Erik Moeller wrote:
But these qualifications are absolutely necessary for
protecting the
organization. Just an example: It's very hard to do good hiring for a
position whose background is completely different from your own.
That's why Brion is the hiring manager for developers and not Sue - so
we can find great techies to expand our team. Similarly, to hire a
competent Executive Director, it helps to have significant experience
in the management of non-profit organizations. And so forth.
We need to get over the idea that the Board somehow has to be deeply
connected to
- the project communities
- the day-to-day questions facing the Foundation.
While I sympathize with the idea that only one-third of the Board should
be appointed, I find the motion ill-timed. It is conceivable that a
Volunteer Council could propose such a requirement, but only in the
context of other requirements. In isolation it leaves the impression of
being more about power struggles than about building real value to the
organization as a whole.
Dealing with challenges in both areas is the
responsibility of staff &
volunteers. Staff are organized through the Foundation itself;
volunteers lack organizational representation. That's what the
Volunteer Council seeks to address: giving volunteers a forum, a
voice, a set of responsibilities.
Expertise is a sine-qua-non for staff hiring, but tipping one's hand in
favour of a Board full of technocrats could too easily be divisive.
Saying that volunteers lack organizational representation is certainly
to the point, and I would be tempted to go a little further to say that
it lacks any kind of coherent general organization at all. There are
isolated pockets of excellent organization in various committees or
projects, but little in the way of giving a broad overview to the entire
operation.
Some decisions which were in the past taken by the
Board (final
approval of new wiki projects, policies on licensing, some or all
agreements related to the chapters) could be delegated to the V.C.,
but importantly, it would also address questions which are only very
vaguely answerable right now: What to do when a conflict escalates
beyond a single wiki, how to investigate allegations of serious abuse
of administrative privileges, when to activate a software feature,
etc.
The V.C. would work with the staff on issues affecting the
communities, e.g. business deals affecting the projects, grant
proposals, etc. - the nature of that relationship would still have to
be developed, and a lot of it would probably be consensus-driven, just
like collaboration in the projects. Some decisions could be firmly in
the V.C.'s hand, e.g. final approval of organizational program goals,
approval of any change significantly affecting a project, etc.
These are all possibilities, but I would be cautious about putting too
much on the VC's plate too early. All those responsibilities
collectively would have too much the appearance of a power vacuum
waiting to be filled by people who have convinced themselves of the
Board's excesses. I think the Council can be an important bridge
between the Board and the communities, but before it can be effective in
that role it needs to build trust with both the Board and the
communities. Doing so with the Board should be relatively easy, but the
perceptions in the communities are widely divergent, and often based on
unfounded fears.
The first duty of the VC that would continue past the provisional stage
is to develop its own coherent internal organization. A VC that thrusts
itself prematurely into thorny conflict resolutions risks becoming a
part of the problem.
Several people in these discussions have asked for a more precise
definition of what a Council would do. Ironically, if those answers
were easy to come by it could obviate the need for a Council.
In such a model, a Board of people with decades of
non-profit
experience provides the necessary "last protection" for the
Foundation: protection against mismanagement, support of
sustainability efforts, protection against violation of core values,
etc. This does not mean that these people have to have 10,000 edits in
the projects. They could come from education, from projects assisting
developing nations, from the technology sector. But they would have
one thing in common: experience safeguarding _organizations_, rather
than wikis.
In a lot of respects, I can agree. But the 10,000 edits criterion may
be the only one that is readily verifiable by the largest part of the
community. Other criteria may be just as valuable, but do they address
our own counterpart to the legal maxim that justice must not only be
done, but seen to be done?
From everything
we know, Wikimedia is a very young, proud, geeky
community. And it's the common
fallacy of young people to
underestimate the value of experience. Work experience for
organizations with hundreds of staff in positions of management,
accounting, legal responsibilities means having hundreds of personal
case studies to draw from, hundreds of parameters to consider when
making a decision. Expertise _matters_.
Sure, but the young and restlessly geeky are not easily convinced of
this. Nor for that matter are many academics. The aesthetic
satisfaction of an elegantly technical solution is often viewed by the
general population as intellectual masturbation. The experienced person
may be more concerned with the simple question, "Does it work?" "How
much effort is needed for the not-so-technical staff to employ a new tool?"
Integrity can come from within or from without.
This is an ambiguous statement. If we are speaking of personal
qualities, no, it can only come from one's own personal fibre. If it's
a matter of where people of integrity can be found then yes they can be
found both within and without the organization. But the other side of
that coin is that scoundrels can be found both within and without the
organization. Unfortunately people of integrity are often weakest at
recognizing scoundrels, because they find the activity of scoundrels to
be unimaginable.
"Not a wiki editor"
does not mean "person who will sell out the project to evil venture
capitalists at the next opportunity". Wikimedia is a values-driven
community; it is not the only one. People with strong convictions and
beliefs and passions _and_ experience who would support our cause
wholeheartedly can be found -- and they can be asked to commit to core
principles and values we hammer out. To a large extent we've already
done so.
Maybe, but there can be a reluctance to commit to the values that
someone else has hammered out. Many such people prefer to rely on their
own reasoning.
The mixing of the senior managers, accountants,
lawyers and the young
wiki volunteer enthusiasts into a single body is a recipe for conflict
and burn-out: One group has near limitless energy, the other has to be
conservative with its time; one group tries to make measured decisions
with long term implications, the other is highly involved in actions
taking effect immediately; one group tries to be vocal and visible as
members of a community, the other tries to be cautious and deliberate.
This doesn't leave a lot of room for radical new ideas. In the battle
against the half-baked the half-asleep have inertia on their side. Their
is a fundamental paradox in all this.
Different organizational functions call for different
qualifications.
We've tried to fit everything into one Board. That was the simplest
model to start with when the organization was young. As we grow, we
need to achieve a mature balance that is sustainable. As Henning said:
If we want to become a charity of free knowledge, we need to start
thinking like a charity -- and that means drawing from all areas of
expertise, not just the obvious core volunteer community experience.
Functional differentiation should indeed be a part of development, but
let's not misplace in the Board the kind of monomania that properly
belongs in the staff. A Board still needs the wisdom to balance these
various specializations.
An effective charity aspires to no longer being a charity. We would do
better to aspire to be knowledge's Grameen Bank.
Ec