Now those are the people I'd like to see. Madeleine Albright, on the other hand, is, by far, the worst suggestion, IMO.
Filip [Dungodung]
Ilya Haykinson <haykinson@...> writes:
I'll suggest three people who I think are great candidates for our board.
First, Brewster Kahle, founder of Alexa and the Internet Archive.
Second, Mike Godwin (of EFF, and Godwin's Law fame) might be a good choice.
Finally, I suggest Mark Shuttleworth. An African citizen who was one of the first to form a business dedicated to privacy and security on the Internet, Mark is active in the Linux world and is involved in educational and access-to-knowledge projects.
-ilya
Might I affirm that these three candidates are screamingly good, and each would be worth it to consider.
Joe
On 6/19/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
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
These are the obvious American free culture / free software representatives. As I've said before, we need to think carefully about what we are trying to achieve. If this is for the purpose of fundraising and expression of mutual respect (I know you are on the CC board already), then an Advisory Council would do just fine, and would allow us to put an arbitrary number of people there.
Would I want Eben Moglen, RMS or Larry Lessig to vote on our copyright policies, or on what new project to approve, or on what personnel to hire? Most likely not. Would I want Mitch Kapor, a key advocate of Mozilla's current corporate approach, to vote on whether Wikipedia should allow advertising? Definitely not. Nor do these people bring truly different perspectives to our organization that we do not already have. In other words, we do not have to search much in our community to find people who think exactly like RMS. Yes, they are crucially important in the movements they represent. But we are already well known and well established in that scene.
Please review the typical descriptions of non-profit Board responsibilities, e.g.: http://www.idealist.org/if/idealist/en/FAQ/QuestionViewer/default?section=03...
Note that I believe Wikimedia is substantially _different_ from typical non-profits, so any standard recipes do not apply. However, the responsiblities of the Board are fairly clear, and in our context, the Board -- even with a decreased role in day to day governance -- has a very substantive role in defining the future of our project. Deciding to literally give a share of that future to an outsider is a very serious move. Much more serious than, say, removing an inactive trustee from the Board.
If you go down the route of appointing a substantial number of outsiders, at the very least you should consider delegating a subset of that authority and responsiblity to an Executive Committee. But I don't see a strong reason to do this in the first place, and none has been put forward. What are the reasons we need RMS, Lessig, or Moglen on our regular governing Board?
Again, if you want fresh thinking on the governing Board, and people who actually participate, then I think we need to look in the worlds of - access to knowledge in the developing world - eLearning and ICT skills development - academia and education - languages, internationalization, localization - freedom of speech (think Chinese Wikipedia) - digitization, archiving and metadata - ...
These are areas which are not truly represented in our current group, nor can we easily find experts here in our community. They are, however, critical to the success of our organization. Again, I am not convinced we need these people on the governing Board, but I'd prefer someone who _doesn't_ have a strong, preformed opinion on many of the copyright and policy questions that will come up.
A group of only Americans would be regrettable. If you, in spite of my objections above, want people from the free software / free culture community, you might consider people like [[Georg Greve]] (FSF Europe), [[Volker Grassmuck]] (Wizards of OS organizer, has written an excellent book about free software / free culture), Markus Beckedahl (Netzwerk Neue Medien, very involved with Creative Commons), [[Konrad Becker]], someone from FFII.org, someone from CCC e.V., ... there are lots of possibilities. Jean-Baptiste should be able to come up with a few other good Euroepean suggestions, but I'd also like people from the developing world in particular.
Erik
On 6/19/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
Would I want Eben Moglen, RMS or Larry Lessig to vote on our copyright policies, or on what new project to approve, or on what personnel to hire? Most likely not. Would I want Mitch Kapor, a key advocate of Mozilla's current corporate approach, to vote on whether Wikipedia should allow advertising? Definitely not. Nor do these people bring truly different perspectives to our organization that we do not already have.
[snip]
Of course you don't. Should we decide to accept someone who is qualified and experienced it would preclude selecting you.
On 6/20/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Of course you don't. Should we decide to accept someone who is qualified and experienced it would preclude selecting you.
Is there a policy against personal attacks on this list?
Erik
On 6/19/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/20/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Of course you don't. Should we decide to accept someone who is qualified and experienced it would preclude selecting you.
Is there a policy against personal attacks on this list?
You're not qualified or experienced in terms of running a non-profit foundation or large scale publishing, this is a matter of fact. You are tireless politicking for a position on the board.
It would be inapproiate to quies criticism of board hopefuls.
If I am mistaken and you have no intention of ever serving on the board, please say so publicly and I'll apologise and never again point out that you never do much except worthless posturing.
Alternately you could spend some of the time you spend writing proposals and conjecture and instead get something done, and then perhaps I'd have a reason to support you rather than point out how inaccurate the claims you make about your own importance are...
On 6/20/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
It would be inapproiate to quies criticism of board hopefuls.
I will leave it to others to decide whether your comments represent a personal attack or not. If they do, and you continue to make them, I hope that you will be put on moderation. I do not participate in discourse on that level.
Erik
On 6/19/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/20/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
It would be inapproiate to quies criticism of board hopefuls.
I will leave it to others to decide whether your comments represent a personal attack or not. If they do, and you continue to make them, I hope that you will be put on moderation. I do not participate in discourse on that level.
I see you excerpted my post very carefully, and rather than simply point out factual inaccuracies in my claims thus proving me to be a fool you've left them stand, perhaps hoping your own playing the victim and shameless self promotion drown them out?
For someone usually so loud an opinionated you're awful quick to assume the role of a meek victim when it appears that you could gain from it.
I'm sorry, but my tolerance for listening to you pretend to be prince of the Wikimedia sandbox is completely dissipated when you dismiss the potential contributions from people with ample experience and proven trackrecords.
I wish that you still had that silly "Cheif Scientist" title so that you could pretend to be important without actually obstructing the organization.
On 6/20/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
For someone usually so loud an opinionated you're awful quick to assume the role of a meek victim when it appears that you could gain from it.
I am not at all meek, Gregory. However, I make an effort to contain my anger, and to transform it into productive energy. I will not dignify your messages with further responses.
Erik
On 6/19/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/20/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
It would be inapproiate to quies criticism of board hopefuls.
I will leave it to others to decide whether your comments represent a personal attack or not. If they do, and you continue to make them, I hope that you will be put on moderation. I do not participate in discourse on that level.
I thought it was a pretty entertaining retort. By promoting yourself for consideration you certainly leave yourself open when you criticize other possibilities.
On 6/20/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
I thought it was a pretty entertaining retort.
Perhaps. Watching chimpanzees beat each other up can be pretty entertaining, too. But if we are to adopt the social standards of chimpanzees on this mailing list, I demand some free grooming.
For the record, I have not criticized the people mentioned, and if my original message came across that way, I apologize. I have a lot of respect for all of them, and have worked closely with two of them. I have questioned the notion, as have others, of having opinionated outsiders on the _governing_ board of our organization (rather than in an advisory capacity), exactly because they are opinion leaders and very knowledgeable in the fields they work in, which are highly relevant to our day-to-day work, while having no involvement, experience and visibility in our community. I have mentioned before possible alternatives from other fields. None of them are me.
