So, Wikimedia is shaped by people who feel that the very philosophy that made WP a success is not applicable to organizations. Wikimedia will become a functioning non-profit with the usual bureucratic processes, some successful fundraising, a few good partnerships here and there, a bunch of "professionals", lots of infighting among volunteers, etc. It will not become the open platform for social and technological change that it could be -- the wide network of people who are interested in building a free knowledge and free culture movement. And who is to blame for that? Not the people who made it so. They have only the best interests of Wikimedia in mind and work their ass of to do what they can to make it a success. The people who are to blame are those who did not participate in turning Wikimedia into something else, something larger, when it mattered.

You express my deep thoughts better I could do. Foundation's opaqueness and distance to the community are growing.

On 6/1/06, Erik Zachte <erikzachte(a)infodisiac.com> wrote: as a side affair. Recent impression that both board pain in the neck at times, No. What Angela pointed out is that there was an open meeting about the committees, about the need for a CEO, and so on (we created a separate meeting specifically to discuss the ExecCom). For arguing for the open meeting, Angela and myself received little but scorn from the existing group of people who were likely to serve on these committees. (Anthere was in the middle of her pregnancy at the time.) The community members from the outside who joined hardly participated at all. This wasn't a small number of people, something like 70 in the main meeting. See the logs at: http://scireview.de/wiki/com2/channel.log

Note that to this day, the second log contains a claim by Jimbo that I "deeply misrepresented" him during the ExecCom meeting, without any actual elaboration of why or how that is the case. I will not repeat some of the other things that have been said. You will also note that in the end, it was mostly me and another small group of people arguing. I know you were there, but there are many people who are on this list who weren't. Now we are given the usual round of whining: "I don't like IRC!" "I wasn't informed!" "My cat ate my homework!" Participating in these meetings, for me, has not exactly been an exercise in gaining popularity or favor; rather the opposite. Taking a stand against a prevailing line of thinking strains relations with people, and that should not be done unless there is a clear benefit. This was a crucial meeting where a case could have been made, by the community, for organizing and structuring Wikimedia in an open and participatory fashion. There are very few people who were willing to actually make that case. For the "inside people" this is easy to explain: as we see with adminship on Wikipedia, open and accountable models are quickly subjected to constant harassment by self-appointed "accountability activists". Having your private little clubs and mailing lists (some of which, as we have heard, even the Board doesn't know about or have access to) makes things so much easier. Why put up with the hassle of an open meeting when you can have a closed one? As for the outside people, perhaps their lack of participation is because they don't care about "organizational stuff," perhaps it's because Wikimedia has historically been so opaque that people have expected that it needs to stay that way. Whatever the reason, people like myself frankly lose the motivation to invest time in a lost cause. Just like Wikipedia has to deal with vandalism and trolls for allowing anyone to edit, an open organization would have to deal with incompetence and maliciousness in return for rapid growth and network benefits. Rather than invent the organizational equivalent of wiki processes -- something which would require a lot of creative thinking from the brightest minds of Wikimedia -- it's much more convenient to say: "wiki and organization are different things and need to be kept separate." And, guess what, the lawyers agree! There is virtually no active pressure or demand from the actual community for openness, participatory processes and transparency within the Wikimedia Foundation. As a result, there are very little. The committees which have been formed are useful, but they pick and choose their members on a case by case basis (or perhaps I should say "face by face") -- cf. GerardM's rejected membership application to the Special Projects committee. At least during the transitional phase, the amount of bureauracy is even worse than it was at the time we were ruled by the Board and the Board alone. A process whereby every committee holds open, widely announced meetings and where advisor status is granted instantly without bureaucratic process was discussed, but does not seem to be practiced by any of the committees. Even a trivial idea like putting a couple of new community-elected members on the Board has been proposed years ago but never implemented. But, then again, has there been any pressure from the community for such change to hapepn? Hardly at all. When a couple of "big shot" outside people are appointed to Board positions and the Board remains otherwise as it is, sure, there will be the usual round of whining. But during the processes that actually matter, the people who whine later tend to be conspicuously absent. So, Wikimedia is shaped by people who feel that the very philosophy that made WP a success is not applicable to organizations. Wikimedia will become a functioning non-profit with the usual bureucratic processes, some successful fundraising, a few good partnerships here and there, a bunch of "professionals", lots of infighting among volunteers, etc. It will not become the open platform for social and technological change that it could be -- the wide network of people who are interested in building a free knowledge and free culture movement. And who is to blame for that? Not the people who made it so. They have only the best interests of Wikimedia in mind and work their ass of to do what they can to make it a success. The people who are to blame are those who did not participate in turning Wikimedia into something else, something larger, when it mattered. Erik _______________________________________________

