Mav wrote:
quote
"...But, IMO, we should seriously consider a better place for the Wikimedia main office before hiring lots of people. St Pete is fine as a tourist destination and maybe even as a satellite office of the foundation given that two board members and Danny live there, but the host city of the main office of an international organization? Sorry, but no.
Washington D.C. or NYC are places where almost every nation of world sends their ambassadors and where a multitude of other international organizations, which we really should be working closely with, are based. Talent pool is another consideration; many more people with the relevant experience we need already live in those cities."
---
As on several earlier occasions I disagree with Mav on how Wikimedia money would be best spent. Washington D.C. or NYC are very expensive cities. Besides, those are cities with heavily political connotations. Of course there is no such thing as a political neutral location. Maybe St Petersburg USA comes close, not sure ;)
We might show the world that we still do things differently, not per se, but when there is a good reason for it. We might do something substantial for the underdeveloped world by placing our head office in e.g. Africa or India. Wikimedia involvement in many underdeveloped countries is still largely lagging behind. We might reach out and make a powerful gesture of good faith in the potential of those parts of the world.
To name just one example: Nairobi would be a capable host city. Even the UN has a head office there. Running an office in Africa or India would be much cheaper. In a web-connected world travel times and costs are no longer very strong arguments against this.
Erik Zachte
--- Erik Zachte erikzachte@infodisiac.com wrote:
As on several earlier occasions I disagree with Mav on how Wikimedia money would be best spent. Washington D.C. or NYC are very expensive cities.
Not the suburbs of D.C. and to some extent parts of the NYC outside of Manhattan. The point, is to be in a place where we can most easily establish connections with other nations and like-minded organizations. Cost of rent is nothing compared to the synergies that would develop my being where all the action is. Not to mention being a job market where we can find top talent.
-- mav
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On 5/25/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
Not the suburbs of D.C. and to some extent parts of the NYC outside of Manhattan. The point, is to be in a place where we can most easily establish connections with other nations and like-minded organizations. Cost of rent is nothing compared to the synergies that would develop my being where all the action is. Not to mention being a job market where we can find top talent.
NYC makes sense to a certain degree because of the internationality (UN, UNICEF), though of course relevant conferences and meetings are held in many different locations around the world. Geneva or Brussels would also work for the same reasons, and for some which do not apply to NYC. Personally I don't mind the US HQ because it keeps most of the legal trouble an ocean away from us EUians.
We also need to take into account laws that might be relevant to our website operations. This is esp. true, unfortunately, in developing countries. There may also be critical variations across US states.
But the idea to move the HQ because of "top talent" sounds rather silly for an organization that was formed around several websites. There are plenty of companies which are entirely decentralized these days, not to mention that highly talented, intelligent, educated and passionate people can be found everywhere in the world. Even in Washington D.C.
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
But the idea to move the HQ because of "top talent" sounds rather silly for an organization that was formed around several websites. There are plenty of companies which are entirely decentralized these days, not to mention that highly talented, intelligent, educated and passionate people can be found everywhere in the world. Even in Washington D.C.
Indeed. Who actually would go to this main office, and what would they do there?
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On 26/05/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Erik Zachte erikzachte@infodisiac.com wrote:
As on several earlier occasions I disagree with Mav on how Wikimedia money would be best spent. Washington D.C. or NYC are very expensive cities.
Not the suburbs of D.C. and to some extent parts of the NYC outside of Manhattan. The point, is to be in a place where we can most easily establish connections with other nations and like-minded organizations.
Washington is (and more importantly is thought of as) an *American* not international administrative centre. It would send a bad message to the rest of the world if we moved there.
paz y amor, -rjs.
--- Robin Shannon robin.shannon@gmail.com wrote:
Washington is (and more importantly is thought of as) an *American* not international administrative centre. It would send a bad message to the rest of the world if we moved there.
That is symbolism over substance and thus not a valid argument in my book. Besides, D.C. itself is too expensive, the office would be in a suburb (preferably reasonably close to a Metro station).
-- mav
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For me, who live in Swiss, to see that Washington could be the seat of the main office of WF I automatically could think about a link between it and US government. I know that european thought is very strange! but for a non-political association this could be a bad choice.
Ilario
-- Messaggio originale -- Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 20:51:24 -0700 (PDT) From: Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office Reply-To: dmayer@wikimedia.org, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@wikimedia.org
--- Robin Shannon robin.shannon@gmail.com wrote:
Washington is (and more importantly is thought of as) an *American* not international administrative centre. It would send a bad message to the rest of the world if we moved there.
That is symbolism over substance and thus not a valid argument in my book. Besides, D.C. itself is too expensive, the office would be in a suburb (preferably reasonably close to a Metro station).
-- mav
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I'm not aware of any plans that call for massive hiring in a central office. Most office hiring will be for routine administrative/clerical functions which will be much cheaper outside of a major metropolitan areas. Flights from St. Petersburg to NYC or DC are $200 round trip and are easy day trips. International flights are more difficult but that hasn't slowed down Jimbo. Given that the Foundations pays $400 per month for office space, it's a whole lot cheaper to fly back and forth a few time a month than lease office space in Manhattan.
Our strength is that we are a virtual organization and that isn't going to change.
Michael
Erik Zachte wrote:
Mav wrote:
quote
"...But, IMO, we should seriously consider a better place for the Wikimedia main office before hiring lots of people. St Pete is fine as a tourist destination and maybe even as a satellite office of the foundation given that two board members and Danny live there, but the host city of the main office of an international organization? Sorry, but no.
Washington D.C. or NYC are places where almost every nation of world sends their ambassadors and where a multitude of other international organizations, which we really should be working closely with, are based. Talent pool is another consideration; many more people with the relevant experience we need already live in those cities."
As on several earlier occasions I disagree with Mav on how Wikimedia money would be best spent. Washington D.C. or NYC are very expensive cities. Besides, those are cities with heavily political connotations. Of course there is no such thing as a political neutral location. Maybe St Petersburg USA comes close, not sure ;)
We might show the world that we still do things differently, not per se, but when there is a good reason for it. We might do something substantial for the underdeveloped world by placing our head office in e.g. Africa or India. Wikimedia involvement in many underdeveloped countries is still largely lagging behind. We might reach out and make a powerful gesture of good faith in the potential of those parts of the world.
To name just one example: Nairobi would be a capable host city. Even the UN has a head office there. Running an office in Africa or India would be much cheaper. In a web-connected world travel times and costs are no longer very strong arguments against this.
Erik Zachte
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Michael Davis wrote:
I'm not aware of any plans that call for massive hiring in a central office. Most office hiring will be for routine administrative/clerical functions which will be much cheaper outside of a major metropolitan areas. Flights from St. Petersburg to NYC or DC are $200 round trip and are easy day trips. International flights are more difficult but that hasn't slowed down Jimbo. Given that the Foundations pays $400 per month for office space, it's a whole lot cheaper to fly back and forth a few time a month than lease office space in Manhattan.
Our strength is that we are a virtual organization and that isn't going to change.
Fully seconded. One of our strengths is extremely low costs implying strong independence and no fears about our financial future. Adding a lot of staff and the rent and salary costs associated with an office in an expensive city does not appear to me very compelling, to say the least.
--Jimbo
--- Michael Davis mdavis@wikia.com wrote:
I'm not aware of any plans that call for massive hiring in a central office. Most office hiring will be for routine administrative/clerical functions which will be much cheaper outside of a major metropolitan areas. Flights from St. Petersburg to NYC or DC are $200 round trip and are easy day trips. International flights are more difficult but that hasn't slowed down Jimbo. Given that the Foundations pays $400 per month for office space, it's a whole lot cheaper to fly back and forth a few time a month than lease office space in Manhattan.
Our strength is that we are a virtual organization and that isn't going to change.
Nobody is advocating having an office in Manhattan. That would be insanely expensive. But having one in suburb of Washington D.C. would be both cost effective and put us within a metro ride of hundreds of potential contacts; both representatives from various nations and many other like-minded organizations. Having our top paid staff there would even be more effective.
There are real limits to the amount that can get done via email, IRC, and telephones. For example, we were able to do more work in the January face-to-face meeting than we did in the previous six months. Face-to-face communication simply has a much higher bandwith (as does having direct physical access to records). Increasing the opportunity for that by physical proximity to the people we want and need to be in contact with, can only reap great benefits.
-- mav
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On 5/25/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
There are real limits to the amount that can get done via email, IRC, and telephones. For example, we were able to do more work in the January face-to-face meeting than we did in the previous six months. Face-to-face communication simply has a much higher bandwith (as does having direct physical access to records). Increasing the opportunity for that by physical proximity to the people we want and need to be in contact with, can only reap great benefits.