The notion that I am campaigning here is absurd. There is no election, and I have about as much a chance of getting appointed as Daniel Brandt or Sollog. And what a great honor it would be to be allowed to waste away more hours for Wikimedia without pay, while receiving a litany of complaints from people who want their sock puppets checked, their admins tarred and feathered, or their crackpot theories about using orgasmic energy to run jet engines featured on the Main Page -- all the while being accused of being part of some grand shadowy conspiracy to make every single human being on the planet read a copy of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead". I've lived with a Board member for a year, I know how much fun it can be. Am I anxious, eager, enthusiastic about the idea of joining in? "No, Kiddo, at this moment, this is me at my most -- masochistic."
Erik
So does that mean you are in or out?
On 6/20/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/20/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
I thought it was a pretty entertaining retort.
Perhaps. Watching chimpanzees beat each other up can be pretty entertaining, too. But if we are to adopt the social standards of chimpanzees on this mailing list, I demand some free grooming.
For the record, I have not criticized the people mentioned, and if my original message came across that way, I apologize. I have a lot of respect for all of them, and have worked closely with two of them. I have questioned the notion, as have others, of having opinionated outsiders on the _governing_ board of our organization (rather than in an advisory capacity), exactly because they are opinion leaders and very knowledgeable in the fields they work in, which are highly relevant to our day-to-day work, while having no involvement, experience and visibility in our community. I have mentioned before possible alternatives from other fields. None of them are me.
The notion that I am campaigning here is absurd. There is no election, and I have about as much a chance of getting appointed as Daniel Brandt or Sollog. And what a great honor it would be to be allowed to waste away more hours for Wikimedia without pay, while receiving a litany of complaints from people who want their sock puppets checked, their admins tarred and feathered, or their crackpot theories about using orgasmic energy to run jet engines featured on the Main Page -- all the while being accused of being part of some grand shadowy conspiracy to make every single human being on the planet read a copy of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead". I've lived with a Board member for a year, I know how much fun it can be. Am I anxious, eager, enthusiastic about the idea of joining in? "No, Kiddo, at this moment, this is me at my most -- masochistic."
Erik _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 6/20/06, Brad Patrick bradp.wmf@gmail.com wrote:
So does that mean you are in or out?
That sounds kinky. In or out of what?
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 6/20/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
I thought it was a pretty entertaining retort.
Perhaps. Watching chimpanzees beat each other up can be pretty entertaining, too. But if we are to adopt the social standards of chimpanzees on this mailing list, I demand some free grooming.
/me picks a bug from Erik hair. And eats it.
Seriously people, let's relax a notch or two, ok? I think we have to recognize that there is a fair amount of trolling going on in this list, which would naturally have the goal and purpose of putting good people like Erik, Cunctator, Anthere, me, and Gregory Maxwell at each others throats.
As far as I am aware, "Assume Good Faith" allows for much better conversations than all this sniping. :)
And what a great honor it would be to be allowed to waste away more hours for Wikimedia without pay, while receiving a litany of complaints from people who want their sock puppets checked, their admins tarred and feathered, or their crackpot theories about using orgasmic energy to run jet engines featured on the Main Page -- all the while being accused of being part of some grand shadowy conspiracy to make every single human being on the planet read a copy of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead".
Erik gets major points here for understanding what it is like. :)
--Jimbo
On 6/20/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
/me picks a bug from Erik hair.
Scary. You are spending too much time on IRC AND adopting Anthere's grammatical structure. :-)
Erik
Nah, Jimmy isn't turning into Anthere, nor is Anthere turning into Jimmy.
All the Wikimedians are very, very slowly merging and assimilating into each other as one grand Wikimedia being.
On 6/20/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/20/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
/me picks a bug from Erik hair.
Scary. You are spending too much time on IRC AND adopting Anthere's grammatical structure. :-)
Erik _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
James Hare wrote:
Nah, Jimmy isn't turning into Anthere, nor is Anthere turning into Jimmy.
All the Wikimedians are very, very slowly merging and assimilating into each other as one grand Wikimedia being.
The Borg?
Ec
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 6/20/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
/me picks a bug from Erik hair.
Scary. You are spending too much time on IRC AND adopting Anthere's grammatical structure. :-)
Erik
/me hopes Jimbo will adopt her board structure as well
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 6/19/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/20/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Of course you don't. Should we decide to accept someone who is qualified and experienced it would preclude selecting you.
Is there a policy against personal attacks on this list?
You're not qualified or experienced in terms of running a non-profit foundation or large scale publishing, this is a matter of fact. You are tireless politicking for a position on the board.
It would be inapproiate to quies criticism of board hopefuls.
If I am mistaken and you have no intention of ever serving on the board, please say so publicly and I'll apologise and never again point out that you never do much except worthless posturing.
Alternately you could spend some of the time you spend writing proposals and conjecture and instead get something done, and then perhaps I'd have a reason to support you rather than point out how inaccurate the claims you make about your own importance are...
Hoi, Sorry to butt in. But I can testify to Erik DOING things.. Have a look at http://wiktionaryz.org Much of the technical work done is his. Erik has published many designs for improvements of the MediaWiki software, asked for comments and modified the designs where needed. Many of these projects he proposed are now active parts of projects. Erik has had an effect on all projects; he was largely instrumental in creating Commons and Wikinews. You may not like the guy, you may not like his ideas but he certainly has proved that he influenced the Wikimedia Foundation and he is certainly one of the more influential people of our community
My question would be: do /you /know your who is who and, what is /your /claim to fame.. ?? I know you from the mailing lists ..
Thanks, GerardM
On 6/19/06, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
My question would be: do /you /know your who is who and, what is /your /claim to fame.. ?? I know you from the mailing lists ..
Can we stop all these pot shots and belly aching? Who gives a crap what people's credentials are at this point in time? If someone does decide to try for a Board position, _then_ you can critique him or her. Let's all act like grown ups here.
But to the point (and I am sure this has been proposed in some form before), for whomever mentioned here that is not eventually on the Board, why not just set aside a small portion of the budget to use as "consultant fees"? Those not on the Board, but whose opinions would help, could be taken on as consultants to make suggestions to the Board. Nothing would be concrete, but some of these people might not consult without getting paid. Others may simply require a nice official invitation from Jimmy or WMF in general.
I am under the impression that anyone can come in to make suggestions, but perhaps asking nicely would drum up some advice (if we are indeed looking for it). If much of this (consultant fees) has been suggested before, would you mind pointing in the right direction? Thanks. --LV
On 6/20/06, Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
But to the point (and I am sure this has been proposed in some form before), for whomever mentioned here that is not eventually on the Board, why not just set aside a small portion of the budget to use as "consultant fees"?
I think that is probably a good idea. I would like to hear Brad's thoughts on this, as he is now the legal counsel and interim director of the Foundation and can best estimate what level of outside expertise is required, at least on an operational level. One thing to keep in mind is that we can get a lot of pro bono help, and that this model works well in areas where advice is not critical.