Hoi, You assume that people get to know the Wikimedia Foundation through Wikipedia. A common assumption but it is wrong in that the Wikimedia Foundation is there not only for Wikipedia but also for Wikipedia. There are other project and when people consider things it is most often seen in the light of what is good for Wikipedia must be good for the rest. Well, suprise that is a fallacy.

Hoi, You assume that people get to know the Wikimedia Foundation through Wikipedia.

that the Wikimedia Foundation is there not only for Wikipedia but also for Wikipedia. There are other project and when people consider things it is most often seen in the light of what is good for Wikipedia must be good for the rest. Well, suprise that is a fallacy. Thanks, GerardM

"I have never seen the WMF foundation asking the communities for anything besides money and trust. I believe the communities have much more to offer. " You probably have limited memory. I remember explicitely calling loudly for help for many topics and various skills. Hell, I remember distinctly I called *you* Birgitte to help for setting up decent rules for new languages creation. Hardly a month ago. On this list. After I asked you help, you basically answered "errr, not now. Sorry ".

I also remember distinctly I called for help many times for Quarto. We got a certain amount of help, but not sufficient to handle things. So, Quarto was closed. It was closed because, *YOU* the community, failed to answer calls for help.

In the past month, I have taking care of answering all the questions on OTRS which were business related. Most of them, I can not answer alone. I need help. I need help to answer stuff about mobile phone. I need help to answer proposal related to trademarks use ... We received a proposition from a big firm that I will not cite here. This was a little bit discussed amongst the community volunteers lawyers. For the past three weeks, I have been asking for a contract for that deal. I got none. None, none, none. It is not exactly as if I asked not for help. I did, but got nothing. (And this is why we need hiring.... believe me, if someone were writing these contracts on a volunteer basis, we would not need to hire people). So, claiming that the Foundation never asked more to the community than money and trust is worse that *false*. That's an *insult*. There is something hugely upsetting in the comments I read in this thread. It is seeing people complain things are not publicly discussed... but who do not even comments when the issues are raised publicly. It is seeing people complain things are not done... but they do not do things themselves. It is seeing people complain we do not welcome their help... but they say no when we ask them. I am not gonna blame you because you refuse to help me on something. That's fine. You're a volunteer. But do not try to pretend we do not ask for help please. That's dishonnest. Ant

Yes you did. I was more thinking of asking across projects not just asking people who already are in contact with the mailing list. A site-wide note similar to fundraising, but a call for volunteers. With a page asking for people with specific skills sets or experience. To bring in people who have not already sought out the Foundation themselves

On 6/1/06, Anthere <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: Well, my perspective on the above comments: I complain about the Foundation to many people. I don't do anything about it because the structure of the Foundation is such that I am disenfranchised from actually having any influence other than through backchannel politicking. The bylaws of the Foundation concentrate all power in the Board, and further structured so that a majority of Board members are not responsible to anyone but themselves. This structure makes the Board inherently resistant to change. I am not sanguine that the Board will ever even recognize all of the problems that exist right now, let alone come up with a useful solution.

my friends and associates, and try to convince them to agree with me (that the Board is going about the business of running the Foundation in the wrong way) with the vague hopes of eventually convincing enough of the Board members to put their personal interests behind their fiduciary duty to the Foundation and, for once, start making decisions that reflect what is best for the Foundation instead of what is best for that individual Board member. (No, I shall not name names. If you are on the Board, it's up to you to decide whether I'm talking about you or not.)

