[Foundation-l] Candidacy to the board of WMF - Wikimedia-l

19 May 2008


      Dear community members,
Though it was a (very) difficult decision to make, I have decided not to 
be a candidate to the coming elections of the board of trustees of 
Wikimedia  Foundation as a community representative.
After four years on the board, and over one year and a half as its 
chair, I observe that the organization has matured a lot.
In 2004 the Wikimedia Foundation was a tiny organization (total expenses 
23 000 dollars) set up and led by Jimmy, running three servers from 
remote Florida and hosting projects with frequent denial of services due 
to unsufficient technical support, Wikimedia has now grown into a six 
million dollars organization, operating over 300 servers, led by an 
accountable board, with a new office in San Francisco and a staff of 15. 
Operations are now guided by a brand new mission statement, with defined 
values, procedures, policies, and charters. Fully independently audited, 
the Wikimedia Foundation receive the  financial support of thousand of 
small donors, as well as support from commercial companies and major 
foundations.
Wikimania, our annual conference was first held in 2005, one year after 
I joined the board. Wikimania then travelled from Frankfurt to Boston, 
Taipei, and Egypt, with the great honor of being hosted by the New 
Library of Alexandria this year.
In the past four years, new projects were started (eg, Wikimedia 
Commons, Wikinews). Wikipedia rose from rank 500 in october 2004 to rank 
8 in october 2007 of most popular websites in the world. As of April 
2008, Wikipedia attracts 683 million visitors annually, reading over 10 
millions articles in 253 languages. Other projects are thriving and made 
available in more and more languages every year (eg, Wikibooks, 
Wiktionary etc…). All Wikimedia projects are now freely available 
worldwide on the internet with an excellent quality of service.
Those are fantastic, tremendous achievements!
I am proud I was part of it.
Of course, all this was not my own doing, but was made possible by the 
dedication of all board members, of previous and current staff members, 
contractors, and most of all, of community volunteers. Good job, everyone!
I want to thank the 2004 voters, who elected me to participate at the 
organization level, and the 2005 voters, who confirmed me on the board 
for two additional years. My nomination as chair in 2006 and renewal in 
2007 was probably more a stroke of luck :-) I was given the difficult 
task to help Wikimedia to mature from a Founder-led group to a mature 
organization with a dual board/executive set-up, various policies and 
procedures, as well as controls to prevent or limit damages. In short, I 
had a position of interim chair :-) The 2007 board trusted me to 
stabilize the transition to the new Executive Director. Twenty months 
later, I consider the job done. The disappearance of the previously 
recurring question "but what if Jimbo is hit by a bus this morning ?" is 
in itself a sufficient sign :-) The organization is more solid than it 
has ever been.
I would like to offer a special "thank you" note to Jan-Bart, the 
vice-chair, for the highly valuable work on the board. Jan-Bart is one 
of these “outsiders”, that some think should not be on the board. I 
could not disagree more. Outsiders may share our values deeply, bring 
expertise that does not exist within the active community, and provide 
an external view sometimes very refreshing on our in-house debates.
Building an organization that could accompany the exponential growth of 
the Wikimedia projects was, as you can imagine, quite a challenge, and 
did not always go without tensions. I read with much attention the 
community petition started after the board reorganization announcement. 
It would be a serious misconception to imagine that board members always 
fully agree on what is decided by the board as a whole. Board members 
can (and do) disagree. Sometimes, no decision is made because there are 
irreconcilable factions. But often, they agree to a compromise, so that 
a needed collective decision can be made. Directions are not set in 
stone and it will be the responsibility of the next board to deal with 
the future. Various trends are showing up right now, as pointed out in 
the petition or by various emails to this list.
After the decision over reorganization of the board, I was placed in a 
rather impossible situation. New blood is highly necessary to the board, 
but the unique position opened to an elected community representative 
places me in direct competition with these new, “third” generation 
leaders currently being candidates. If three positions had been opened, 
it would have been an entirely different matter, but this one position 
truly deserves to go to a brand new member, with fresh energy and ideas. 
I wish the candidates all the best of luck. The new board member can 
count on my support to welcome him or her after the elections, during 
our roughly 2 weeks of overlapping presence on the board.
Though I will reduce my participation, I will certainly not quit the 
projects. My heart is dedicated to them and to our love of knowledge. I 
intend to keep on “thinking global”, even if I act more “local”. Since 
my first days on the projects (February 2002), my focus has been on 
transparency, volunteer involvement, decentralization, bottom-up 
decision making, and love for cultural and linguistic diversity. I will 
stay available to share my time and energy with those who are, with 
pride but modesty, supporting our projects as well as their values. An 
organization is at the service of a cause, and the primary interest and 
focus of its members should not be the organization itself, but its 
mission and, even more important, the vision behind the mission and the 
values shared between all members. Our vision should be our credo, day 
after day: bringing knowledge to every single human being on Earth.
Love
Anthere / Florence Devouard