Erik
Lord Voldemort wrote:
On 6/19/06, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
My question would be: do /you /know your who is who and, what is /your /claim to fame.. ?? I know you from the mailing lists ..
Can we stop all these pot shots and belly aching? Who gives a crap what people's credentials are at this point in time? If someone does decide to try for a Board position, _then_ you can critique him or her. Let's all act like grown ups here.
Errr... Erik explicitely said he was interested in a position on the board...
But whatever.
But to the point (and I am sure this has been proposed in some form before), for whomever mentioned here that is not eventually on the Board, why not just set aside a small portion of the budget to use as "consultant fees"? Those not on the Board, but whose opinions would help, could be taken on as consultants to make suggestions to the Board. Nothing would be concrete, but some of these people might not consult without getting paid. Others may simply require a nice official invitation from Jimmy or WMF in general.
I am under the impression that anyone can come in to make suggestions, but perhaps asking nicely would drum up some advice (if we are indeed looking for it). If much of this (consultant fees) has been suggested before, would you mind pointing in the right direction? Thanks. --LV
Actually... we have used advice from outside parties on a pro-bono basis. For newbie, that means someone accept to work for free for the Foundation - in exchange, they (the person or the firm) get some fame/advertisement and most presumably, this can be deduced as "gift to a charity" in term of tax. This was for example the case of Brad law firm and is the case as well for a PR agency giving us advice from time to time. Other "legal" entities have also helped against fees (I do not know if we got a "special" price).
I believe RMS and others regularly give "advice" to how the Foundation or the projects should be run (just as journalists, librairians etc do ...). These advices are given to Jimbo during conferences they attend together. We have from time to time some feedback about opinion of one or another about the way we should go for licensing or other topics... My only problem with this type of "advice" is that the advice is not given to the board, but to Jimbo. If the Foundation was to pay for advice, I would ask that the Foundation be informed. Not one member exclusively. This said, I would be hesitant to pay someone to give me some advice... with the full knowledge that the advice would be entached with the personal agenda of its provider (surely, Lessig would not advice us against his interest). Note that this is also the reason why I am not so happy with having a famous person with a strong agenda on the (governing) board.
ant
On 6/20/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Errr... Erik explicitely said he was interested in a position on the board...
Angela posted a recent thread "Would you consider being on the Board?" It seems that stating my explicit readiness to serve on the Board now makes constant accusations of "campaigning" and deep personal attacks of any kind allowable. Gregory was right about one thing: It's no surprise that only few people commented publicly in that thread. I was stupid enough to do so.
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 6/20/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Errr... Erik explicitely said he was interested in a position on the board...
Angela posted a recent thread "Would you consider being on the Board?" It seems that stating my explicit readiness to serve on the Board now makes constant accusations of "campaigning" and deep personal attacks of any kind allowable. Gregory was right about one thing: It's no surprise that only few people commented publicly in that thread. I was stupid enough to do so.
Erik
I do not think you were stupid to do so :-)
ant
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 6/19/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/20/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Of course you don't. Should we decide to accept someone who is qualified and experienced it would preclude selecting you.
Is there a policy against personal attacks on this list?
You're not qualified or experienced in terms of running a non-profit foundation or large scale publishing, this is a matter of fact. You are tireless politicking for a position on the board.
It would be inapproiate to quies criticism of board hopefuls.
If I am mistaken and you have no intention of ever serving on the board, please say so publicly and I'll apologise and never again point out that you never do much except worthless posturing.
Alternately you could spend some of the time you spend writing proposals and conjecture and instead get something done, and then perhaps I'd have a reason to support you rather than point out how inaccurate the claims you make about your own importance are...
Hoi, Sorry to butt in. But I can testify to Erik DOING things.. Have a look at http://wiktionaryz.org Much of the technical work done is his. Erik has published many designs for improvements of the MediaWiki software, asked for comments and modified the designs where needed. Many of these projects he proposed are now active parts of projects. Erik has had an effect on all projects; he was largely instrumental in creating Commons and Wikinews. You may not like the guy, you may not like his ideas but he certainly has proved that he influenced the Wikimedia Foundation and he is certainly one of the more influential people of our community
My question would be: do /you /know your who is who and, what is /your /claim to fame.. ?? I know you from the mailing lists ..
Thanks, GerardM
Hello,
When personA questions personB importance/authority in an organisation, that does not mean personA claims to be famous himself.
Ant
Anthere wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 6/19/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/20/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Of course you don't. Should we decide to accept someone who is qualified and experienced it would preclude selecting you.
Is there a policy against personal attacks on this list?
You're not qualified or experienced in terms of running a non-profit foundation or large scale publishing, this is a matter of fact. You are tireless politicking for a position on the board.
It would be inapproiate to quies criticism of board hopefuls.
If I am mistaken and you have no intention of ever serving on the board, please say so publicly and I'll apologise and never again point out that you never do much except worthless posturing.
Alternately you could spend some of the time you spend writing proposals and conjecture and instead get something done, and then perhaps I'd have a reason to support you rather than point out how inaccurate the claims you make about your own importance are...
Hoi, Sorry to butt in. But I can testify to Erik DOING things.. Have a look at http://wiktionaryz.org Much of the technical work done is his. Erik has published many designs for improvements of the MediaWiki software, asked for comments and modified the designs where needed. Many of these projects he proposed are now active parts of projects. Erik has had an effect on all projects; he was largely instrumental in creating Commons and Wikinews. You may not like the guy, you may not like his ideas but he certainly has proved that he influenced the Wikimedia Foundation and he is certainly one of the more influential people of our community
My question would be: do /you /know your who is who and, what is /your /claim to fame.. ?? I know you from the mailing lists ..
Thanks, GerardM
Hello,
When personA questions personB importance/authority in an organisation, that does not mean personA claims to be famous himself.
Ant
Hoi, PersonA did not question either importance or authority, he questioned personB's capability. After pointing out that personB has a track record of accomplishments, it makes sense to ask whether personA knows what he is talking about. It makes as much sense to ask what accomplishments personA has as this might indicate first hand experience. Thanks, GerardM
On 6/19/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/19/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
Would I want Eben Moglen, RMS or Larry Lessig to vote on our copyright policies, or on what new project to approve, or on what personnel to hire? Most likely not. Would I want Mitch Kapor, a key advocate of Mozilla's current corporate approach, to vote on whether Wikipedia should allow advertising? Definitely not. Nor do these people bring truly different perspectives to our organization that we do not already have.
[snip]
Of course you don't.
I gave a brief explanation of what I think Erik is talking about wrt Larry Lessig. For an example of the dispute, see also http://intelligentdesigns.net/blog/?p=25
His problem with Mitch Kapor seems clear. For more background see [[Mozilla Corporation]].
I'm not sure what his problem with RMS and Eben Moglen are.
These people don't bring particularly different perspectives to the organization, but I do think their input is useful, because they represent some of the most influential people with regard to those perspectives. I'd love to have RMS and Larry Lessig battling it out on this mailing list over how best to implement Wikimedia project copyright policies (with Eben Moglen presenting his own opinions as to how best to implement these policies). But I think it's pretty obvious that they're already invited to do so.