As to being asked to help: The only representatives of the Foundation who have ever asked me to help are Danny Wool and Brad Patrick. (Well, except for when Jimbo asked me to serve on the enwiki ArbCom, but he was doing that as Jimbo, not as CEO of the Board.) Even when I told people that I was ready and willing to help, I never got requested to do anything. So I've concluded that WMF doesn't really want my help. Either this is because the WMF has concluded that my talents are of no use to it, or because the WMF has ignored me when I've offered to help.

So, yes, you may be asking for help, but frankly I find it hard to figure out what help you need or who to talk to about it -- and besides, your volunteer coordinators should be working to match volunteers with tasks that need doing, instead of making volunteers hunt around to find something to do that fits their talents. But then again, that's yet another one of the myriad defects of the WMF: the Foundation appears to have no clue how to manage volunteers, either. (Does WMF even have a volunteer coordinator?)

I imagine I'll anger more than a few people with this email. I hope so; maybe out of that anger will come the desire for change (instead of the desire to kill the messenger, which I fear is more likely to be the result). With regards, Kelly

Let me see... I need 1) someone with good knowledge of cell phones to help us figure what we could do with wikipedia and cell phone (technical description). Able to answer all emails on OTRS of cell-phone people proposing various partnership. 2) Someone with good graphical skills to improve the look of a CD for kids 7-13. And make the external jacket. Speaking french will be a bonus. 3) Someone to clean up and rearrange all pages on meta related to the Foundation. Good english skills required as well as knowledge of the Foundation structure 4) Someone to update various pages on the foundation website. To check the discrepancies between the english version and the other languages version. To contact the various editors responsiable of this version to tell them about the discrepancies. Require : access to WMF site and good communication skills.

5) A baby-sitter at Wikimania for my baby. Skills : knowledge of kids. Plump preferred. Male, female, trans welcome. Date and location : early august in Boston. 6) A lawyer or legal counselling to fix broken contracts received on OTRS. Skills required : patience and availability. 7) Checkuser issue : it seems the privacy policy, the checkuser policy are not making everyone happy. I am looking for someone to review both and make new proposals. Additional jobs : doing stats of useage. Asking Brion to add a system to allow easier consulting. Skills : tough skin.

8) OTRS assistant : job, improve the spam filter. OR, clean up the board queue.

9) Fundraising assistant : someone to help Mav to write a resolution allowing the creation of that committee. Then, help to make a GREAT fundraising before summer. Skills : being creative with good communication ability. Urgent job. 10) Business development : I need someone to help figuring out how much are trademarks are worth. Example : if we make a dvd, how much to ask per item. If we make a board game : how much to ask per item. 11) Also in business development. I need someone to collect the names and addresses of all mirrors (in all languages) and to contact them one by one to propose them a live feed; Will require to contact translators to fix languages templates. Should get a tech description from Brion. Skills and various : should have tech knowledge and OTRS access. Multilingual preferred. More later as soon as I had time to really think about it.

Interesting question. Is the job of a board member 1) define the strategy of the Foundation in the long run 2) manage everyday operations of the organisation 3) focus on human management of volunteers ?

According to books, it is 1. According to reality, it is 2. According to wishes, is it 3 ?

Let me see... I need

1) someone with good knowledge of cell phones to help us figure what we could do with wikipedia and cell phone (technical description). Able to answer all emails on OTRS of cell-phone people proposing various partnership.

For that matter, a job description for hiring a CEO was recently drafted.

It seems the board agrees on the job description.

We are currently voting to approve or not a candidate.

For any charitable foundation which expects and *needs* to retain the freely-donated level of work of its volunteers to engage a COO (as that is what the description is far closer too rather than a CEO - see next mail!) without (a) advertising the position to its membership and generally, (b) publicising the shortlisted candidates under consideration in some manner, and (c) having an open recruitment process throughout, would seem to be very contrary to good corporate governance.

