This seems like a futile exercise. The appearance it gives is that you don't know what you are doing. As for the executive, perhaps things did not get done because it was not empowered to do them. Danny In a message dated 4/16/2007 9:00:09 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Anthere9(a)yahoo.com writes: daniwo59(a)aol.com wrote: I do understand your email generally, but I must say I do not understand that sentence. Rather than picking a random "ends" *I* am not picking up 4 ends (ends is different than goals). I am suggesting people to brainstorm and come up with a few ones. What I hope to do is to collect a list of ends, put them on a page on meta, have them refined by editors. I have a list already on my wiki, some defined, some less defined. Some from the board retreat, some from the last board meeting, but whilst we have a list, I think it is a good idea to see if editors might not have other ideas that make sense, or approaches different but more interesting than the ones we have. Mostly, I do think that the board is there to listen to what editors want the foundation to be. I could do that alone, I prefer asking them. Then, when a list is available, what I hope is to let it open for editors to somehow express what they feel is a priority. A sort of poll. Then go to the board with that list (I hope they will have participated in creating it !) and have a final list retained and officially approved. board a By the way, this isn't so far from the truth. If put priorities. I think you should read the model description again (Carver one if you did not understand my mail). Allow me to tell it boldly. The board is the boss of the ED. As such, the board tells the ED "the website must be in working order" and "there must be a Wikimania". When we say that, we are not defining priorities. We are not telling him "if you have time, and if you feel like it, could you do one or the other. And if you are really successful, we could appreciate if you could do both, but of course, it is up to you, we are just telling your about our sense of what should be your priorities". When we say that, we say "your job is to have a website running and to organise Wikimania. You fail ? You are fired". sustainability. the new, government All this is interesting, but not an End as defined in this model. The purpose of the Ends is to list a collection of things we want the ED (or the staff in absence of an ED) to take care of. So, what we should create is not a list of questions, but a list of what must happen. One "legal" end for example, might be that all trademarks of our projects must be secured in countries xx. The way to do it is not to ask "Are all of our tms registered in countries xxx ?", but rather to tell the executive, here is YOUR job. You have 6 months, and this should be done. Period. You are in charge of organising yourself the way you want, but have it done. of retreat an Actually, I was looking at the list just 3 days ago, and thought that many of the items listed then for the BOARD to do, had been indeed done. One of the few items left for the board is "reorganisation", and that is what I am currently trying to do. Many of the executive items have not been done. They certainly will be there. Anthere http://www.aol.com. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.