Unfortunately I don't know much about Mitch Kapor. But given what I do know I would love to hear his input on how best to bring sustainable revenue to the foundation. This doesn't mean I know enough to say he should be given a vote.
As I alluded to of those 4 people I'd probably be willing to give RMS a shot. From what I've seen he definitely seems to have the integrity I'd want from a board member.
Anthony
On 6/19/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I gave a brief explanation of what I think Erik is talking about wrt Larry Lessig. For an example of the dispute, see also http://intelligentdesigns.net/blog/?p=25
So you believe Erik opposed Lessig for being pragmatic enough to believe that there is a place in the world for unfree but not outrageously limited content?
I'd hope that Lessig would realize that "free as in beer" media is already done rather well by NPR, and that while there is a place in the world for unfree things, that place isn't Wikimedia. I'd hope so, and nothing from my limited conversations with him has suggested otherwise... It would seem to be rather disrespectful to dismiss him on the basis of such presumptions.
His problem with Mitch Kapor seems clear. For more background see [[Mozilla Corporation]].
I'm not sure what his problem with RMS and Eben Moglen are.
As above these people have a proven track record and substantial experience. They may hold some views which are incompatible, but we can't know that based on assumptions and our own criticisms related to circumstances which are vastly different from our own... It's clear that they all have vision and experience which could benefit us, and a proven trackrecord to back up their claims. It's not like anyone is discussing handing them board seats without discussion.
These people don't bring particularly different perspectives to the organization, but I do think their input is useful, because they represent some of the most influential people with regard to those perspectives. I'd love to have RMS and Larry Lessig battling it out on this mailing list over how best to implement Wikimedia project copyright policies (with Eben Moglen presenting his own opinions as to how best to implement these policies). But I think it's pretty obvious that they're already invited to do so.
Presumably they aren't here arguing on the list because they are busy getting something done. :)
Unfortunately I don't know much about Mitch Kapor. But given what I do know I would love to hear his input on how best to bring sustainable revenue to the foundation. This doesn't mean I know enough to say he should be given a vote.
Absolutely, I don't know enough either. But I know enough not to dismiss them off hand...
The claim that we're so different from everything non-profit, everything free culture, etc.. It sounds rather ridiculous to me.
As I alluded to of those 4 people I'd probably be willing to give RMS a shot. From what I've seen he definitely seems to have the integrity I'd want from a board member.
People are very polarized about RMS. I think people fall into three groups about him, people who are just clueless, people who respect his work but have never argued with him, and people who have had an argument with RMS. (Arguing with RMS is like arguing with a highly intelligent brick wall). :)
On 6/19/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/19/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I gave a brief explanation of what I think Erik is talking about wrt Larry Lessig. For an example of the dispute, see also http://intelligentdesigns.net/blog/?p=25
So you believe Erik opposed Lessig for being pragmatic enough to believe that there is a place in the world for unfree but not outrageously limited content?
I won't speak for Erik, but I've read enough by Lessig to know that his philosophy on this matter goes well beyond mere pragmatism. Lessig doesn't just recognize that he lives in a world with unfree content, that's the world he wants to live in.
I'd hope that Lessig would realize that "free as in beer" media is already done rather well by NPR, and that while there is a place in the world for unfree things, that place isn't Wikimedia. I'd hope so, and nothing from my limited conversations with him has suggested otherwise... It would seem to be rather disrespectful to dismiss him on the basis of such presumptions.
I don't think he should be dismissed completely. I just don't think it's appropriate to put him on the governing board, especially a strong governing board with essentially no limits on its power, without the community first getting to know him, within the context of Wikimedia, a lot more.
His problem with Mitch Kapor seems clear. For more background see [[Mozilla Corporation]].
I'm not sure what his problem with RMS and Eben Moglen are.
As above these people have a proven track record and substantial experience. They may hold some views which are incompatible, but we can't know that based on assumptions and our own criticisms related to circumstances which are vastly different from our own...
And that is precisely why I don't think it's a good idea to put outsiders on the governing board in the first place.
It's clear that they all have vision and experience which could benefit us, and a proven trackrecord to back up their claims. It's not like anyone is discussing handing them board seats without discussion.
If you think there's going to be a public announcement that X is being considered for appointment to the board, and that the community now has a chance to interview the candidate and see how well he or she fits in with Wikimedia, I think you're sadly mistaken. I'm under the assumption that this *is* that discussion. It seems to be going about similar to the discussion over who to name as the chief executive.
These people don't bring particularly different perspectives to the organization, but I do think their input is useful, because they represent some of the most influential people with regard to those perspectives. I'd love to have RMS and Larry Lessig battling it out on this mailing list over how best to implement Wikimedia project copyright policies (with Eben Moglen presenting his own opinions as to how best to implement these policies). But I think it's pretty obvious that they're already invited to do so.
Presumably they aren't here arguing on the list because they are busy getting something done. :)
I would think, considering your participation in this discussion, that engaging in open dialogue with the goal of determining the right thing to do is often just as useful as actually doing it.
Unfortunately I don't know much about Mitch Kapor. But given what I do know I would love to hear his input on how best to bring sustainable revenue to the foundation. This doesn't mean I know enough to say he should be given a vote.
Absolutely, I don't know enough either. But I know enough not to dismiss them off hand...
Maybe I've done that, and if so I guess I shouldn't have. But I repeat the question asked by others in this thread. What is the purpose of putting one of these people on the board in the first place? What is the purpose that isn't served equally by some other position?
Anthony
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
I won't speak for Erik, but I've read enough by Lessig to know that his philosophy on this matter goes well beyond mere pragmatism. Lessig doesn't just recognize that he lives in a world with unfree content, that's the world he wants to live in.
Well, I wouldn't want to live a world with only "free" content.
On 6/20/06, Paweł Dembowski fallout@lexx.eu.org wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
I won't speak for Erik, but I've read enough by Lessig to know that his philosophy on this matter goes well beyond mere pragmatism. Lessig doesn't just recognize that he lives in a world with unfree content, that's the world he wants to live in.
Well, I wouldn't want to live a world with only "free" content.
And I wouldn't want you on the board of Wikimedia.
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Well, I wouldn't want to live a world with only "free" content.
And I wouldn't want you on the board of Wikimedia.
I never said I wanted to be on the board. Anyway, free content has its advantages, but I don't see it as either realistic or even good for it to replace all other sorts of content in all situations.
On 6/20/06, Paweł Dembowski fallout@lexx.eu.org wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Well, I wouldn't want to live a world with only "free" content.
And I wouldn't want you on the board of Wikimedia.
I never said I wanted to be on the board. Anyway, free content has its advantages, but I don't see it as either realistic or even good for it to replace all other sorts of content in all situations.
I don't know. I bet a lot of people a few years ago would have said it wasn't realistic to create a free encyclopia that anyone could edit. Now I have my doubts as to whether or not free quality fiction will ever catch on, but fiction is rather outside the scope of Wikimedia, and if it were realistic I certainly think it'd be a good thing.