I do hope that this is an error, or an extremely *temporary* measure whilst a proper and effective process is put in place, though imho there should be no need to rush to an interim appointment given the survival so far and that a fit and proper appointment could be made within 2-3 months anyway.

Kelly Martin wrote: it is the second time I see you using that expression. What does that mean "I am not sanguine" ? except for not being an orange which is probably true ?

Interesting question. Is the job of a board member 1) define the strategy of the Foundation in the long run 2) manage everyday operations of the organisation 3) focus on human management of volunteers ? According to books, it is 1. According to reality, it is 2. According to wishes, is it 3 ?

Let me see... I need 1) ... 11)

Without knowing the full history, or many details at all, I can understand both sides of this.

That said it is much easier to get things done when they are kept closed.

Part of the problem from my perspective is that it feels like you need to make the transition to meta-level time commitment to have any say in how things are run.

I don't think that people who prefer to spend most of their time editing the encyclopedia, developing its policies, resolving article, disputes, etc.---the people intimately familiar with the workings of our main reason for being here---should be cut off from knowledge of and a say in what's going on at "higher levels".

Important issues should be announced ahead of time to the community at large; comments should be solicited and taken into account before final decisions are made; and in very important cases even referendum-type votes (or at least straw polls) should be taken.

At the very least things should be routinely discussed on the publicly-accessible mailing lists, and ideally important things should be announced on the relevant wikis (i.e. Village-Pump type places) early enough to give non-mailing-list folk a chance to weigh in.

By the way, you still haven't answered who made the proposal to install you as President.

On 6/3/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: A list of resolutions which have passed, in most cases without vote counts or any other information, with pending resolutions not even put into the view for months, is not "everything you can publicly". In fact, I asked your CFO over a year ago for a copy of the latest 990, which is by law publically available and the IRS recommends for it to be posted on the foundation's website. I have received nothing other than the very first 990-EZ which has finally arrived on the Guidestar website. You haven't posted everything you can publicly. Not even close.

On 6/4/06, Anthere <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: I know. The CFO told me he didn't even have the document yet, even though it had already been filed. Looking up the dates, the fiscal year ended June 30, 2004, the 990-EZ was originally due on November 15, 2004, assuming two extensions were granted it was then due by May 15, 2005, it's dated April 1, 2005 (ha), it was stamped as received by the IRS on June 28, 2005, the CFO still didn't have a copy of it on August 6, 2005,

anywhere on the foundation website (though it is now available through Guidestar).

Your name and what seems to be your address.

On or about January 6, 2006 I found a copy on the Guidestar website. I uploaded it to Wikimedia commons, and Delphine Ménard deleted it.

There was talk at that point about blacking out the officer addresses "and SSNs" (which I put in quotes because the document on Guidestar doesn't have any SSNs in it; it contains the EIN of the organization which is public knowledge and can be found on Florida's corporate information site) and uploading it to the foundation site. This was supposedly taken to the internal mailing list.

I certainly would like a copy, and I'd rather not wait for Guidestar to get around to scanning it in first. Additionally, if the organization is at all interested in transparency posting a copy of the latest 990s on the foundation website would be the appropriate response. Anthony

EINs are employer identification numbers. They are essentially the corporation equivalent of the SSN, but they are not considered to be sensitive information.

So, Wikimedia is shaped by people who feel that the very philosophy that made WP a success is not applicable to organizations.

InstantCommons (see [[m:InstantCommons]]) is a perfect example of that. We met with Kennisnet in February, and they basically said "Wow, good idea, let's do it! But, we would like the WMF to authorize it." Since then, the project has been in organizational limbo, moving slowly as molasses through several layers of bureaucracy, from SP to Legal to SP to Board and back again, with complex contracts being drawn up when all that needed to be done was giving them a call and letting Gerard manage the project. This is about building a relationship with a developer in Ghana, who could have started work on this project as early as March. Now it's June and we still can't go ahead. We're talking about a EUR 5000-10000 project. How on Earth do you intend to manage large grants with that kind of attitude towards project realization?