-- mav
Okay, so even if this was the case, would the foundation be wanting to rent or buy? Buying would obviously be more cost-effective, but how much would the foundation be willing to spend on a new office? Doesn't most of the current budget go towards server upkeep/purchase, etc.? Do we happen to have a tens of thousand of US dollars just laying around? If meetups are more effective, why not just schedule more regular meet ups? Meet in a library or some other suitable meeting area. I came into this convo a little late, forgive my noobishness.
--- Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
Okay, so even if this was the case, would the foundation be wanting to rent or buy? Buying would obviously be more cost-effective, but how much would the foundation be willing to spend on a new office? Doesn't most of the current budget go towards server upkeep/purchase, etc.? Do we happen to have a tens of thousand of US dollars just laying around? If meetups are more effective, why not just schedule more regular meet ups? Meet in a library or some other suitable meeting area. I came into this convo a little late, forgive my noobishness.
A couple more thousand per month would have a very minimal impact on a multi-million dollar per year budget. There is a significant opportunity cost of having to set up meetings way in advance because all the key people need to fly into one place vs simply having key people already on the ground where we know contacts are already located.
What key non-Wikimedia contacts are in St Pete? None outside the tourist industry and Scientology AFAIK. What key non-Wikimedia contacts are in D.C. and NYC? Representatives from just about every nation on earth along with hundreds of like-minded organizations that share different parts of our goals. If we had an office near D.C. or NYC, then meeting with any one of those key contacts could be done casually, often, and without much notice beforehand.
Strengthening ties like that is a great opportunity. Are we going to throw that away by pretending that email and IRC with the occasional real world meeting have anything near the bandwidth of frequent face-to-face communication?
-- mav
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2006/5/26, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com:
A couple more thousand per month would have a very minimal impact on a multi-million dollar per year budget. There is a significant opportunity cost of having to set up meetings way in advance because all the key people need to fly into one place vs simply having key people already on the ground where we know contacts are already located.
I don't see how moving the office would diminish that problem. As far as I see it, the office would not be the "key people", and as far as they are, they are so by being who they are, not by their function.
What key non-Wikimedia contacts are in St Pete? None outside the tourist industry and Scientology AFAIK. What key non-Wikimedia contacts are in D.C. and NYC? Representatives from just about every nation on earth along with hundreds of like-minded organizations that share different parts of our goals. If we had an office near D.C. or NYC, then meeting with any one of those key contacts could be done casually, often, and without much notice beforehand.
If we have people near D.C. or NYC, they could do that without the office being there physically. If we have no people there, then it would in my opinion be stupiditiy to move our office there.
--- Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
If we have people near D.C. or NYC, they could do that without the office being there physically. If we have no people there, then it would in my opinion be stupiditiy to move our office there.
Of course we already have people (volunteers) there in the strictest sense. What Im talking about is having most or at least the top paid staff there instead of in a place where they wont be as effective (a tourist hot spot). Remember, this whole thread started with a mention of hiring a CEO/Executive Director. I do not propose closing the St Pete office since we have two board members there along with our main server farm.
-- mav
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Is this the first time a CEO has been proposed? what on earth would be the point of having one? I ask if this is the first time it has been asked because i would like to see any wikipages or archeived email threads to see what the arguments are for having one.
paz y amor, -rjs.
On 26/05/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
If we have people near D.C. or NYC, they could do that without the office being there physically. If we have no people there, then it would in my opinion be stupiditiy to move our office there.
Of course we already have people (volunteers) there in the strictest sense. What I'm talking about is having most or at least the top paid staff there instead of in a place where they won't be as effective (a tourist hot spot). Remember, this whole thread started with a mention of hiring a CEO/Executive Director. I do not propose closing the St Pete office since we have two board members there along with our main server farm.
-- mav
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On 5/26/06, Robin Shannon robin.shannon@gmail.com wrote:
Is this the first time a CEO has been proposed? what on earth would be the point of having one? I ask if this is the first time it has been asked because i would like to see any wikipages or archeived email threads to see what the arguments are for having one.
There's been a brief public discussion about it in January: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-January/thread.html#57...
Erik
--- Robin Shannon robin.shannon@gmail.com wrote:
Is this the first time a CEO has been proposed? what on earth would be the point of having one? I ask if this is the first time it has been asked because i would like to see any wikipages or archeived email threads to see what the arguments are for having one.
We have been talking about this for at least a couple years; the last time we did so publicly was just mentioned and linked to by Erik. The reason why this is necessary is due to the fact that we long ago reached the limit on what volunteers alone can accomplish. We have therefore been missing out on many different potential opportunities (for getting grants, very large donations and to reach our ultimate goals) simply because we have not had proper staffing. And a staff needs a person to manage them and the daily aspects of running the organization. Simply put, we are transitioning from the amateur football club model to a professional organization. Staff are an investment.
-- mav
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
We have been talking about this for at least a couple years; the last time we did so publicly was just mentioned and linked to by Erik. The reason why this is necessary is due to the fact that we long ago reached the limit on what volunteers alone can accomplish. We have therefore been missing out on many different potential opportunities (for getting grants, very large donations and to reach our ultimate goals) simply because we have not had proper staffing. And a staff needs a person to manage them and the daily aspects of running the organization. Simply put, we are transitioning from the amateur football club model to a professional organization. Staff are an investment.
This isn't without risks; many initially grass-roots organizations have lost the essence of what initially made them work in the transition to large, professional organization (this is especially true, for example, of many environmentalist organizations). It's not impossible to do right, but IMO needs to be done slowly and cautiously. There are plenty of things that a grassroots organization can get people to do for free that an organization with a large, paid staff cannot.
-Mark
On 5/26/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
This isn't without risks; many initially grass-roots organizations have lost the essence of what initially made them work in the transition to large, professional organization (this is especially true, for example, of many environmentalist organizations). It's not impossible to do right, but IMO needs to be done slowly and cautiously. There are plenty of things that a grassroots organization can get people to do for free that an organization with a large, paid staff cannot.
-Mark
But I'm not sure we lose the grassroots-type feel even if we had a paid staff. We still have tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people willing to do things for free, even with a paid staff. Wikimedia has flourished under this volunteer oriented mindset, but I don't see everyone suddenly saying, "Screw you WMF, you hired some people, I ain't doing squat." The volunteers would still be there, and WMF would still enlist the services of them. Or am I wrong? --LV
On 26/05/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
We have been talking about this for at least a couple years; the last time we did so publicly was just mentioned and linked to by Erik. The reason why this is necessary is due to the fact that we long ago reached the limit on what volunteers alone can accomplish. We have therefore been missing out on many different potential opportunities (for getting grants, very large donations and to reach our ultimate goals) simply because we have not had proper staffing. And a staff needs a person to manage them and the daily aspects of running the organization. Simply put, we are transitioning from the amateur football club model to a professional organization. Staff are an investment.
-- mav
You see i really don't like how that was worded (this is not meant at all to be a personal attack on mav just a warning about what we may become). " We have been talking about this for at least a couple years; the last time we did so publicly was just mentioned and linked to by Erik." I've been lurking and occasionally posting on this list and others for most of the time it has existed and now that Erik linked to that thread i do remember it but that is the only previous mention i remember (i'm not saying there haven't been more, just that we haven't had a large public debate about it). I think we need to engage anyone who is willing to be engaged in a debate about where we should be heading and how we should go about it. Espesially if the direction is towards corpratisation. So far i think the WMF has been doing the best it can of a difficult job and i don't mean to critisise anyone personally, I just think that the future direction of wikimedia is up to the community not the board or its officers, staff or whoever. The money that the foundation spends is not the foundation's but the wikimedia community's (i am not talking in a legal way i am talking in an ethical way. It was given for the community not the foundation).
The balance sheets tell me that 60 something percent of money goes to servers and hardware and the rest goes to other stuff. I don't think that is a good balance. That is my view. What is the view of most people in the community? What is the view of most donors? I dunno. Does anyone? Do all the board members and others who have most to do with the day to day running of foundation issues think we need a CEO?
paz y amor, -rjs.
On 5/26/06, Robin Shannon robin.shannon@gmail.com wrote:
I think we need to engage anyone who is willing to be engaged in a debate about where we should be heading and how we should go about it.
How? Previous public Wikimedia meetings have led nowhere and done nothing other than highlight how few people in the communities are interested in _doing_ anything - as opposed to debating on mailing lists.
I just think that the future direction of wikimedia is up to the community not the board or its officers, staff or whoever.