Anthony
Paweł Dembowski wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Well, I wouldn't want to live a world with only "free" content.
And I wouldn't want you on the board of Wikimedia.
I never said I wanted to be on the board. Anyway, free content has its advantages, but I don't see it as either realistic or even good for it to replace all other sorts of content in all situations.
I absolutely agree with Paweł here, and so would (for example) Richard Stallman. There are certain types of works which are better off freely licensed, and certain types of works which are not.
Anthony DiPierro holds a different position. Enough said.
--Jimbo
On 6/20/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Paweł Dembowski wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Well, I wouldn't want to live a world with only "free" content.
And I wouldn't want you on the board of Wikimedia.
I never said I wanted to be on the board. Anyway, free content has its advantages, but I don't see it as either realistic or even good for it to replace all other sorts of content in all situations.
I absolutely agree with Paweł here, and so would (for example) Richard Stallman. There are certain types of works which are better off freely licensed, and certain types of works which are not.
Anthony DiPierro holds a different position. Enough said.
I'm not even sure what position you're claiming that I hold (or what position you're claiming Richard Stallman holds, for that matter).
Enough said? No, either too much said, or too little said.
Anthony
On 6/20/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I'm not sure what his problem with RMS and Eben Moglen are.
I don't have a "problem" with _any_ of the people listed bringing their substantial experience and allowing us to benefit from it. I have worked closely with Larry and Richard on the Free Content Definition, and their detailed and qualified feedback has been instrumental to get to the point where we are now. Doing so has also shown me how very different their perspectives are.
Their tremendous qualifications and immense contributions to our broader movement aside, as I said (and as Kelly Martin also pointed out), I think we need to think carefully about whether they need to be on the _governing_ Board of the organization.
RMS and Larry Lessig "battling it out", as you say, on the mailing list is one thing; them actually voting on whether we should adopt this or that licensing model is quite another. Here I think a full and deep understanding of the needs and practices of the community is required to make a well-informed decision, based, quite possibly, on the actively solicited _input_ of people like the ones mentioned.
For instance, RMS is a strong advocate of copyleft. Wikinews chose to adopt CC-BY, without copyleft. I could easily see such a decision escalating to a significant and avoidable Board level conflict. I could also see one of these appointees holding a key vote in a split decision. I would prefer the final call to always be made by he community, or at least by members of the Board who have some long term involvement there.
This concern is somewhat made obsolete if we choose to adopt an Executive Committee (a subset of the Board which reports to the Board), and where people like the ones mentioned would likely not participate due to time constraints alone. However, it remains true in any case that the Board is the final legal authority of the organization, and can restructure it as it requires.
I favor a Board fully elected by the community, which makes its strategic and organizational decisions based on a broad and diverse basis of information. An Advisory Council strikes me as the best way to achieve this. Failing such a Board setup, I would prefer appointees from outside fields that are not represented in our current group, and who will abstain on some of the issues where their qualifications do not come into play.
Erik
Jimmy Wales 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.
Sorry if the issue I'll talk about has already been raised (if so, I missed it), but the real matter for me is not "who", but "for what". I mean, before itemizing people and draft the Ideal Wiki Board, one should think about the role of the appointed members.
IMO, it would be *great* to enjoy new ideas from people standing outside the Wikimedia bubble, since it certainly brings fresh air in our daily reflexion. But, I'm not going a bundle on a board which would have a majority of appointed members, especially if the appointed members were to be able to vote (ie. define the Foundation policy). I'm not underlying any "lack of confidence" in external point of views, by the way; but if we do look for people with different, fresh ideas, it is first and foremost to extract from those ideas some elements we, the meta community, would consider appropriate to our projects. The "meta community" here is its representants on the board, at least in the current structure.
For example, I'm not convinced that a business man, who could advocate for adding advertising in Wikipedia to streamline projects organization, would 1) get a positive feedback from the projects users 2) would be harmless to the projects, if he were able to vote for this proposal.
Several commitees have been launched this year. It's a great, great improvement, because it's a way for Wikimedia to have its member *and some external folks* working on concrete parts of the projects. Thus, I think it would be rather logical to have the Big Names (from Lessing to Moglen, to list some of your email) acting as first-class *adviser*, not as Wikimedia *leaders*.
If you (the current board, I guess) were to go the other way, ie. appointed members as leaders, a re-think of the community role should be done IMO. Some talked about a WikiCouncil somme weeks ago, a place were the community could discuss and make formal proposals/claims.
I do know the community is seperated from the foundation, but it would be a disaster if the community were to feel the foundation has betrayed projects users, wouldn't it?
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!
On Jun 19, 2006, at 5:07 AM, Jimmy Wales 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!
I have always viewed Jimbo's suggestion that we "distribute a paper encyclopedia to African children" as quixotic but I have in connection with a possible board member wondered if we could create a series of documents which focus on public health which would prove useful in Africa, possibly also in China and other regions, and be worth distributing as part of a public health education campaign. There was lately a cholera epidemic in Angola which affected most of the country. There is a lot of ignorance involved in this sort of situation. I don't see this project so much directed to children as to local decision makers. It would contain information about disease and disease prevention, etc. The question, bottom line, is would a project of this nature actually prove effective? Or should we first see if we could even mobilize around it? One of the good aspects regarding this possible board member is that he is a hands on, computer literate guy with experience in give and take.
Fred
-- ###################################################################### # # Office: 1-727-231-0101 | Free Culture and Free Knowledge # # http://www.wikipedia.org | Building a free world # ###################################################################### # _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Fred Bauder wrote:
On Jun 19, 2006, at 5:07 AM, Jimmy Wales 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!
I have always viewed Jimbo's suggestion that we "distribute a paper encyclopedia to African children" as quixotic but I have in connection with a possible board member wondered if we could create a series of documents which focus on public health which would prove useful in Africa, possibly also in China and other regions, and be worth distributing as part of a public health education campaign. There was lately a cholera epidemic in Angola which affected most of the country. There is a lot of ignorance involved in this sort of situation. I don't see this project so much directed to children as to local decision makers. It would contain information about disease and disease prevention, etc. The question, bottom line, is would a project of this nature actually prove effective? Or should we first see if we could even mobilize around it? One of the good aspects regarding this possible board member is that he is a hands on, computer literate guy with experience in give and take.
Fred
I might be interested in the guy name ;-)
Regarding "would a project of this nature actually prove effective", I am giving a presentation end of august in an international health forum (http://www.hcuge.ch/genevahealthforum/) and this is exactly the type of question I hope can receive a beginning of an answer.
I do not really believe we can mobilize around it before setting up a framework around. We need partners for such project and these partners input will be essential to define which content should be included or not included, and what the audience would be.
However, admittedly, what I would worry about is, if a framework is set, with partners and of course, a deadline, I am not sure we would succeed to mobilize enough and in a sufficiently effective way to respect the limits. I think we can do huge things, but generally, we are bad with deadlines because a volunteer may come and go.