The problem now is to get the grant from Kennisnet.

On 6/5/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence(a)gmail.com> wrote: As was clarified by e-mail, the situation is exactly as I expected. Kennisnet is working for the WMF to complete the transaction.

Erik Moeller wrote: As was also mentionned, the spc had not been informed whether the grant was okay or not, nor of how much it was planned to be (still unclear by the way). I'd like that you make the effort to recognise that we are acting in good faith and trying to make our best. I may also hint at the fact that we are volunteers and that volunteers can *choose* to take care of a proposal... or not. We are under no obligation to spend hours studying your proposals, and may prefer to focus on other issues of more interest to us or where people will appreciate a bit more the efforts of the team. The comments you made are not motivating in the least. You may criticize as much as you feel like, but one drawback may be that the next proposal Gerard or you make, finds nobody to take care of and is simply forwarded to the board for consideration. Anthere

The notion that every contract has to be between the Wikimedia Foundation and another organization is also unnecessary -- contracts can be between volunteers and grant-giving organizations, if the grants are small and having the contracts managed by Wikimedia only adds unnecessary bureaucratic overhead. This way, Wikimedia adds organizational credibility for volunteers who deserve it.

They don't care about whose name is attached to the contract. They care that WMF wants this to go ahead. Many organizations will be the same way: "Oh, Wikimedia wants 5000 EUR for this project? Sure, we'll help! Oh, you want us to deal with these guys over there to keep the overhead low? Sure, can do!" We can and should define a size of contract where things cannot be handled this way anymore, of course.

I wrote specifications, a budget and a full proposal for Kennisnet in February. This proposal named the developers, the roles and responsibilities, and the duration of development. The proposal, as written in February, is at http://scireview.de/temp/instantcommons_2.odt

Then they should be deleted. InstantCommons is a manual, user-initiated process. Commons has no legal responsibility to stop users of other wikis from copying images from Commons, whether it is by means of manually downloading or uploading, or by setting their wiki up for IC and initiating an IC transfer process. The copyright cleanup script is a convenient thing we can provide, and by no means a legal necessity.

On 6/8/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote: Before I answer these, let me ask if you agree with this being a reasonable idea in general. If it is, then for me it means that technical details should be worked out by technical people as the project moves along. Kennisnet actually told us that the proposal was more technically detailed than it needs to be in order to be funded.

There are future queries where the subsystem would come in handy, such as: show me the available, pre-rendered thumbnails, a list of conversion services, etc. Some of these are mentioned in the specs.

Sure, the system should cache non-existence, but given that we anticipate fairly low usage to begin with, and given that the process of adding and reviewing an image is interactive, I do not anticipate any major load resulting from putting that feature into a future version of MW even without such caching. MW has several caching mechanisms that would kick in anyway for pages that have already been viewed before. If it does cause problems, we can deactivate the Commons service entirely until the feature is improved.

We don't have the same assurance for Commons usage within the Wikimedia projects either, I think.

Then they should be deleted. InstantCommons is a manual, user-initiated process. Commons has no legal responsibility to stop users of other wikis from copying images from Commons, whether it is by means of manually downloading or uploading, or by setting their wiki up for IC and initiating an IC transfer process. The copyright cleanup script is a convenient thing we can provide, and by no means a legal necessity.

It's a service which we can choose to provide - for some wikis, for some file formats, etc. This is a policy choice for Wikimedia to make.

The first iteration of IC could support SVG the same way it is supported today: If your local wiki doesn't have a backend rendering library, you can still upload them (locally or through IC), but you can't view them as rendered PNGs and scaled thumbnails. Future iterations could support SVGs through some XML-RPC based query/response mechanism for the PNGs, if Wikimedia wants to provide that service.