Nice idea... how about you suggest how that might happen? There are currently two community representatives on the Board, though it's increasingly obvious that the community are not using either Anthere or myself to get anything to happen. Anything that does happen comes through private mailing lists and an increasing number of internal processes that even Board members don't always have access to.
Angela
Angela wrote:
On 5/26/06, Robin Shannon robin.shannon@gmail.com wrote:
I think we need to engage anyone who is willing to be engaged in a debate about where we should be heading and how we should go about it.
How? Previous public Wikimedia meetings have led nowhere and done nothing other than highlight how few people in the communities are interested in _doing_ anything - as opposed to debating on mailing lists.
Since most of us don't have sufficient funds to travel to public meetings, nor sufficiently flexible schedules to sit around on IRC, it should be no surprise that we're much more willing to debate on mailing lists, which are the most inclusive. If there were a public meeting in Atlanta, I would certainly attend, but to my knowledge there hasn't been one.
As for what needs doing, many of us are doing the one thing that IMO needs most urgently to be done, and without which nothing else is particularly useful---improving the encyclopedia. I agree there are other things that should get done, most notably some sort of infrastructure for a "Wikipedia Review" or "Sifter" or "Wikipedia 1.0" project (or whatever name it ends up going by). I don't personally have the expertise or free time to do that, and it seems nobody else has been forthcoming either, so if hiring someone to do it is the best way to get it done, that seems like a reasonable use of funds.
I just think that the future direction of wikimedia is up to the community not the board or its officers, staff or whoever.
Nice idea... how about you suggest how that might happen? There are currently two community representatives on the Board, though it's increasingly obvious that the community are not using either Anthere or myself to get anything to happen. Anything that does happen comes through private mailing lists and an increasing number of internal processes that even Board members don't always have access to.
I've personally been pretty happy with the community representation on the board; IMO you and Anthere usually align with the interests of the majority of the community.
The latter part seems a bit disturbing---is it even *legal* for the Wikimedia Foundation to have processes that its Board doesn't have access to?
-Mark
On 5/26/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Since most of us don't have sufficient funds to travel to public meetings, nor sufficiently flexible schedules to sit around on IRC, it should be no surprise that we're much more willing to debate on mailing lists, which are the most inclusive. If there were a public meeting in Atlanta, I would certainly attend, but to my knowledge there hasn't been one.
[snip]
If you consider your own contributions of such low value that they are not worth going out of your way to present, even including sending someone else in your place... then why should we expect them to be worth our time reading on a mailing list?
On 5/26/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
If you consider your own contributions of such low value that they are not worth going out of your way to present, even including sending someone else in your place... then why should we expect them to be worth our time reading on a mailing list?
I find questioning people's financial situations in poor taste. --LV
On 5/26/06, Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/26/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
If you consider your own contributions of such low value that they are not worth going out of your way to present, even including sending someone else in your place... then why should we expect them to be worth our time reading on a mailing list?
I find questioning people's financial situations in poor taste.
Huh? I was refering to the IRC meetings which is what almost all of them have been.
If you're telling me that financial situation prevents them from getting someone to go attend an IRC meeting in your place....
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 5/26/06, Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/26/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
If you consider your own contributions of such low value that they are not worth going out of your way to present, even including sending someone else in your place... then why should we expect them to be worth our time reading on a mailing list?
I find questioning people's financial situations in poor taste.
Huh? I was refering to the IRC meetings which is what almost all of them have been.
Oh, I thought you meant the in-person meetings.
I don't find IRC (or "chat" generally) a useful or efficient means of communication. Email gives enough space that people can look up sources, consider their positions and arguments, read other material if necessary, and then respond. IRC is a mixture of off-the-cuff and prepared remarks, broken up into small bits with a lot of asides and chit-chat that you have to sit through in real time.
There are some projects that use it effectively, but most projects I've been involved with have dropped it pretty quickly in favor of the mailing lists. The exceptions are ones with a high proportion of people who hang out on IRC to socialize anyway.
-Mark
On 5/26/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote: [snip]
I don't find IRC (or "chat" generally) a useful or efficient means of communication. Email gives enough space that people can look up sources, consider their positions and arguments, read other material if necessary, and then respond. IRC is a mixture of off-the-cuff and prepared remarks, broken up into small bits with a lot of asides and chit-chat that you have to sit through in real time.
[snip]
IRC's time constraints, is by large, a primary factor in its attractiveness. It acts as a great time equalizer, preventing kooks with unlimited time to prepare their rants from monopolizing the fourm. Actions are what counts, not how long you can make your argument.
If someone were to propose such discussions happen on a mailinglist with a limit of ~100 words per person/day, then I'd find that agreeable. If you can't make your point in a small space you either haven't thought about it enough or it's just not a good idea. Brevity also helps non-native English speakers understand.
--- Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
If someone were to propose such discussions happen on a mailinglist with a limit of ~100 words per person/day, then I'd
find >that
agreeable. If you can't make your point in a small
space >you either
haven't thought about it enough or it's just not a
good >idea. Brevity
also helps non-native English speakers understand.
Gregory makes it indeed confusing for people having another mother tongue than English (I am one of them): by using too many words.
What I understand is (can native speakers tell me if I'm right or wrong?):
Limit of 100 words would be better. I doubt it. If you are allowed to attach a picture (far more than 100 words) you could be able to show what you mean even to people who can read nor write.
These were indeed less than 100 words (excluding the quote :)).
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Klaas wrote:
--- Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
If someone were to propose such discussions happen on a mailinglist with a limit of ~100 words per person/day, then I'd
find >that
agreeable. If you can't make your point in a small
space >you either
haven't thought about it enough or it's just not a
good >idea. Brevity
also helps non-native English speakers understand.
Gregory makes it indeed confusing for people having another mother tongue than English (I am one of them): by using too many words.
What I understand is (can native speakers tell me if I'm right or wrong?):
Limit of 100 words would be better. I doubt it. If you are allowed to attach a picture (far more than 100 words) you could be able to show what you mean even to people who can read nor write.
These were indeed less than 100 words (excluding the quote :)).
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What, short on disk space? I have missed most of the thread. Can someone explain why 100 words should be a limit?
Jeff
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 5/26/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote: [snip]
I don't find IRC (or "chat" generally) a useful or efficient means of communication. Email gives enough space that people can look up sources, consider their positions and arguments, read other material if necessary, and then respond. IRC is a mixture of off-the-cuff and prepared remarks, broken up into small bits with a lot of asides and chit-chat that you have to sit through in real time.
[snip]
IRC's time constraints, is by large, a primary factor in its attractiveness. It acts as a great time equalizer, preventing kooks with unlimited time to prepare their rants from monopolizing the fourm. Actions are what counts, not how long you can make your argument.
So now people who take time to consider their answers are kooks preparing rants.
If someone were to propose such discussions happen on a mailinglist with a limit of ~100 words per person/day, then I'd find that agreeable. If you can't make your point in a small space you either haven't thought about it enough or it's just not a good idea. Brevity also helps non-native English speakers understand.
I'm not opposed to brevity and concise answers, but a comment that is both brief and effective can take longer to draft than a long sloppy one.
Ec
On 5/26/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
I don't find IRC (or "chat" generally) a useful or efficient means of communication. Email gives enough space that people can look up sources, consider their positions and arguments, read other material if necessary, and then respond. IRC is a mixture of off-the-cuff and prepared remarks, broken up into small bits with a lot of asides and chit-chat that you have to sit through in real time.
I agree that IRC is next to useless when you have any sizable number of people involved, especially since most such "meetings" are poorly moderated or not moderated at all; but for small, well-behaved groups, it's a good medium between the careful but time-consuming consideration of e-mail and the real-time demands of a conference call. And for one-on-one interaction, I prefer it to the telephone for the same reason you prefer e-mail.
There are some projects that use it effectively, but most projects I've been involved with have dropped it pretty quickly in favor of the mailing lists. The exceptions are ones with a high proportion of people who hang out on IRC to socialize anyway.
Yeah, I'm one of those guys. I've been connected more or less every day for the last ten years, I've administered IRC networks, I've written tons of IRC daemon code. You'll be hard-pressed to find a bigger IRC geek than me, so it should be no surprise that I'm an advocate of it in general. It's not a proper substitute for face-to-face contact, though—Wikimania 2005 was probably the most productive week in wiki history; certainly in Wikimedia history.
On the topic at hand, however, I find the mailing list more productive as a whole. Any kook can rant, sure, but it's actually easier to ignore him via e-mail.
Austin
Delirium wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 5/26/06, Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/26/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
If you consider your own contributions of such low value that they are not worth going out of your way to present, even including sending someone else in your place... then why should we expect them to be worth our time reading on a mailing list?
