(for those not willing to read a long email, just jump at the end of it to read the 6 proposed values) -------- I would like to propose to the board to finalize (-> approve) the values of Wikimedia Foundation. What is it about ? It would be a collection of common words or ideas which reflects what is important to us, as an organization. It comes on top of * the vision tagline, which is our bold goal * the mission statements, which describe what the organization is doing to reach its goal The values represent the principles we share together What is the difference with the Wikipedia pillars ? The values I am talking about are the *organization* (WMF) values, not the projects values. Obviously, many values will be shared, but not necessarily all of them. For example, Wikipedia has NPOV as a pillar, the Wikimedia Foundation does not have NPOV as a pillar. What is the difference between "vision", "mission" and "values" ? Imagine you are a WMF staff member, you are at a dinner with your grand-mother and she asks "so tell me about your job, is it interesting ? do you have to wear a suit ?" Your answer might be "eh, we want to give access to information to every one in the world (vision). So, to make that happen, we host some freely accessible internet web sites where people can add information (mission). My own job is to make sure we have enough cash to operate, so I raise money from people and companies (my job). What is real cool is that I am not the only one doing that, but many volunteers from all over the world help as well; sometimes it is not easy, because I need to keep them informed a lot of what I am doing even though they are not my boss. Also, it is very important to us to stay independant, so I have to find funds from various sources. It makes things more complicated, but it is super exciting ! As for the suit, the team is very geek like, very diverse set, most have already been living in other countries. So, as long as we are clean and careful not to hurt anyone sensitivities, no need to wear a suit on a daily basis !" (values) Why do we need that ? Some of you would consider that unnecessary. I would respectfully disagree :-) There are two main reasons we should have these values written down, one is related to "branding" (public perception of our uniqueness), the other to "management" (training of our staff members). It is important that "outsiders" (donors, partners, governments, civil society...) understand what is important to us, what is welcome and what is non negotiable. Donors will give us money more easily if they know what is important to us, and actually agree with our values. Potential partners will not lose our valuable time and their valuable time proposing proprietary software deals if they know it is a deal-breaker for us. Wikipedia in particular, currently enjoys very much support because it is clearly identified as a brand. Other Wikimedia projects are not as well clearly identified yet (there are still people wondering what Wikiversity exactly is about for example). During the past year, the WMF motto has been "we are a non profit", and still many people think it is a business company. People do not approach a non-profit and a for-profit in the same way. In any cases, most people have no idea of the existence of WMF, and when they do think about organization, they believe we have 10.000 employees somewhere in the Silicon Valley, and open big round shocked eyes when they learn the truth. There are also beliefs that, as a web 2.0 company, every one can do whatever they want on the websites, and no one is responsible. We should kill such an idea in the egg, and make sure that the common view becomes that thriving to quality is one of our major motto. Values are not only what make us stick together, but also general guidelines for what we want to become, what we are really trying hard to do, and what we want to be known as specific about us. Which is also why it is important to management. The bottom line concept is that the staff is ultimately trying to achieve the VISION, thanks to operational activity (the MISSION), and deep respect of the VALUES. The put it bluntly: no decision should be made that could hurt the values. Any time a decision is on the plate, the staff and volunteers should keep in mind "does it go along with our values, or against our values ?" Example: It seems that past and recent discussions show how important it was for the community that our entire projects be build upon free software, using free format and free standards. It goes beyond the simple notion of creating freely-licenced content, as described in the mission statement. Whilst supporting, defending, developing, the free mouvement is NOT our goal, nor even within our mission, it seems to be an important value to most of us. Hence, the very notion of listing our support to freedom is a VALUE, which has been clarified in a recent resolution. As a value, anytime the staff is thinking of making a deal with a partner, it should ask himself, "is that all right with the freedom value" ? If it is not, no deal. Period. Other values have other impacts. When we talked to Sue last summer before hiring her, we made super clear that it was super important to us to hire staff with international awareness (either non US staff, or US staff having lived outside of the US, or at a minimum, US staff being multilingual). Sue has been extremely careful to take such guidelines into account, and all recently hired staff is in one way or another, respecting these guidelines. Practically, if a staff member was at some point voicing such opinion that "non US people are jerks", I would consider that ground for being fired. --------- Last summer, the board + advisory board brainstormed together over our values. We further discussed the issue on this list, as well as here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values I have been thinking over it in the past few weeks, and here is the result of my list. * Community * Diversity * Quality of service * Transparency * Freedom * Independance Text is rough draft for now Our community is our biggest asset We are a community-based organization. We must operate with a mix of staff members, and of volunteers, working together to achieve our mission. We support community-led collaborative projects, and must respect the work and the ideas of our community. We must listen and take into account our communities in any decisions taken to achieve our mission. Commitment to openness and diversity Though US-based, the organization is international in its nature. Our board of trustees, staff members, and volunteers are involved without discrimination based on their religion, political beliefs, sexual preferences, nationalities etc... Not only do we accept diversity, but we actually look forward to it. Quality of service is a priority We will try our best to give access to high quality Wikimedia project content 24 hours a day and 7 days, as well as provide access to regularly updated, user-friendly, and free dumps of Wikimedia project content. To insure world-wide, unrestricted, dissemination of knowledge, we do not enter into exclusive partnerships, with regards to access to our content or use of our trademarks. Freedom We make extra efforts to use only free software on our own servers, and to support open and patent-free media formats that are viewable and editable with free software. Transparency We must communicate Wikimedia Foundation information in a transparent, thorough and timely manner, to our communities and more generally, to the public. Independance As a non-profit, we mostly depend on gifts to operate (donations, grants, sponsorship etc...). It is very important to us to ensure our organization stays free of influence in the way it operates. For this reason, we strictly follow a donation policy, reserve the right to refuse donations from a limited number of sources, and try to multiply the number of sources. ---------- are they comments at this point ? Sorry for the verrrry long email :-) Ant