Erik Zachte wrote:

Anthere, thanks for you extensive reply on my previous mail. Jimbo, thanks for recognizing that my remarks are meant constructively.

Anthere, I hope you did not think of me as one of the guys who threw 'oil on the fire'. If so, I would feel very sorry for that.

I certainly did touch on a sensitive issue when tensions were already high. Erik Moellers resignation is the apotheosis of a longer time of difficult relations between him and the board. So his announcement will have done little to make your wikibreak bear fruit. And then, on top of that, I made some remarks about the role of the board, as if you did not have enough on your mind yet. Maybe I should have postponed my reaction and should not have jumped up immediately to try to put this event in a broader perspective.

At the other hand: part of my point is exactly that it may be useful to make roles and rules more explicit in times when everyone is on a good footing with each other, since it is much more difficult to discuss these things when emotions are already running high, and conflicts have started. So with hindsight I illustrated my point inadvertently with my initial mail. Let me quote from my first mail to emphasize this even more: "So let us be inspired to clarify roles, responsibilities and procedures, at a time when we can do without in many occasions, in preparation for a time when we might need more clarity and transparency badly."

Anthere, not all of my questions are addressed (to be clear about this, you did elaborate on how you see the role of the officers, but not the jurisdiction of the board, perhaps you think this is self evident by its actions) but I will happily defer this discussion till a later time, and move half of this mail into my drafts folder.

Oh one more thing: I'm one those guys that, as Chris described, does not often write a mail to tell I'm happy with how things are going. Maybe I should, but these lists get spammed with trivia already far too much, and I feel a mail about how I have nothing to say, apart from that things are going well, or how I also support a decision that is already approved by most writers, would be quite trivial indeed.

So for the record, I'm in some cases reasonably happy with how things are going, and in many cases very. And still euphoric after Wikimania by the way. Enjoy your wikibreak. :-)

Erik Zachte

Hi Erik,

It is quite impossible for me to be in full wikibreak, but I enjoy a long week of wiki-activity reduction (attempt to reduce wikipediholism :-)). I think it is bearing fruits indeed, as my blood pressure was acceptable again 2 days ago (which might be a good reason for me being back to my real life job today...). No, I have never seen you as throwing oil on the fire. You raise good points.

One point striked me in what you wrote above. "you did elaborate on how you see the role of the officers, but not the jurisdiction of the board, perhaps you think this is self evident by its actions"

You are correct that I think it is self evident, while actually it is possibly not. So, I'll try to elaborate a little bit about that (with the usual warning, this is only my opinion).

When Angela and I were elected a year ago, the Foundation did NOT exist, except for a legal paper. The Foundation was just a set of principles, a bit of bureaucracy and a man, Jimbo. Nothing else. This was sufficient for the beginning of the project and possibly till about 1 or 2 years ago, it can not be any more today. Jimbo's opinion of the board future and activity was that it would only consist of a handful of meetings per year, where a bunch of decisions would be made, and off it goes. He mentionned this is what most board members on most foundations are doing in the USA. Not day to day operations, but just settting up strategies, ensuring big principles are respected, and letting others taking care of the daily work. I guess this was not Angela and I opinion, and we both put a lot of time in it. But a lot of time to do what ? And with which goals ? Well, it quite simple : a system where a board would merely meet 4 times a year to decide big directions could not work a year ago simply because the Foundation only existed on a paper. A Foundation is not first a legal structure, it is first human people working as a team. So, while I fully agree that micro-management is NOT the role of the board, practically, it HAD TO BE for a while, till things start(ed) to clarify. The first role of the board was simply to build an embryo of organization. If we had limited ourselves to set big principles and directions, I am not sure we would even have an embryo now.

A year after this first election, a real organisation is only barely beginning to appear. It is still very messy (more than you could dream of), it is possibly not very transparent (but I don't think it is meant to be non transparent), and it is veeeeery slow (ask to anyone waiting for a reimbursement, but again, this is changing). It is quite obvious to me that the embryo of an organization we have today would have been different if other people had been elected on the board a year ago.

I think I proposed the official positions even before the elections a year ago. To my opinion, it was the first step. Aside from Mav role (finances), which was quite urgent, I think the first few months were mostly used for the board members to get to know one another better, to check what mattered for each of us, to test the limits of our mutual patience and understanding, and to meet people/editors and evaluate "who" could work with "who" and on "which" topic. Whether it will be easy for you to accept or not, this was also one of the goal of the developer poll last summer, and I think it really helped me to get to know some people much better, and to figure out who was controversial and who was not, who was a leader and who was not, who was strong headed and who was more easy going.