I find questioning people's financial situations in poor taste.
Huh? I was refering to the IRC meetings which is what almost all of them have been.
Oh, I thought you meant the in-person meetings.
There was nothing in that comment to specify that he was talking about IRC.
I don't find IRC (or "chat" generally) a useful or efficient means of communication. Email gives enough space that people can look up sources, consider their positions and arguments, read other material if necessary, and then respond. IRC is a mixture of off-the-cuff and prepared remarks, broken up into small bits with a lot of asides and chit-chat that you have to sit through in real time.
I strongly agree with this. I have this unfortunate habit of liking to think about what I say. That leaves me ill-suited for the instant gratification that is sometimes required in chat rooms.
Ec
On 5/26/06, Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/26/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
If you consider your own contributions of such low value that they are not worth going out of your way to present, even including sending someone else in your place... then why should we expect them to be worth our time reading on a mailing list?
I find questioning people's financial situations in poor taste.
The meetings I was talking about were on IRC, not in real life, so it's about time, not finance.
Angela.
On 5/26/06, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/26/06, Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/26/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
If you consider your own contributions of such low value that they are not worth going out of your way to present, even including sending someone else in your place... then why should we expect them to be worth our time reading on a mailing list?
I find questioning people's financial situations in poor taste.
The meetings I was talking about were on IRC, not in real life, so it's about time, not finance.
Angela.
Sorry, I thought you were referring to the "Since most of us don't have sufficient funds to travel to public meetings" part. My mistake. Nothing to see here... carry on. --LV
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 5/26/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Since most of us don't have sufficient funds to travel to public meetings, nor sufficiently flexible schedules to sit around on IRC, it should be no surprise that we're much more willing to debate on mailing lists, which are the most inclusive. If there were a public meeting in Atlanta, I would certainly attend, but to my knowledge there hasn't been one.
[snip]
If you consider your own contributions of such low value that they are not worth going out of your way to present, even including sending someone else in your place... then why should we expect them to be worth our time reading on a mailing list?
It's more the opposite: I consider in-person meetings of such low value that they are not worth going out of my way to attend or send someone to attend. This is not 1930; internet projects for decades now have been coordinated solely by means of the internet.
-Mark
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
It's more the opposite: I consider in-person meetings of such low value that they are not worth going out of my way to attend or send someone to attend. This is not 1930; internet projects for decades now have been coordinated solely by means of the internet.
In person meetings may be of low value to you, but I've found them to be extremely productive compared to email/IRC or even phone. For example, we accomplished more in a single weekend during the January face-to-face meeting of all the board members and most of the officers than we did in the six months prior to that.
Having most of our paid staff in close proximity to like-minded organizations and representatives of all the nations of the world will likely have similar efficiencies since meetings could be made much more easily and frequently.
-- mav
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
It's more the opposite: I consider in-person meetings of such low value that they are not worth going out of my way to attend or send someone to attend. This is not 1930; internet projects for decades now have been coordinated solely by means of the internet.
In person meetings may be of low value to you, but I've found them to be extremely productive compared to email/IRC or even phone. For example, we accomplished more in a single weekend during the January face-to-face meeting of all the board members and most of the officers than we did in the six months prior to that.
That is absolutely right. A LOT can be done face to face which is difficult or impossible online.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
It's more the opposite: I consider in-person meetings of such low value that they are not worth going out of my way to attend or send someone to attend. This is not 1930; internet projects for decades now have been coordinated solely by means of the internet.
In person meetings may be of low value to you, but I've found them to be extremely productive compared to email/IRC or even phone. For example, we accomplished more in a single weekend during the January face-to-face meeting of all the board members and most of the officers than we did in the six months prior to that.
That is absolutely right. A LOT can be done face to face which is difficult or impossible online.
I think it would be more accurate to say that you (and some others) find that to be the case; it's not a universal truth of some sort.
Since the main bulk of my job (academic research) involves collaborating with people, I have a pretty decent sample size. I find that some of my collaborations require seeing the other person face-to-face regularly, but that with others it makes little to no difference. The main predictor seems to be whether the other person grew up using online tools as a normal part of their life, or whether it's a more recent retrofit for them.
-Mark
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
It's more the opposite: I consider in-person meetings of such low value that they are not worth going out of my way to attend or send someone to attend. This is not 1930; internet projects for decades now have been coordinated solely by means of the internet.
In person meetings may be of low value to you, but I've found them to be extremely productive compared to email/IRC or even phone. For example, we accomplished more in a single weekend during the January face-to-face meeting of all the board members and most of the officers than we did in the six months prior to that.
That is absolutely right. A LOT can be done face to face which is difficult or impossible online.
That is very correct. When you meet people things get done easier than any of the substitutes for a face to face meeting. It is one of the things I miss a lot in my interaction with fellow wikimedians!
Waerth/Walter
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 5/26/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Since most of us don't have sufficient funds to travel to public meetings, nor sufficiently flexible schedules to sit around on IRC, it should be no surprise that we're much more willing to debate on mailing lists, which are the most inclusive. If there were a public meeting in Atlanta, I would certainly attend, but to my knowledge there hasn't been one.
If you consider your own contributions of such low value that they are not worth going out of your way to present, even including sending someone else in your place... then why should we expect them to be worth our time reading on a mailing list?
How do you measure the worth of a person's contributiona? Some of us have real lives. Perhaps you are independently wealthy, and can do this. For most of us, however, running around the world to defend our contributions would require a significant outlay for which no subsidies are available.
Ec
Robin Shannon wrote:
On 26/05/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
We have been talking about this for at least a couple years; the last time we did so publicly was just mentioned and linked to by Erik. The reason why this is necessary is due to the fact that we long ago reached the limit on what volunteers alone can accomplish. We have therefore been missing out on many different potential opportunities (for getting grants, very large donations and to reach our ultimate goals) simply because we have not had proper staffing. And a staff needs a person to manage them and the daily aspects of running the organization. Simply put, we are transitioning from the amateur football club model to a professional organization. Staff are an investment.
-- mav
You see i really don't like how that was worded (this is not meant at all to be a personal attack on mav just a warning about what we may become). " We have been talking about this for at least a couple years; the last time we did so publicly was just mentioned and linked to by Erik." I've been lurking and occasionally posting on this list and others for most of the time it has existed and now that Erik linked to that thread i do remember it but that is the only previous mention i remember (i'm not saying there haven't been more, just that we haven't had a large public debate about it). I think we need to engage anyone who is willing to be engaged in a debate about where we should be heading and how we should go about it. Espesially if the direction is towards corpratisation. So far i think the WMF has been doing the best it can of a difficult job and i don't mean to critisise anyone personally, I just think that the future direction of wikimedia is up to the community not the board or its officers, staff or whoever. The money that the foundation spends is not the foundation's but the wikimedia community's (i am not talking in a legal way i am talking in an ethical way. It was given for the community not the foundation).
The balance sheets tell me that 60 something percent of money goes to servers and hardware and the rest goes to other stuff. I don't think that is a good balance. That is my view. What is the view of most people in the community? What is the view of most donors? I dunno. Does anyone? Do all the board members and others who have most to do with the day to day running of foundation issues think we need a CEO?
paz y amor, -rjs.
Oh YES. We do need a CEO. Badly.
Ant
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Robin Shannon robin.shannon@gmail.com wrote:
Is this the first time a CEO has been proposed? what on earth would be the point of having one? I ask if this is the first time it has been asked because i would like to see any wikipages or archeived email threads to see what the arguments are for having one.
We have been talking about this for at least a couple years; the last time we did so publicly was just mentioned and linked to by Erik. The reason why this is necessary is due to the fact that we long ago reached the limit on what volunteers alone can accomplish. We have therefore been missing out on many different potential opportunities (for getting grants, very large donations and to reach our ultimate goals) simply because we have not had proper staffing. And a staff needs a person to manage them and the daily aspects of running the organization. Simply put, we are transitioning from the amateur football club model to a professional organization. Staff are an investment.
What you seem to forget is that Wikipedia's strength rests with its amateurs. While there may be evident need for some amount of administrative staff it is as important to avoid pretensions of being a professional organization. If you look at staff as an investment you are assuming an economic model that runs contrary to Wikipedia's free nature.
Ec
On 5/29/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
What you seem to forget is that Wikipedia's strength rests with its amateurs. While there may be evident need for some amount of administrative staff it is as important to avoid pretensions of being a professional organization. If you look at staff as an investment you are assuming an economic model that runs contrary to Wikipedia's free nature.