The feature set is reasonably simple. Do keep in mind that for a feature to be developed and for it to be "Brion-ready" generally takes some more time spent with testing, debugging, security review, etc. The developer is ready to use any surplus time for the purpose of developing Wikipedia content in one of the native languages of Ghana; Kennisnet was happy with that. Also keep in mind that this is his first MediaWiki project, so he'll need some tutoring from a skilled developer, which should be paid for.

On 6/8/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: I wrote specifications, a budget and a full proposal for Kennisnet in February.

responsibilities, and the duration of development.

written in February, is at http://scireview.de/temp/instantcommons_2.odt

Kennisnet was ready to approve the project as such if Wikimedia was happy with it.

if that is not the case.

Since then, the only major thing that has happened from my point of view is that I answered to some questions that came from SP (via Legal). For the most part, there was nothing in there that could not have been worked out as the project moves along -- see my response from April: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/spcommittee-l/2006-April/000078.html Erik

Erik Moeller wrote: We have never seen a detailed budget (though we asked). This proposal named the developers, the roles and We have not received a timeline (despite repeated requests) The proposal, as ... I can not read .odt... (shame...) I suddenly wonder if we got all the right documents... I suspect not...

On 6/7/06, Anthere <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: This is not about good or bad faith, Florence. Of course the SP committee is acting in good faith - I never denied this. The point is that a 5000 EUR project that was essentially OK'd by Kennisnet in February is still not ready to go by June. The point is that at this organizational efficiency, we need not even dream of realizing any real grant proposals that are brought to us from the outside. I'd like _you_ to make the effort to recognize that the organization needs to fundamentally change in the way it does things if it does want to fulfill its charitable mission. I am very, very concerned that our promises about helping children in Africa are going to sound rather cynical when actual African projects (and InstantCommons is one) do not happen because the organization is so ineffective. _Especially_ in an all-volunteer organization, the approach which is currently taken -- a small group of people must make all the critical decisions, and new members are only recruited if there is consensus _within_ that group (_and_ ideally the Board) -- is not scalable. And it's certainly not scalable for a top 16 website with over a million registered users and hundreds, thousands of potential "special projects". Not to mention other projects besides Wikipedia which are badly in need of innovative thinking and creative partnerships. Not to mention that we're supposed to be multilingual. I have not seen a single announcement on this mailing list for an open SP-related meeting. Most of the discussions you need to have can be open without leaving a permanent record on the web -- publish edited logs or summaries where confidential information is concerned. You can accept advisors without even voting on them. And the core voting members should be those who do the most work of actually planning, coordinating and realizing projects as this becomes visible in a larger group. The notion that every contract has to be between the Wikimedia Foundation and another organization is also unnecessary -- contracts can be between volunteers and grant-giving organizations, if the grants are small and having the contracts managed by Wikimedia only adds unnecessary bureaucratic overhead. This way, Wikimedia adds organizational credibility for volunteers who deserve it. This could have been done with Kennisnet in February or March. Don't be overly afraid of outcomes -- just dissociate yourself from projects which fail, and highlight those that succeed. And for Christ's sake, don't worry all the time about legal risks. Legal risks can be addressed as a project develops. Wikipedia is an insanely bad idea from a legal point of view and would never have been started through _any_ process which we are actually using in our organization to start things. Build _many_ relationships with people you can trust, instead of building _few_ relationships with people you'd like to take out for dinner. How about you start _trusting_ me, Gerard and other volunteers when we come to the Foundation and say: "This here is a moderately cool project that these people over there are willing to pay for, but they'd like to get an OK from the Foundation." Again, I ask: Why could the SP committee not simply have sent the authorization to Kennisnet, and let the contract side of things be handled between Gerard and them? Again, not a single valid reason has been given for excluding a person like Gerard from the committee. This is not about him personally -- it's about the _process_. You accuse me of assuming bad faith. Yet you are treating me as an outsider after 5 years of working with and around Wikipedia which has included more "special projects" than I care to mention (which pay my salary, I might add). There are large grants I am associated with which I wouldn't bring even anywhere _near_ the Foundation because of its current state. Your point above seems to be accurately summarizable as: "Erik, please be nice to us, because otherwise we'll just ignore your ideas." Not a single part of my e-mails was personal criticism, an assumption of bad faith, or deliberately insulting. I have been very careful to focus on the issues, using InstantCommons as an example of failure. I am doing this publicly not to humiliate you but because I know from experience that otherwise I will just be silently ignored. Instead of actually trying to resolve the problems I pointed out, you posted a new thread with the upper case title "INCORRECT", accusing me of spreading false information. When the information turned out to be correct, you accuse me of not being nice. How about, instead of accusing me of something, you try to actually answer to my points above? How is the Foundation going to scale to the size of problems it faces? I would be very happy to serve with you on SP and to work with you to reorganize it in such a fashion that it can handle grants and projects efficiently and effectively. The question is, do you acknowledge the problems there are, and do you want my help to solve them? Or are you hoping to pull a miracle CEO out of your hat who will solve global hunger? Kennisnet is just one random (if important) organization from the Netherlands we happen to have a good working relationship with. There are thousands of Kennisnets out there, thousands of organizations and companies and institutions who would be happy to support us in a myriad different ways. Heck, some of them have already sent the Foundation product samples. I have no doubt that the SP committee will initiate a dozen or half dozen projects from within its own ranks in the coming months. However, Wikimedia's ambition is not "to start a dozen or half dozen interesting projects". Wikimedia's ambition is: "Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." http://wikimediafoundation.org/ The first version of this statement was drafted by Jimmy and me at the WOS 2004. I would say it's about time we get serious about it, or drop the rhetoric. Wikimedia is turning into a "who likes who" club rather than an organization centered around goals, objectives, and qualifications. Jimmy says he doesn't want the organization to be run like a college club. Then it's time to get rid of the bullshit politics. Get Gerard and me on SP. Let us identify other people who can help. Allow us to bring our existing collaborations into the WMF. And let's broaden and open up the organization in ways which will amaze us all. This is not about "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" philosophy, about applying wiki ideology to areas where there are "tried and tested" ways of doing things which are preferable. This is about learning from great thinkers like Douglas Engelbart, Ted Nelson, Howard Rheingold, Frederic Vester, and Tim Berners-Lee. This is about running Wikimedia in accordance with the laws of thermodynamics: only open systems are survivable. The last thing our planet needs is more politics and more bureaucracy. What it does need is smart people collaborating, building global networks, and overlooking their personal differences, before our civilization collapses under its own weight. Erik