Also, one of the reasons why Wikipedia typically is successful is that it can be build by tiny bits. Doing just a bit is easy. A little step that most of us can climb without too much efforts. It is much more of a problem to participate to a long term project, in which significant amounts of efforts must be brought be each contributor.
Ant
Anthere wrote:
Fred Bauder wrote:
I have always viewed Jimbo's suggestion that we "distribute a paper encyclopedia to African children" as quixotic but I have in connection with a possible board member wondered if we could create a series of documents which focus on public health which would prove useful in Africa, possibly also in China and other regions, and be worth distributing as part of a public health education campaign. There was lately a cholera epidemic in Angola which affected most of the country. There is a lot of ignorance involved in this sort of situation. I don't see this project so much directed to children as to local decision makers. It would contain information about disease and disease prevention, etc. The question, bottom line, is would a project of this nature actually prove effective? Or should we first see if we could even mobilize around it? One of the good aspects regarding this possible board member is that he is a hands on, computer literate guy with experience in give and take.
Regarding "would a project of this nature actually prove effective", I am giving a presentation end of august in an international health forum (http://www.hcuge.ch/genevahealthforum/) and this is exactly the type of question I hope can receive a beginning of an answer.
I do not really believe we can mobilize around it before setting up a framework around. We need partners for such project and these partners input will be essential to define which content should be included or not included, and what the audience would be.
However, admittedly, what I would worry about is, if a framework is set, with partners and of course, a deadline, I am not sure we would succeed to mobilize enough and in a sufficiently effective way to respect the limits. I think we can do huge things, but generally, we are bad with deadlines because a volunteer may come and go.
Also, one of the reasons why Wikipedia typically is successful is that it can be build by tiny bits. Doing just a bit is easy. A little step that most of us can climb without too much efforts. It is much more of a problem to participate to a long term project, in which significant amounts of efforts must be brought be each contributor.
The idea is commendable but strikes me as well beyond the scope of the things we do. We are more in a kind of educational publishing business rather than a vehicle for mibilising health care. Our information could include medical information, but publishing that information is not enough. We could include "The Barefoot Doctor's Manual" in Wikisource. (The English translation was published by the National Institute of Health in 1974, and that would likely make it copyright free as a US government publication despite the claims of subsequent reprinters.)
But the advances in Chinese medical practice at that time involved more than just publishing a book. It was a textbook for teaching. Putting it on-line won't do much for people who don't have computers. What the barefoot doctor mobilization did in China was was bring medical care to rural areas where no care at all was previously available; one should not, therefore, judge the skill of these practitioners by reference to the medical personel in developed countries where there is access to sophisticated equipment and drugs.
What's needed is to mobilize local people, give them a basic level of medical training, and send them out through the country where, as much as possible, they can use indiginous supplies in the practice of medicine. This may seem like quackery by Western standards, but it's better than the nothing that that public currently has. Our role in this can only be very limited.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Anthere wrote:
Fred Bauder wrote:
I have always viewed Jimbo's suggestion that we "distribute a paper encyclopedia to African children" as quixotic but I have in connection with a possible board member wondered if we could create a series of documents which focus on public health which would prove useful in Africa, possibly also in China and other regions, and be worth distributing as part of a public health education campaign. There was lately a cholera epidemic in Angola which affected most of the country. There is a lot of ignorance involved in this sort of situation. I don't see this project so much directed to children as to local decision makers. It would contain information about disease and disease prevention, etc. The question, bottom line, is would a project of this nature actually prove effective? Or should we first see if we could even mobilize around it? One of the good aspects regarding this possible board member is that he is a hands on, computer literate guy with experience in give and take.
Regarding "would a project of this nature actually prove effective", I am giving a presentation end of august in an international health forum (http://www.hcuge.ch/genevahealthforum/) and this is exactly the type of question I hope can receive a beginning of an answer.
I do not really believe we can mobilize around it before setting up a framework around. We need partners for such project and these partners input will be essential to define which content should be included or not included, and what the audience would be.
However, admittedly, what I would worry about is, if a framework is set, with partners and of course, a deadline, I am not sure we would succeed to mobilize enough and in a sufficiently effective way to respect the limits. I think we can do huge things, but generally, we are bad with deadlines because a volunteer may come and go.
Also, one of the reasons why Wikipedia typically is successful is that it can be build by tiny bits. Doing just a bit is easy. A little step that most of us can climb without too much efforts. It is much more of a problem to participate to a long term project, in which significant amounts of efforts must be brought be each contributor.
The idea is commendable but strikes me as well beyond the scope of the things we do. We are more in a kind of educational publishing business rather than a vehicle for mibilising health care. Our information could include medical information, but publishing that information is not enough. We could include "The Barefoot Doctor's Manual" in Wikisource. (The English translation was published by the National Institute of Health in 1974, and that would likely make it copyright free as a US government publication despite the claims of subsequent reprinters.)
But the advances in Chinese medical practice at that time involved more than just publishing a book. It was a textbook for teaching. Putting it on-line won't do much for people who don't have computers. What the barefoot doctor mobilization did in China was was bring medical care to rural areas where no care at all was previously available; one should not, therefore, judge the skill of these practitioners by reference to the medical personel in developed countries where there is access to sophisticated equipment and drugs.
What's needed is to mobilize local people, give them a basic level of medical training, and send them out through the country where, as much as possible, they can use indiginous supplies in the practice of medicine. This may seem like quackery by Western standards, but it's better than the nothing that that public currently has. Our role in this can only be very limited.
Ec
Hoi, If we want to make a difference in Africa, we should make Africa more relevant. This is something that is not impossible, we should however consider the issues that we face to support Africa.
* Our user interface is not localised for the many African languages * Many people are reluctant to edit and have a bias against their own language * Due to "peering agreements" traffic from Europe or America is REALLY expensive and slow to reach Africa * We should spend more effort on African subjects in the Arab, English and French wikipedia
Localising the MediaWiki user interface is a job that takes in between two days and a week. It takes a week when the vocabulary does not exist in language. This means some research. Particularly the languages where Microsoft or Open Office have done there thing should be in relative good shape for the many other languages it is just a lot of work. This work can be done by people we pay or by people an NGO pays. In my opinion it is best when we do not pay and that it is done within existing organisations. When an NGO organises this, it is software that they are likely to use as well.. This helps a lot.
Many people who are literate in one language are semi-literate in their mother tongue. When they edit, they expect the same level of completeness, the same consistency of spelling. Many languages however do not have one formalised orthography and for many people this hinders rather than helps. When an NGO uses MediaWiki to spread its own message, people will see how it can be done. Getting a message in their own language is really powerful from a marketing point of view. It will also help make it easier for people to start contributing.. (Wikipedia is very much monkey see, monkey do)
We could have some servers in Africa... There is some reluctance of the developers to overcome.. We could hope that the project of the Vrije Universiteit bears fruit.. and help it where we can. With this project successful, it would mean a peer to peer MediaWiki whereby content is near the people that want it.
When we want to make Wikipedia itself more relevant, there is nothing stopping us, we can enrich the content about Africa. It is still very poor compared to what we know about the first world.