But you can also make the case that getting professionals to do the work that needs to be done (legal, finance, fundraising, etc.) offloads those tasks so that the "strength of the amateurs" can be more productively tapped and scaled up to keep Wikipedia evolving in what it does best.
A lot of the problems with this (and many discussions on this list) is the misguided goal of trying to find The Way, or the "universal truth" as Delirium said, to do everything. Online or face to face? Amateur or professional? Volunteer or paid position? Bottom up or top down?
"You must err on the side of disorganization, or all is lost!"
Someone once described this as the "tyranny of wiki-fundamentalism." It's quite an accurate label. We should try moving beyond the fundamental belief that building a great online virtual encyclopedia automatically provides the formula for building a legally and financially responsible organization.
<troll> That said, it should be completely obvious to all that the new Wikimedia headquarters should be in... Hawaii, home of the wikiwiki. </troll>
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
--- Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/29/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
What you seem to forget is that Wikipedia's strength rests with its amateurs. While there may be evident need for some amount of administrative staff it is as important to avoid pretensions of being a professional organization. If you look at staff as an investment you are assuming an economic model that runs contrary to Wikipedia's free nature.
But you can also make the case that getting professionals to do the work that needs to be done (legal, finance, fundraising, etc.) offloads those tasks so that the "strength of the amateurs" can be more productively tapped and scaled up to keep Wikipedia evolving in what it does best.
Exactly. The amateur model just does not scale well *at all* for the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia and the other wikis are a different matter). I, for example, am an amateur when it comes to finance. My day job and education have nothing to do with it. And yet I'm the CFO. Which may have been fine when Wikipedia was a top 500 website and had a small budget, but not now.
I'm a quick learner and always have been able to handle widely varied responsibilities that require different skill sets (thus my ability, with the help of the Wikimedia treasurer who does have the relevant experience and training, to perform in my role), but there simply is a limit to what I can do; both from a time perspective (I can only devote an hour or two - at most - a day to this) AND, perhaps more importantly, from an experience/education perspective.
That is why I've had a standing letter of resignation that will go into effect once the foundation finally gets around to hiring a properly qualified finance director.
The foundation is not a wiki. It needs to grow up.
-- mav
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/29/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
What you seem to forget is that Wikipedia's strength rests with its amateurs. While there may be evident need for some amount of administrative staff it is as important to avoid pretensions of being a professional organization. If you look at staff as an investment you are assuming an economic model that runs contrary to Wikipedia's free nature.
But you can also make the case that getting professionals to do the work that needs to be done (legal, finance, fundraising, etc.) offloads those tasks so that the "strength of the amateurs" can be more productively tapped and scaled up to keep Wikipedia evolving in what it does best.
Exactly. The amateur model just does not scale well *at all* for the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia and the other wikis are a different matter). I, for example, am an amateur when it comes to finance. My day job and education have nothing to do with it. And yet I'm the CFO. Which may have been fine when Wikipedia was a top 500 website and had a small budget, but not now.
I'm a quick learner and always have been able to handle widely varied responsibilities that require different skill sets (thus my ability, with the help of the Wikimedia treasurer who does have the relevant experience and training, to perform in my role), but there simply is a limit to what I can do; both from a time perspective (I can only devote an hour or two - at most - a day to this) AND, perhaps more importantly, from an experience/education perspective.
That is why I've had a standing letter of resignation that will go into effect once the foundation finally gets around to hiring a properly qualified finance director.
The foundation is not a wiki. It needs to grow up.
I don't dispute the need for the Foundation to have some level of paid staff. I also feel some concern about the way you have been hung out to dry in the CFO job. While you have no doubt worked at the position to the best of your ability, Wikipedians having a little more familiarity with such matters probably could see the potential difficulties, and avoided volunteering for the task. I really don't think that the Board has ever been on top of this portfolio.
The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia are indeed two different concepts, and the relative roles of professionals and amateurs will indeed be different in these two organizations. In many respects we need to start building a firewall between the two. This would leave the WMF responsible for the maintenance of the infrastructural assets, while Wikipedia and its sisterprojects could be free to pursue their innovative strategies without the need to be guided by a paranoia that any small legal oversight could bring the entire empire crashing. There are certainly profitable enterprises out there who would welcome that development with great glee. There needs to be an arm's length relationship between the two, and I don't see much being said to address that.
Ec
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/29/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
What you seem to forget is that Wikipedia's strength rests with its amateurs. While there may be evident need for some amount of administrative staff it is as important to avoid pretensions of being a professional organization. If you look at staff as an investment you are assuming an economic model that runs contrary to Wikipedia's free nature.
But you can also make the case that getting professionals to do the work that needs to be done (legal, finance, fundraising, etc.) offloads those tasks so that the "strength of the amateurs" can be more productively tapped and scaled up to keep Wikipedia evolving in what it does best.
Exactly. The amateur model just does not scale well *at all* for the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia and the other wikis are a different matter). I, for example, am an amateur when it comes to finance. My day job and education have nothing to do with it. And yet I'm the CFO. Which may have been fine when Wikipedia was a top 500 website and had a small budget, but not now.
I'm a quick learner and always have been able to handle widely varied responsibilities that require different skill sets (thus my ability, with the help of the Wikimedia treasurer who does have the relevant experience and training, to perform in my role), but there simply is a limit to what I can do; both from a time perspective (I can only devote an hour or two - at most - a day to this) AND, perhaps more importantly, from an experience/education perspective.
That is why I've had a standing letter of resignation that will go into effect once the foundation finally gets around to hiring a properly qualified finance director.
The foundation is not a wiki. It needs to grow up.
I don't dispute the need for the Foundation to have some level of paid staff. I also feel some concern about the way you have been hung out to dry in the CFO job. While you have no doubt worked at the position to the best of your ability, Wikipedians having a little more familiarity with such matters probably could see the potential difficulties, and avoided volunteering for the task. I really don't think that the Board has ever been on top of this portfolio.
The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia are indeed two different concepts, and the relative roles of professionals and amateurs will indeed be different in these two organizations. In many respects we need to start building a firewall between the two. This would leave the WMF responsible for the maintenance of the infrastructural assets, while Wikipedia and its sisterprojects could be free to pursue their innovative strategies without the need to be guided by a paranoia that any small legal oversight could bring the entire empire crashing. There are certainly profitable enterprises out there who would welcome that development with great glee. There needs to be an arm's length relationship between the two, and I don't see much being said to address that.
Ec
On 5/31/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia are indeed two different concepts, and the relative roles of professionals and amateurs will indeed be different in these two organizations. In many respects we need to start building a firewall between the two. This would leave the WMF responsible for the maintenance of the infrastructural assets, while Wikipedia and its sisterprojects could be free to pursue their innovative strategies without the need to be guided by a paranoia that any small legal oversight could bring the entire empire crashing. There are certainly profitable enterprises out there who would welcome that development with great glee. There needs to be an arm's length relationship between the two, and I don't see much being said to address that.
Ray, the issue has been discussed here and there, but you clarify it very well. Many of the heated discussions on the future of WMF have been because of the unclear line between what the Foundation should do, and what Wikipedians do.
The WP:OFFICE policy is a real problem in that respect. This is not to diminish what Danny or others have been doing. They should be commended for bridging the 'real world' phone calls and concerns with the Wikipedia virtual community. And hiring someone to feed phone call complaints/comments into OTRS (and stop at that) is a good step.
I'll paste in here what I sent to some of the board members last month, since it's relevant:
"I fear that Wikipedia claiming it is a "forum" and a "common carrier" worked before, but starts to break down when WP:OFFICE is used. That is, with "OFFICE" oversight that has final authority, the Foundation then takes on a liability as the ultimate editing function. This could have dramatic implications, since the stance of WMF with the Seigenthaler case was, "find that libelous anon, since we are not not liable." With WP:OFFICE, the case could be made the WMF is liable for this same case in the future."
The short version: once the WMF as an organization takes a role in the culling and selection of editorial content, it is "on the hook." A "firewall" separation as Ray pointed out is not only good communitywise, but legally too.
Ec
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/29/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
What you seem to forget is that Wikipedia's strength rests with its amateurs. While there may be evident need for some amount of administrative staff it is as important to avoid pretensions of being a professional organization. If you look at staff as an investment you are assuming an economic model that runs contrary to Wikipedia's free nature.
But you can also make the case that getting professionals to do the work that needs to be done (legal, finance, fundraising, etc.) offloads those tasks so that the "strength of the amateurs" can be more productively tapped and scaled up to keep Wikipedia evolving in what it does best.