De : Anthere <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> I completly disagree with this point. You are part of the Board. That's an engagement.

Traroth

GerardM, who has a more impressive track record in special projects than I do -- there would be no Kennisnet partnership and no WiktionaryZ project without him, applied for membership and was rejected. Frankly, this is not an example of an open organization that accepts the most qualified people to do the right thing. It's an example of "face by face" selection processes. No amount of rhetoric is going to change that.

All in all, there are arguments why I am not in there. Given that people are chosen by the existing committee members, it does not help argueing publicly about why someone is or is not in a committee.

It is my expectation that Tim will be replaced by the end of this year. Notice that such decisions are not up to me, but up to the entire board. We have been discussing board expansion, and it is a complex matter. We are not prepared to say at the moment exactly how or when it will happen. My expectation is that we will see at least one additional member from the community, and one additional member (likely from the free software / free culture world) to provide additional external oversight.

It would be absolutely fine to start a public dialogue about it right now. Who do you recommend we approach?

The composition of the board is of critical importance to insuring that our core mission and community values are respected.

It would be absolutely fine to start a public dialogue about it right now. Who do you recommend we approach?

On 6/6/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence(a)gmail.com> wrote: I met Achal when I was in South Africa, and again at Wikimania last year. If there is to be an advisory board, he should definitely be considered for that since he has a lot of very relevant experience and would seem to support our goals. I'd rather keep the actual board limited to people with experience of Wikimedia though, rather than outsiders to increase the chance the Board members are aware of the community's concerns and have some motivation to follow the wishes of the community.