Oh yes, and when you want medical information, it is good to know that medical subjects have a mondial relevance. Would it work? Sure, but do not forget that people are looking for sex, sport and politics first in Wikipedia and it is important to get all the eyeballs that we can get.
Thanks, GerardM
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Anthere wrote:
Fred Bauder wrote:
I have always viewed Jimbo's suggestion that we "distribute a paper encyclopedia to African children" as quixotic but I have in connection with a possible board member wondered if we could create a series of documents which focus on public health which would prove useful in Africa, possibly also in China and other regions, and be worth distributing as part of a public health education campaign. There was lately a cholera epidemic in Angola which affected most of the country. There is a lot of ignorance involved in this sort of situation. I don't see this project so much directed to children as to local decision makers. It would contain information about disease and disease prevention, etc. The question, bottom line, is would a project of this nature actually prove effective? Or should we first see if we could even mobilize around it? One of the good aspects regarding this possible board member is that he is a hands on, computer literate guy with experience in give and take.
Regarding "would a project of this nature actually prove effective", I am giving a presentation end of august in an international health forum (http://www.hcuge.ch/genevahealthforum/) and this is exactly the type of question I hope can receive a beginning of an answer.
I do not really believe we can mobilize around it before setting up a framework around. We need partners for such project and these partners input will be essential to define which content should be included or not included, and what the audience would be.
However, admittedly, what I would worry about is, if a framework is set, with partners and of course, a deadline, I am not sure we would succeed to mobilize enough and in a sufficiently effective way to respect the limits. I think we can do huge things, but generally, we are bad with deadlines because a volunteer may come and go.
Also, one of the reasons why Wikipedia typically is successful is that it can be build by tiny bits. Doing just a bit is easy. A little step that most of us can climb without too much efforts. It is much more of a problem to participate to a long term project, in which significant amounts of efforts must be brought be each contributor.
The idea is commendable but strikes me as well beyond the scope of the things we do. We are more in a kind of educational publishing business rather than a vehicle for mibilising health care. Our information could include medical information, but publishing that information is not enough. We could include "The Barefoot Doctor's Manual" in Wikisource. (The English translation was published by the National Institute of Health in 1974, and that would likely make it copyright free as a US government publication despite the claims of subsequent reprinters.)
But the advances in Chinese medical practice at that time involved more than just publishing a book. It was a textbook for teaching. Putting it on-line won't do much for people who don't have computers. What the barefoot doctor mobilization did in China was was bring medical care to rural areas where no care at all was previously available; one should not, therefore, judge the skill of these practitioners by reference to the medical personel in developed countries where there is access to sophisticated equipment and drugs.
What's needed is to mobilize local people, give them a basic level of medical training, and send them out through the country where, as much as possible, they can use indiginous supplies in the practice of medicine. This may seem like quackery by Western standards, but it's better than the nothing that that public currently has. Our role in this can only be very limited.
Ec
Hoi, If we want to make a difference in Africa, we should make Africa more relevant. This is something that is not impossible, we should however consider the issues that we face to support Africa.
- Our user interface is not localised for the many African languages
- Many people are reluctant to edit and have a bias against their own
language
- Due to "peering agreements" traffic from Europe or America is REALLY
expensive and slow to reach Africa
- We should spend more effort on African subjects in the Arab, English
and French wikipedia
Localising the MediaWiki user interface is a job that takes in between two days and a week. It takes a week when the vocabulary does not exist in language. This means some research. Particularly the languages where Microsoft or Open Office have done there thing should be in relative good shape for the many other languages it is just a lot of work. This work can be done by people we pay or by people an NGO pays. In my opinion it is best when we do not pay and that it is done within existing organisations. When an NGO organises this, it is software that they are likely to use as well.. This helps a lot.
Many people who are literate in one language are semi-literate in their mother tongue. When they edit, they expect the same level of completeness, the same consistency of spelling. Many languages however do not have one formalised orthography and for many people this hinders rather than helps. When an NGO uses MediaWiki to spread its own message, people will see how it can be done. Getting a message in their own language is really powerful from a marketing point of view. It will also help make it easier for people to start contributing.. (Wikipedia is very much monkey see, monkey do)
We could have some servers in Africa... There is some reluctance of the developers to overcome.. We could hope that the project of the Vrije Universiteit bears fruit.. and help it where we can. With this project successful, it would mean a peer to peer MediaWiki whereby content is near the people that want it.
Hello
How having servers in Africa would help the goal ?
Ant
When we want to make Wikipedia itself more relevant, there is nothing stopping us, we can enrich the content about Africa. It is still very poor compared to what we know about the first world.
Oh yes, and when you want medical information, it is good to know that medical subjects have a mondial relevance. Would it work? Sure, but do not forget that people are looking for sex, sport and politics first in Wikipedia and it is important to get all the eyeballs that we can get.
Thanks, GerardM
Anthere wrote:
Hello
How having servers in Africa would help the goal ?
Ant
Hoi, African ISP's pay for traffic coming from America or Europe. Consequently the speed of American and European websites is really poor. Within Africa, African websites perform as we would expect them to. By having servers in Africa the speed in which we serve our pages would be dramatically better. I would argue that we should have our projects in African languages completely in Africa and do caching for English and French as well.
Hosting in Africa is not as cheap as in either America or Europe. Bandwidth is much more expensive. It would be good to find a partner who would pay the hosting of our content. There are plenty of universities and NGO's who could provide part of such a service. Universities can provide expertise and NGO's the funding.
The signal value of us having servers in Africa is very important. It would help us not only in getting more readers, it would help our localisation effort. It would help the adoption of MediaWiki as a platform to provide information. The marketing value for our projects is really big. It would also help make the use of African languages acceptable by providing content.
Thanks, GerardM
PS these are the latest *localisation *statistics and the problematic messages: http://nike.users.idler.fi/betawiki/Localisation_statistics http://nike.users.idler.fi/dev/problems.txt
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Anthere wrote:
Hello
How having servers in Africa would help the goal ?
Ant
Hoi, African ISP's pay for traffic coming from America or Europe. Consequently the speed of American and European websites is really poor. Within Africa, African websites perform as we would expect them to. By having servers in Africa the speed in which we serve our pages would be dramatically better. I would argue that we should have our projects in African languages completely in Africa and do caching for English and French as well.
By dramatically, what do you mean ? Do you have statistics to show the speed of delivery for a same page, in USA, in the Netherlands and in South Africa ?
Hosting in Africa is not as cheap as in either America or Europe. Bandwidth is much more expensive. It would be good to find a partner who would pay the hosting of our content. There are plenty of universities and NGO's who could provide part of such a service. Universities can provide expertise and NGO's the funding.
But would the drawbacks of finding and coping with a partner be significant with regards to the current percentage of readers for which there would be an improvment and for the level of improvement ?
The signal value of us having servers in Africa is very important. It would help us not only in getting more readers,
Frankly... I do not follow you here. Whether the site is hosted in Africa or hosted somewhere else is likely to be invisible to the great majority of reader. I gather most will not care... nor even ask themselves who host the site. Actually most readers have no idea what hosting means...
it would help our
localisation effort.
