On 6/3/06, Anthere <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: I don't think it would be hard to explain to Gavin what Wikimedia's troubles are. Now that I look back on what he said of them: "We don't know what to do next and we need help deciding what to do", I see how that could be taken one of two ways. One way, that the Wikimedia board is unclear on its mission, is quite plainly false. The other interpretation, that the Wikimedia board has no clue how best to organize itself so as to accomplish that mission, seems to hit the nail right on the head. If you have a different opinion as to what the main trouble is, I for one would like to hear it. Maybe you've already said it though, and I missed it. I know you were complaining before about lack of help, but I don't think there actually is a lack of help, just a lack of the organization needed to match the help up with the work that needs to be done. Umm, no, I wasn't suggesting getting rid of the community representatives, I was suggesting that Gavin *be* one of the community representatives. Of course I was basing this on the fact that the board seems to be admitting that it doesn't know what its doing. Maybe this isn't the case, in which case I wonder what's the need to hire a CEO. Sure, but it is my understanding that it's unlikely to convince Michael Davis and Tim Shell to vote for expansion of the board unless Jimbo agrees to it. Maybe I'm wrong. Hopefully I'm wrong. "Should a Trustee resign, become incapacitated or otherwise be unable to serve the remaining Trustees shall appoint an interim representative if such Trustee was a Member Representative until such time as a new election can be held to fill such office at the next annual election." So if the board agreed, I guess it depends whether or not Gavin could manage to do his magic before the next annual election. Of course, I see no reason why Gavin would have no chance to be elected as a community representative, especially if he had already performed well as an interim community representative. Is there an archive somewhere of all the historical board votes? I'd be interested in seeing it. Overall, it's really hard to find information about what it is the board and its members have been doing.

Angela wrote: For those who wonder if we did nothing at all before january, I'll clarify that the resolution system was adopted in january 2006, precisely because the previous system did not always allowed to clearly track decisions taken. ant

On 6/3/06, Angela <beesley(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm trying to think of a major thing that I can suggest, rather than nitpicking minor details. Overall, wikimediafoundation.org is very outdated. Even just looking at the front page the quarterly reports contain nothing from the current year (5 months into it), the projects section starts with a red link, the second feature talks about the Quarto which is a project which was abandoned over a year ago. One of the higher pageranked pages is http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings, which contains no information about meetings in 2006. One of the meetings I stubled across, http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/October_22%2C_2004, talks about changing membership from opt-out to opt-in. This doesn't seem to have been implemented, and I'm not actually sure whether or not I'm even a member. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Bylaws points to http://wikimediafoundation.org/bylaws.pdf, which seems to be the original bylaws from 2003 (which have apparently changed). http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws is another version, which seems to have been updated, but it doesn't seem to have taken all resolutions into account (besides the opt-in/opt-out one, I remember reading from you or Ant that the notion of "Member Representative to the Board of Trustees" had been dropped). (Interestingly, http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/About_Wikimedia points to *both* versions.) Anyway, thanks for the links. I guess my "suggestions" were somewhat nitpicky. But I do think it's pretty important that people know a) whether or not they're actually a member of Wikimedia and b) what the bylaws of the foundation are. Anthony

Anthony DiPierro wrote: Vaccum. A new version of the bylaws were written about 2 months ago. This new version entirely remove the notion of membership (so the notions of opt-in and opt-out disappear). However, the new text recognises the input and importance of the community (it was not the case before). From a "board election" point of view, the existence of members or not, does not have impact. There are still community representatives on the board. However, there is an-ongoing discussion on the election/appointement modes. As of today, I am unable to answer to your question (am I a member or not ?). If the new bylaws were to be adopted, the answer would be "no". As for whether the bylaws will be adopted or not, I posted a resolution regarding the first three parts of the bylaws (including the membership part) on the board wiki 5 weeks ago. As of today, none of the board members have voted on the resolution, nor really made any comment (so I have no idea if the lack of voting is due to opposition, lack of interest, lack of time or whatever). ant PS : note that it is not possible to oblige people to vote.

Anthony DiPierro wrote: Anthony, please stop trolling. I am at the forefront of advocating board expansion, so you have a hell of a nerve accusing me of "control issues". --Jimbo

This hasn't yet been voted on. It doesn't even have a Motion to Vote yet. I've no idea why it would be regarded as rejected. Angela.