Exactly. The amateur model just does not scale well *at all* for the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia and the other wikis are a different matter). I, for example, am an amateur when it comes to finance. My day job and education have nothing to do with it. And yet I'm the CFO. Which may have been fine when Wikipedia was a top 500 website and had a small budget, but not now.
I'm a quick learner and always have been able to handle widely varied responsibilities that require different skill sets (thus my ability, with the help of the Wikimedia treasurer who does have the relevant experience and training, to perform in my role), but there simply is a limit to what I can do; both from a time perspective (I can only devote an hour or two - at most - a day to this) AND, perhaps more importantly, from an experience/education perspective.
That is why I've had a standing letter of resignation that will go into effect once the foundation finally gets around to hiring a properly qualified finance director.
The foundation is not a wiki. It needs to grow up.
I don't dispute the need for the Foundation to have some level of paid staff. I also feel some concern about the way you have been hung out to dry in the CFO job. While you have no doubt worked at the position to the best of your ability, Wikipedians having a little more familiarity with such matters probably could see the potential difficulties, and avoided volunteering for the task. I really don't think that the Board has ever been on top of this portfolio.
The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia are indeed two different concepts, and the relative roles of professionals and amateurs will indeed be different in these two organizations. In many respects we need to start building a firewall between the two. This would leave the WMF responsible for the maintenance of the infrastructural assets, while Wikipedia and its sisterprojects could be free to pursue their innovative strategies without the need to be guided by a paranoia that any small legal oversight could bring the entire empire crashing. There are certainly profitable enterprises out there who would welcome that development with great glee. There needs to be an arm's length relationship between the two, and I don't see much being said to address that.
Ec
Hello
You are absolutely correct both Foundation and Wikipedia are two different conceps, and this is why Gavin comments are interesting. Some of his comments mix the two systems resulting in a description which would be neither acceptable from the community (Wikipedia) point of view nor from the board (Foundation) point of view.
Gavin : "I would imagine that a simple flow could be as follows: volunteer works on a project, gets more involved, gets groomed to become the project leader, stays in that for a year and grooms his / her replacement, gets invited to join the core team, gets groomed to become director, serves for a set period, becomes a board member."
Implies a pyramidal organisation of Wikipedia with the Foundation on top, which is absolutely not the way we are currently organised. There are some non-official project leaders, but they lead only by voice and reputation, not by authority.
Gavin : "Project management may not be about content generation alone. It is also about budgets, settling disputes and being responsible and answerable to the organisation at large."
Precisely mixes the two jobs. Collecting, organising and creating content PLUS settling disputes between editors is entirely a Wikipedia job and should not involve Foundation. It does only because there is a confusion between a role at the Foundation and a moral authority AND because the Foundation hosts the project (so, is liable, has access to logs, can block etc...). Budget or being answerable to the organisation at large is a Foundation issue and absolutely not a Wikipedia one.
This does not remove in any sense the value of his comments on the need for continuity. But the fact is that he seems to see one system... where there are several systems. Wikipedia is one. Wikibooks is another. Wiktionary a third one. These three are tightly related and work under rather similar rules. Foundation is an entirely different system.
Wikipedia system is free to join. Editors may stay anonymous. Foundation system is very closed, based on peer approval. Real names are registered. Foundation is NOT a democracy.
Roughly, all editors are equal in terms of decision making on wikipedia. On Foundation, some have a voting voice, others have an advising voice.
Wikipedia organisation is very flexible and its rules change without much pain, upon editors push. Foundation is pretty static, relying on bylaws which are not easily changed, with decisions made through votes and resolutions; through official delegations to individuals and committees. And all this with the weight of history.
Wikipedia editors are all volunteers. They have no legal obligations. If unhappy, they can easily quit anytime for a wikibreak or definitly. Foundation has paid staff or board members earning money through speaking fees. Others are only volunteers. Earning a living does not imply working harder, so, to the contrary of Wikipedia, people working on Foundation issues have to manage with the concept of mixing volunteers with paid members. Whether paid or not, people are expected to be available 7/7 24/24. For most, there is a binding relationship.
Wikipedia editors may feel accountable... or not. They can actually do many stupid things and not be embarassed by more than losing a sysop status. Foundation activity is scrutinized (an audit has been going on for several weeks now), the board is accountable and lawsuits DO happen.
In most cases, Wikipedia can run at its own peace. Nothing is really urgent, everything can be delayed. It is easy enough to call for more volunteers as well. Editors may go on a rant for days. On Foundation, this is not true. If a bill is not paid, the site stop working. If a cease and desist is not answered, we can get in big troubles. When a japanese editor complains at 4 am that personal data is posted on the website and should be *immediately* removed... it must be *immediately* removed. When there is too much work to do, one reduces its sleep time. Foundation people are expected to behave professional.
And I could go on forever.
One of the hardest things is to identify the needs of "system Foundation", talk about these needs, and read criticism from people belonging to "system Wikipedia", who have no beginning of an idea of where the need comes from, why it is critical... but who considers they have a say nevertheless.
I think Ec, that you are correct in saying we need a firewall between the two systems; You, as an editor, feels this need. Me, as a board member, feel it as well. I think it is slowly being put into place.
A huge limitation for the construction of the firewall will stay the legal considerations. Contrary of what you say, much have been said, but it has been said in other places than public mailing lists (precisely due to our paranoia :-)). The WP:Office issue is still unsolved though.
On 5/31/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
You are absolutely correct both Foundation and Wikipedia are two different conceps, and this is why Gavin comments are interesting. Some of his comments mix the two systems resulting in a description which would be neither acceptable from the community (Wikipedia) point of view nor from the board (Foundation) point of view.
I agree, and then I don't.
Gavin : "I would imagine that a simple flow could be as follows: volunteer works on a project, gets more involved, gets groomed to become the project leader, stays in that for a year and grooms his / her replacement, gets invited to join the core team, gets groomed to become director, serves for a set period, becomes a board member."
Implies a pyramidal organisation of Wikipedia with the Foundation on top, which is absolutely not the way we are currently organised. There are some non-official project leaders, but they lead only by voice and reputation, not by authority.
I don't agree with your interpretation of this as a pyramidal organisation. If we look at the way we have been working today, this is exactly how things have happened, and not for the worst. In the organisation, people have started working in the projects, and slowly become a part of the organisation, and taken responsibilities within the organisation. It seems a responsible way of doing things...if we go to the end. By going to the end I mean this:
People start in the projects, they become leaders in some ways (and yes, I agree with your assessment that people are not "leaders" of the projects as such, ie. their leadership is a community-based one, nothing official, and I agree Gavin probably used the wrong terms here), they take an interest in the organisation and get involved in the organisation. However, to go back to Ray's firewall, there comes a time where people who are involved in the organisation *have* to understand and accept that heir role as an editor in the projects and their role in the organisation need to be kept strictly separate. Which, for most of us working in the organisation, is not the case today. This would mean for example giving up our rights as admin or steward, or using them wisely (ie. only for non controversial things, and things that have *nothing* to do with the organisation) - however I believe that *not using* is harder than *not having* in the long run. The difficulty is to make sure that people in the projects understand that the organisation is *not* the answer to their edit wars, to the troll that disrupts their project, that these things are a community matter, to be settled by the community.
Although I am myself an advocate of bringing fresh blood in (ie. non wikipedians aboard the organisation), I believe that not having ever edited (and possibly not having ever been made aware of what being an admin or a steward implies) gives you only a partial view of what Wiki*m*edia is all about. And for some responsibility laden positions within the organisation, that experience is needed. Not for all.
In the organisation, there will be, and there already is, a need for outside people who do the stuff we won't do (accounting, answering the phones, business development etc.). And there will be (and there already is) a need for inside people to make sure that the stuff that touches the projects in their core/directions is carried through *to* and *with* the community. What I believe everybody needs to understand is that whether someone working as a professional (understand: paid) for the organisation comes from the community or not is irrelevant, as long as they can do the job that is asked of them. And what we also need to understand is that there comes a time when *even* if it is said that *volunteers can do the jobs for no money*, the organisation may have a different view, and when the organisation feels the need to have someone who is accountable (which volunteers are not by definition), they *have* to be able to make that choice, by their own terms.
I do not think the organisation should be *ruled* by the projects. And I do not think either that the projects should be *ruled* by the organisation. I totally agree with Ray's need for a firewall. I think however that we need to find ways to keep the projects in touch with the organisation and the organisation in touch with the projects. This has to go through information, and information is best carried trhough with people who have a knowledge of both the organisation and the projects. So the need for professionals issued from the projects is important, as well as the need for people who are not issued from the projects. It has to go both ways, with the understanding from both parts that an organisation is *not a wiki*, no more than a wiki is an *organisation*.