I do not see how hosting the site on the African continent (say South Africa) will increase the percentage of translation of the software...
It would help the adoption of MediaWiki as a
platform to provide information.
Which might be nice, but is not the goal of the Foundation.
The marketing value for our projects is
really big.
I am not convinced. We also have hosting provided in Korea. Do you think it improved marketing value of our projects in Asia ? Do you have figures ?
It would also help make the use of African languages
acceptable by providing content.
I certainly see the benefit of having mediawiki interface translated, I just fail to see how hosting Wikipedia and other sites in Africa will help use of African languages more acceptable :-(
Thanks, GerardM
PS these are the latest *localisation *statistics and the problematic messages: http://nike.users.idler.fi/betawiki/Localisation_statistics http://nike.users.idler.fi/dev/problems.txt
Interesting data !
Anthere wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Anthere wrote:
Hello
How having servers in Africa would help the goal ?
Ant
Hoi, African ISP's pay for traffic coming from America or Europe. Consequently the speed of American and European websites is really poor. Within Africa, African websites perform as we would expect them to. By having servers in Africa the speed in which we serve our pages would be dramatically better. I would argue that we should have our projects in African languages completely in Africa and do caching for English and French as well.
By dramatically, what do you mean ? Do you have statistics to show the speed of delivery for a same page, in USA, in the Netherlands and in South Africa ?
I base this information on what I learned from the many people I spoke about this issue. Many of these people are expert in this field and deal with this on a daily basis.
Hosting in Africa is not as cheap as in either America or Europe. Bandwidth is much more expensive. It would be good to find a partner who would pay the hosting of our content. There are plenty of universities and NGO's who could provide part of such a service. Universities can provide expertise and NGO's the funding.
But would the drawbacks of finding and coping with a partner be significant with regards to the current percentage of readers for which there would be an improvment and for the level of improvement ?
When we want to improve our presence in Africa, the first thing to do is making it a priority. It is like starting a new business, when you have good indicators that the opportunity is there you invest in the expectation that the market will develop as a consequence. Given that we intent to provide information to everyone on this earth in their own language, I would say that it is very much a core deliverable of our Wikimedia Foundation consequently the drawbacks are to be considered but they are secondary.
The signal value of us having servers in Africa is very important. It would help us not only in getting more readers,
Frankly... I do not follow you here. Whether the site is hosted in Africa or hosted somewhere else is likely to be invisible to the great majority of reader. I gather most will not care... nor even ask themselves who host the site. Actually most readers have no idea what hosting means...
Our readers may not care where their servers are. They care about the increased service provided by better performance. With our hosting in Africa, we will have an marketing opportunity for our projects. This is really relevant. Remember, the Seigenthaler affair increased our traffic no end it was one /great /side effect. When we actively promote our projects it will lead to more eye balls, more content, better localisation.
it would help our localisation effort.
I do not see how hosting the site on the African continent (say South Africa) will increase the percentage of translation of the software...
I have contacts with organisations that are interested in using the MediaWiki software for languages like Farsi and Lao. I have contacts with organisations interested in localising MediaWiki for African languages. With a better infra-structure for the Wikimedia projects and more people making use of MediaWiki projects, this investment would be more beneficial as more people will know how to participate.
It would help the adoption of MediaWiki as a platform to provide information.
Which might be nice, but is not the goal of the Foundation.
Call it a fringe benefit then.. It is a welcome fringe benefit right ?
The marketing value for our projects is really big.
I am not convinced. We also have hosting provided in Korea. Do you think it improved marketing value of our projects in Asia ? Do you have figures ?
I would not know. You are in a much better position to tell us if we used the Korean hosting as an opportunity to market our projects. I would also say that Asia cannot be compared with Africa; there are many BIG projects in Asia. There are none in Africa. The reason for hosting in Africa are distinctly different; Asia does have the traffic Africa does have poor response times. The reason for hosting in Africa is therefore not comparable either.
It would also help make the use of African languages acceptable by providing content.
I certainly see the benefit of having mediawiki interface translated, I just fail to see how hosting Wikipedia and other sites in Africa will help use of African languages more acceptable :-(
By providing a quality localised user interface, it shows that there are people who care for THEIR language. By providing a quality responsive service we show that we care for THEIR custom. There is also a limit to what we can do from America or Europe. We can make our African service better than it currently is by orders of magnitude. I may remind you that Google invests heavily to remove fractions of their response time to build their market share, for us it is much easier. :)
One of the things I have observed in several small projects is that people are hesitant to contribute, they are often literate in a language other than there mother tongue. It is hard to convince people that an occasional spelling or grammatical "error" can be due to no fixed orthography. To overcome this shyness is not easy. This is often accomplished by peer pressure.. This is one reason why we have to work together with people in Africa, people in universities, NGO's etc..
Thanks, GerardM
On Jun 25, 2006, at 12:45 AM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
We could have some servers in Africa... There is some reluctance of the developers to overcome.. We could hope that the project of the Vrije Universiteit bears fruit.. and help it where we can. With this project successful, it would mean a peer to peer MediaWiki whereby content is near the people that want it.
Ok, Vrije Universiteit is in the Netherlands. What project do they have which relates to Africa?
Fred
Fred Bauder wrote:
On Jun 25, 2006, at 12:45 AM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
We could have some servers in Africa... There is some reluctance of the developers to overcome.. We could hope that the project of the Vrije Universiteit bears fruit.. and help it where we can. With this project successful, it would mean a peer to peer MediaWiki whereby content is near the people that want it.
Ok, Vrije Universiteit is in the Netherlands. What project do they have which relates to Africa?
Fred
Hoi, They are building an application that allows the hosting of Wikipedia content in a peer to peer basis. When successful it means that people can opt to run a Wikipedia peer on their hardware. This peer network would know what information is in demand and distribute it accordingly.. So when a certain topic is in the news .. the network would react by bringing more copies of the data to where it is in demand. This would overcome among other things the current problems with peering agreements between ISP's.
They are at the stage where they need real life (anonomised) traffic details to test the distribution of traffic in a big private GRID network. Thanks, GerardM
On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 01:07:40PM +0200, Jimmy Wales 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!
Just to throw in my two cents - I'd go for Larry Lessig over the others. I've seen several of his talks and he seems to 'get' the point behind fair use in conjunction w/copyright law in both ideological and practical perspectives.
He also is better known than most of the others on your list, with the exception of Richard Stallman, who tends to IMO be divisive and pedantic in a way that Larry is not. He also brings a lot of pragmatic legal expertise to the table. He would also be an engaging proponent for Wikipedia in general.
Again, just my IMO,
Ed
On 6/19/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!
Forgive my ignorance, does anybody know anything about Thomas Malone from MIT? (http://ccs.mit.edu/malone/) He seems to be very into collective intelligence. I know nothing of his politics or views of freedom of information, so I thought I'd ask. Note: I am not putting forth his name for the Board (he seems pretty busy), I was just wondering if people in the know, namely you guys and gals, knew anything about him. Please forgive me if he has been discussed previously. Thanks. --LV
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