On Sun, June 4, 2006 02:56, Anthere wrote: since we have no procedure to close a resolution Clearly a motion which fails to get a majority of vites falls, however the present situation permits that, by this methodology of not requiring/demanding a vote (yay or nay) from every board member that there is a quite effective "hidden fillbuster" option available. It would be a great improvement to require that all Board members *must* vote within a set perdio (14 days should be more than sufficient) and that For, Against and Abstain ballots are each counted and recorded. Alison Wheeler

Anthony DiPierro wrote: I rest my case. Anthony is not being serious here, he is trolling. There is a legitimate question as to what to call a resolution which was never voted upon, because no one ever made a motion that it be voted on, because it was in preliminary drafting stages. Was it rejected? Was it never really proposed? That is what Angela is talking about. Spinning this into some kind of lack of transparency is just... well, it is Anthony. Nonsense. --Jimbo

Anthony DiPierro wrote: Oh, Anthony, do be a dear and shut up, please. It's not amusing, it's /certainly/ not mature, and it's becoming increasingly irritating for you to continue to post to the lists in the current fashion. Feel free to count me as someone "other than [Jimbo]" who is bothered by it. Half the time you provide constructive criticism - and that is of course welcomed - but, well, really... If you can't tell when you cross the line into massive assumptions of bad faith, seemingly-deliberate poor assumptions, and, essentially, "trolling", then maybe it would be for the best if you were no longer to post here. Note: In normal circumstances, this would of course be sent privately in order to avoid the blushes of the recipient. However, in this situation all that would lead to is Anthony making veiled comments about such a missive, ones that wouldn't exactly ring true with what I had said. Yours sincerely, -- James D. Forrester Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] E-Mail : james(a)jdforrester.org IM (MSN) : jamesdforrester(a)hotmail.com

Jimmy Wales wrote: Jimbo, only percieved trolls with little standing to lose with the powers that be within our "communities" are going to tell the Emperor he has no clothes. I have wasted more time than I care to remember wandering around meta and various mailing lists looking for agendas, results of votes, minutes, budgets, audit reports, expenditures, etc. All the typical data that an organization should routinely produce and publish in a timely manner to operate efficiently. Little to none of it is published in an organized meaningful manner for the simple fundamental reason that we have a stacked Board and what matters is what Jimbo decides. In organizations where meaningul delegation is the rule the data gets produced because everybody needs it! Nobody needs it at the Wikimedia Foundation because only Jimbo's opinion or stated position has any final standing on anything. So it does not get routinely produced and posted publicly. Your committees and people participating in the process are to a large extent hand picked from the select group are known to get along with you on the mailing lists. People like me who have had conflicts in the past are not likely to send private emails requesting information from insiders who are unlikely to provide it as a result of past personal conflicts. I understand that many initiatives have been attempted in the past and are currently underway but it does not change the fact that few volunteers want to hang around breathlessly all the time waiting for you to make decisions. When those volunteers get interested in a topic and go looking for the information and cannot find it without querying a wide range of poorly organized sources the organization does indeed look "opaque". The best way for you to fix the growing problems of the Wikimedia Foundation is to unstack the Board. Hold an immediate election for the two appointed trustee positions. Hang onto your personal position by fiat if you cannot trust the community to vote you onto the Board. Four to one looks a lot more honest than three to two but (paraphrasing to make my point) ..... "I will almost always not oppose the two electees ... honest." When your "Interim Director" tells you the same thing or something similar, remember you heard it first, or at least before, from a "troll". regards, mirwin, lazyquasar

Elisabeth Bauer wrote: It is precisely the Board's fault. If critical functions cannot be met by motivating volunteers then budgets need to be established to pay for those critical functions to be met, workforces hired and trained, etc. etc. Regarding your desire that I snap to and perform tasks you desire completed at meta ... forget it. I contribute when and where I please, often anonymously to avoid hassles. Feel free to delete the obsolete business planning that "24" and I attempted to initiate at meta. If meta had been used as advertised initially instead of merely diverting volunteers from management issues the Foundation would not be in its current mess nor would there be a mess to clean up at meta. As far as I am concerned you can turn meta off entirely. In my view, it has done more harm to the projects and "communities" it was supposed to support than good. Have fun. regards, lazyquasar

On 6/14/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: Internal wiki refers to internal.wikimedia.org, where only genuine cabal members ;-) have access. Erik

Jimmy Wales wrote: It's not a huge deal, but could this be somehow indicated on the Resolutions page? It'd be useful as a reader to be able to distinguish between resolutions that failed at a vote versus resolutions that "failed" due to never being voted on. -mark