It is a very tough call though, because the organisation (and here I mean the organisation at large, chapters included) also works on bringing new editors (academics, scientists, professors, you name it) in Wikipedia or in the other projects to edit, and doing this and leaving these people be treated as vandals because they make a mistake does not help the organisation in its goal of "spreading the word" and "supporting" the Wikimedia projects. Projects and organisation have to work hand in hand. A clear(er) definition of the roles, the do's and dont's of both should help find a way.
Gavin : "Project management may not be about content generation alone. It is also about budgets, settling disputes and being responsible and answerable to the organisation at large."
Precisely mixes the two jobs. Collecting, organising and creating content PLUS settling disputes between editors is entirely a Wikipedia job and should not involve Foundation. It does only because there is a confusion between a role at the Foundation and a moral authority AND because the Foundation hosts the project (so, is liable, has access to logs, can block etc...). Budget or being answerable to the organisation at large is a Foundation issue and absolutely not a Wikipedia one.
Here I don't know if you are right or wrong in your understanding of Gavin's sentence. My take is that his "disputes settling" applies to the disputes *the organisation* could be thrown into, not to an edit war in Wikipedia. But if he meant what you say, then I agree with you completely.
This does not remove in any sense the value of his comments on the need for continuity. But the fact is that he seems to see one system... where there are several systems. Wikipedia is one. Wikibooks is another. Wiktionary a third one. These three are tightly related and work under rather similar rules. Foundation is an entirely different system.
Wikipedia system is free to join. Editors may stay anonymous. Foundation system is very closed, based on peer approval. Real names are registered. Foundation is NOT a democracy.
Roughly, all editors are equal in terms of decision making on wikipedia. On Foundation, some have a voting voice, others have an advising voice.
Wikipedia organisation is very flexible and its rules change without much pain, upon editors push. Foundation is pretty static, relying on bylaws which are not easily changed, with decisions made through votes and resolutions; through official delegations to individuals and committees. And all this with the weight of history.
*nods*
Wikipedia editors are all volunteers. They have no legal obligations. If unhappy, they can easily quit anytime for a wikibreak or definitly. Foundation has paid staff or board members earning money through speaking fees. Others are only volunteers. Earning a living does not imply working harder, so, to the contrary of Wikipedia, people working on Foundation issues have to manage with the concept of mixing volunteers with paid members. Whether paid or not, people are expected to be available 7/7 24/24. For most, there is a binding relationship.
Wikipedia editors may feel accountable... or not. They can actually do many stupid things and not be embarassed by more than losing a sysop status. Foundation activity is scrutinized (an audit has been going on for several weeks now), the board is accountable and lawsuits DO happen.
In most cases, Wikipedia can run at its own peace. Nothing is really urgent, everything can be delayed. It is easy enough to call for more volunteers as well. Editors may go on a rant for days. On Foundation, this is not true. If a bill is not paid, the site stop working. If a cease and desist is not answered, we can get in big troubles. When a japanese editor complains at 4 am that personal data is posted on the website and should be *immediately* removed... it must be *immediately* removed. When there is too much work to do, one reduces its sleep time. Foundation people are expected to behave professional.
I agree fully with the general "pace" thing here.
However, I believe you are the one who is mixing both roles in your example of the personal data. I do not agree that if a {{timezone}} person believes that their problem must be taken care of *at once* it has to be taken care of *at once*. If the firewall was in place, there would be office hours, and yes, it would be the role of the people in the office to take care of the thing first thing in the morning. But you cannot expect an office to run 7/7 and 24/24. I believe the fact that most of us in the organisation are *also* editors/admins/stewards/developpers has thinned the line between what is acceptable and what is not. The fact that the separation between "I am an editor" and "I have responsibilities in the organisation" is not obvious enough, that the line is not drawn clearly enough makes those who are in the organisation feel responsible 24/24. And that should *not* be. This implies a change of mentality both in the organisation and in the community of the projects.
And I could go on forever.
One of the hardest things is to identify the needs of "system Foundation", talk about these needs, and read criticism from people belonging to "system Wikipedia", who have no beginning of an idea of where the need comes from, why it is critical... but who considers they have a say nevertheless.
*nods* And again, a clearer separation would also imply better expectations on both parts. If everybody knows what everybody's role is, and information flows both ways, there is no need to challenge anybody's decisions.
I think Ec, that you are correct in saying we need a firewall between the two systems; You, as an editor, feels this need. Me, as a board member, feel it as well. I think it is slowly being put into place.
I feel it too. And yes, I agree that it is slowly coming.
A huge limitation for the construction of the firewall will stay the legal considerations.
I am not so sure. If we gave ourselves the time to understand and explain what legal implications there *really* are in editing the projects as a member of the organisation, I believe that could be solved very easily. It only takes time that we probably have not given ourselves.
Contrary of what you say, much have been said, but it has been said in other places than public mailing lists (precisely due to our paranoia :-)). The WP:Office issue is still unsolved though.
See above.
Delphine
On 5/30/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/29/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
What you seem to forget is that Wikipedia's strength rests with its amateurs. While there may be evident need for some amount of administrative staff it is as important to avoid pretensions of being a professional organization. If you look at staff as an investment you are assuming an economic model that runs contrary to Wikipedia's free nature.
But you can also make the case that getting professionals to do the work that needs to be done (legal, finance, fundraising, etc.) offloads those tasks so that the "strength of the amateurs" can be more productively tapped and scaled up to keep Wikipedia evolving in what it does best.
Exactly. The amateur model just does not scale well *at all* for the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia and the other wikis are a different matter). I, for example, am an amateur when it comes to finance. My day job and education have nothing to do with it. And yet I'm the CFO. Which may have been fine when Wikipedia was a top 500 website and had a small budget, but not now.
I'm a quick learner and always have been able to handle widely varied responsibilities that require different skill sets (thus my ability, with the help of the Wikimedia treasurer who does have the relevant experience and training, to perform in my role), but there simply is a limit to what I can do; both from a time perspective (I can only devote an hour or two - at most - a day to this) AND, perhaps more importantly, from an experience/education perspective.
That is why I've had a standing letter of resignation that will go into effect once the foundation finally gets around to hiring a properly qualified finance director.
The foundation is not a wiki. It needs to grow up.
I don't dispute the need for the Foundation to have some level of paid staff. I also feel some concern about the way you have been hung out to dry in the CFO job. While you have no doubt worked at the position to the best of your ability, Wikipedians having a little more familiarity with such matters probably could see the potential difficulties, and avoided volunteering for the task. I really don't think that the Board has ever been on top of this portfolio.
The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia are indeed two different concepts, and the relative roles of professionals and amateurs will indeed be different in these two organizations. In many respects we need to start building a firewall between the two. This would leave the WMF responsible for the maintenance of the infrastructural assets, while Wikipedia and its sisterprojects could be free to pursue their innovative strategies without the need to be guided by a paranoia that any small legal oversight could bring the entire empire crashing. There are certainly profitable enterprises out there who would welcome that development with great glee. There needs to be an arm's length relationship between the two, and I don't see much being said to address that.
Ec
I totally agree with this statement. The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia are and should continue to be kept very separate. Besides the points you have raised I think this bolsters the legal position that the foundation is an ISP, and not a content provider. The servers are owned by the Foundation. But the content is owned by everyone.
As for Daniel Mayer being CFO, I think a large portion of what he does (at least, what I've seen him do) could easily (and rather inexpensively) be outsourced. Sure, someone internal needs to decide on a budget to submit to the board for approval, but that shouldn't be an enormous time-waster. I've seen it done effectively many times by volunteer committees with absolutely no finance or business background. Someone internal also needs to record transactions, but the CFO shouldn't be the one doing this anyway. Last time I heard this was something the treasurer was doing. If the work is really overwhelming it might make sense to hire a bookkeeper, but most non-profits don't require this. Wikipedia's budget is big, but it's not enormous. There are plenty of community organizations with roughly the same size budget that get by fine without a CFO - homeowners associations, special taxing districts, volunteer fire departments, activities organizations, etc.
Am I missing some legal requirement to have a CFO in a non-profit organization? Sarbanes-Oxley, as it applies to non-profits, seems to suggest that any "financial expert" be a member of the board. If there's no legal requirement for a CFO, I'd say drop the CFO and put Daniel Mayer on the board. He can lead a budget committee on a regular basis from there. Then look into outsourcing as much of his old job as possible. Wikimedia's board is obviously way too small.
Anthony
Anthony DiPierro wrote: Wikimedia's board is obviously way too small.
Anthony
Seconded. What I think could be a good "measure" is that all committees should have at least one board member sitting on it (as a rule of thumb).
Current situation of committees
Audit committee : Michael and Jimbo are on it (perhaps Tim as well, memory hole here). The committee has successfully selected an audit firm and the audit is ongoing.
Board expansion committee : Jimbo, Angela and Anthere are on it. Currently a bit stalling...
Chapters committee : no board member on it. Delphine handles it pretty well :-) A cool committee
Communications committee : Angela on it. Seems to be pretty active committee. Regular reports provided.
Executive committee : inactive committee. Should be replaced by a CEO
Events committee : no board member on it. Was started from what I heard.
Financial committee : Michael on it. Hummm, not really (yet ?) a committee
Insurance committee : jeeee, so inactive that I do not even remember who is on it... (personal note : what is going on here ?)
Technical committee : no board member on it. But Michael (and I as a pompom girl) follow what is going on.
Special projects committee : Anthere on it. Ongoing committee with needs for more experts
Trademarks committee : no board member on it. Should be transformed in a legal committee (or a new committee be created).
From a quick glance, I'd say we have a couple of major holes.
In particular a legal hole. A board member from legal background is required.
I recently suggested to Mav to propose the creation of a fundraising committee (I presume Mav resolution is pending), which seems to neither really fit with comcom, nor with financial com, nor with technical com, though the three committees would be involved as well.
The special projects committee is also supposed to take care of business development and grants. Additional expertise on these matters to add on the board would possibly be quite neat as well.
Maybe a big shot related to the technical side of things might be cool on the board as well, if only to help us make more deal with big firms on technical issues.
ant
Executive committee : inactive committee. Should be replaced by a CEO
I'd say it never existed, not that it's inactive, though the creation of it has been authorised. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_board_expansion_committee
I thought the idea was to expand the Board before having this committee.
Financial committee : Michael on it. Hummm, not really (yet ?) a committee
Doesn't exist due to disputes over who should be on it. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_creation_finance_committee
Insurance committee : jeeee, so inactive that I do not even remember who is on it... (personal note : what is going on here ?)
This was more of a working group than a committee, designed just to fill in the forms for insurance in January. I don't know if those forms were ever sent, but the committee disbanded after they were finished. Perhaps Danny knows more?
Technical committee : no board member on it. But Michael (and I as a pompom girl) follow what is going on.
I thought Michael was actually on it.
I agree with the need for a fundraising committee.
Angela.
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
As for Daniel Mayer being CFO, I think a large portion of what he does (at least, what I've seen him do) could easily (and rather inexpensively) be outsourced. Sure, someone internal needs to decide on a budget to submit to the board for approval, but that shouldn't be an enormous time-waster. I've seen it done effectively many times by volunteer committees with absolutely no finance or business background.
I think this seriously undervalues the contribution Mav has made in this role. His deep understanding of the projects, the community, the financial needs, and his staying on top of the spending, etc., has been of enormous value, and I do not think that it could have been easily outsourced at all.
--Jimbo
On 6/4/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
As for Daniel Mayer being CFO, I think a large portion of what he does (at least, what I've seen him do) could easily (and rather inexpensively) be outsourced. Sure, someone internal needs to decide on a budget to submit to the board for approval, but that shouldn't be an enormous time-waster. I've seen it done effectively many times by volunteer committees with absolutely no finance or business background.
I think this seriously undervalues the contribution Mav has made in this role. His deep understanding of the projects, the community, the financial needs, and his staying on top of the spending, etc., has been of enormous value, and I do not think that it could have been easily outsourced at all.
--Jimbo
Not all of what he does could be outsourced, of course. Some of it could. And if it was, he'd have more time to spend applying his irreplaceable skills. And he probably wouldn't be as keen on resigning.
I certainly didn't mean to undervalue the significance of his contributions. In fact, that he feels his job could be better performed by someone else suggests to me that you are the one who is undervaluing him, by not using him where he is most effective.
Anthony
Andrew Lih wrote:
But you can also make the case that getting professionals to do the work that needs to be done (legal, finance, fundraising, etc.) offloads those tasks so that the "strength of the amateurs" can be more productively tapped and scaled up to keep Wikipedia evolving in what it does best.
I think this is a really important point. For me, one of the most important aspects of bringing in some professional staff is precisely to allow me, an amateur, a community member, to do what I do best, which is work in the community as a volunteer to help organize and focus discussions about how to achieve our charitable goals.
There are some things that the foundation has traditionally done quite well, and some things we have traditionally done quite badly. As we have grown, the opportunities missed by the fact that we do some things badly have grown as well.
As an example: donor relations. We finally managed to send out a proper thank-you card to people who donated money last holiday season, but we have no program in place to stay in contact with larger donors who might be easily encouraged to donate more. Why do we not do this? Simply put: there has been no means available to do it. We have every reason to think that, done well, a little money spent in this area could have great rewards.
Ideally, the foundation should be run to optimally empower the community to fulfill the fundamental charitable goals of the foundation. (At the core: to give a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet.)
This will take many different kinds of people, with many different kinds of relationships to the foundation. It takes editors and writers. It takes people to run the tech side of things. It takes fundraising, legal, finance. It takes business partnerships. It takes people who work primarily on the wiki, people who work best in email, people who enjoy irc meetings, people who can do face-to-face outreach to other organizations, people who can interact with the press, etc.
A big mistake is for any of us to accidentally overvalue our own contribution, and think that the contributions of others is not important.
--Jimbo
On 5/25/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
What key non-Wikimedia contacts are in St Pete? None outside the tourist industry and Scientology AFAIK.
Well, there's also the [[St. Petersburg Times]], one of the only newspapers in the world which is owned by a non-profit organization (the [[Poynter Institute]]), and by far the largest of that sort.
But obviously NYC and DC have a lot more :)
Anthony
On 5/26/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/25/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
What key non-Wikimedia contacts are in St Pete? None outside the tourist industry and Scientology AFAIK.
Well, there's also the [[St. Petersburg Times]], one of the only newspapers in the world which is owned by a non-profit organization (the [[Poynter Institute]]), and by far the largest of that sort.
Doing a bit more research, apparently it's only the largest *US* newspaper owned by a non-profit. The Guardian, for example, has a higher circulation.
Still more of a key contact than Scientology, though :)
Lord Voldemort wrote:
On 5/25/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
There are real limits to the amount that can get done via email, IRC, and telephones. For example, we were able to do more work in the January face-to-face meeting than we did in the previous six months. Face-to-face communication simply has a much higher bandwith (as does having direct physical access to records). Increasing the opportunity for that by physical proximity to the people we want and need to be in contact with, can only reap great benefits.
Okay, so even if this was the case, would the foundation be wanting to rent or buy? Buying would obviously be more cost-effective, but how much would the foundation be willing to spend on a new office?
Buying real estate would be a bad idea from a resk management perspective. The possibility of expensive legal suits will always be there, no matter how much we strive for accuracy in Wikipedia articles. One thing you don't want in such circumstances is assets that can be lusted after by suitors. By having one (perhaps for-profit) company lease servers to an associated non-profit company you can cut the risk of being sued.
Ec
On 5/25/06, Erik Zachte erikzachte@infodisiac.com wrote:
To name just one example: Nairobi would be a capable host city.
Except that to be non-profit in the US, you have to have an office in the US....
Kelly
Kelly Martin wrote:
On 5/25/06, Erik Zachte erikzachte@infodisiac.com wrote:
To name just one example: Nairobi would be a capable host city.
Except that to be non-profit in the US, you have to have an office in the US....
Fair enough, but that doesn't mean that we have to go out and rent a physical office. A corner of someone's basement is enough as long as there is a physical address where the post office can leave official mail.
Other countries have similar laws too. They frown on the collection of tax relieved charitable donations which are exported for use in another country.
Ec
Kelly Martin wrote:
On 5/25/06, Erik Zachte erikzachte@infodisiac.com wrote:
To name just one example: Nairobi would be a capable host city.
Except that to be non-profit in the US, you have to have an office in the US....
Kelly
Hoi, But in order to be a non-profit in the US, you do not have to represent the whole world from the US. Thanks, GerardM
On 5/31/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/25/06, Erik Zachte erikzachte@infodisiac.com wrote:
To name just one example: Nairobi would be a capable host city.
Except that to be non-profit in the US, you have to have an office in the US....
Kelly
There are plenty of companies which will provide registered agent service with a physical address for your registered office. I'm not aware of any further requirements for a non-profit, but there very well might be some, especially for a non-profit the size of Wikimedia.
Anthony
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