If one want to build a solid organisation, the different members composing it must be quite diverse (all officers being native english speaking is a very bad idea, all officers being men is quite possibly a bad idea, all officers being less than 20 may not be very wise...). We need people from various origin, various professional background, various personalities. Best is that all of them are at least on polite terms. Best to mix emotional ones with less emotional ones etc... Generally, we mostly rely on friendship relations, not cold and unpersonal ones. In an system such as ours, it is maybe not so good to have too strong egos. We need leaders, but not a leadership based on authoritarian behavior. I do not think leading in organising so-called democratic votes every week is a good idea either. We rather need coordinators or facilitators. For officers, we need people who are not too controversial, are generally appreciated, but who also have a rather strong personnality, however it is nice as well that they are surrounded by very bold people pushing issues sometimes a little bit heavily.

Once it begins to be clear which departments are needed, and who could fit where, things can progress. But until this is set up, micromanagement is necessary to a certain point. And if officers are not trusted, micromanagement will also occur by fear of the board losing control :-) Now that several departements have been better defined, some with officers, some without..., I strongly believe micromanagement will decrease. It already did. But I still believe it will be the role of the board to look for people who can bring much to the organisation. Finding these people might be part of our "jurisdiction" as you say.

Incidently, I think the next two "departments", which might have an officer, or not, are * "publishing" (paper versions; dvds; wikireaders) - with a strong link with the legal departement due to issues of copyright, trademarks and logo use. This will probably need an officer. If anyone feels like working on a "role description", please do. I however do not see clearly yet who might hold it. * "public relations" - I do not think I need to explain why I feel we need to work on this ;-) This will probably not have an officer, or not until a good while.

The second "jurisdiction" of the board might be the "role description", clarification of responsabilities and procedures. Quite funily, some of you asked for roles to be much much more strictly defined, while others rather said we should leave much room for the officers to move.

I am not convinced that we should be very strictly defining all that yet, rather let it grow a little bit organically. Example : Maveric is taking care of finances and fundraising at the same time. But should these two be together ? Or two separate positions ? Or under the responsability of another officer ? After all, it could also depends of a public relations commitee, or of the grant commitee. I think that for a while, it is urgent... to do nothing and just see what happens, and trust that things will naturally become obvious. It may also be that the role change with the person holding it. I'll give another example. Delphine is now our chapter coordinator. I think that role holds two different parts; one being of communication, the other being more on financial matters. It is my belief Delphine will be much more precious (and happier) on financial matters. I think that under her leadership on the matter, the chapter coordinator will be much more oriented on financial matters. Possibly another person would do differently though.

In case you then say "what the hell, let us define their role quite strictly and it is their job to try to do their best in that role", I'll answer that all officers are volunteers. If they get bored or lost in the role strictly defined, they will do a bad job and will drop. As much as we can, I think we should let them flower, just as wikipedia allow people to. And if they are really outside of the rails, it is then the (third) "jurisdiction" of the board to make suggestions to improve (if no one else hinted the problem at them already). And little by little, as we grow and improve, and as the needs become pressing, we can more clearly define the roles.

One of the thing I hope we work on is communication. Communication feedback from officers to the board and to the community, should be sometimes more frequent (such as on technical matters), but mostly more organised. Offering communication is not sending immediately a mail when something is boiling, but rather trying to makes regular summaries about what is currently ongoing, who they need help from, when, what is blocking them from going further. For example, grant report from the grant coordinator once a month : * I have approach this group as well as that group. No answer yet from either. * for the grant G, we are currently writting the full grant request ([[link]], which should be send before dd/mm/yyyy. We would need information from the legal departement (paper XX) as well as banking information from Jimbo (paper Y). * for the grant Y, it has been submitted and we are waiting for result by that day. * We got Grant S !!!! We start working with the press departement. A press release in under work at [[link]]. Please comment.

In the future, here is what I would love to see :-))) Such reports from each departement will allow the board to organise itself better and decide things more quickly and efficiently.

(let's say this will happen in a year from now).

I know that some people feel lost when they are not quite firmly told what to do and not do. This model is frequently used in the internet business and not everyone is confortable with it. But it is my belief we are no more under fordism. And my belief that those most happy in the wiki model are precisely people who like a certain independance. This said, less defined roles also mean more risk to walk on each other toes. I know I sometimes walk on other people toes, I regret this and try to make efforts myself. The solution is not really to walk on more toes to ensure the other toes disappear, but rather to look where the toes are and be careful to walk on them less. If someone walks too much on the wrong toes and does not realise that, then... he should be removed from the path. This is the fourth "jurisdiction" of the board. The one big difference with being an employer... is that there is the weight of a community behind.

Finally, another "jurisdiction" of the board is simply to ensure that some important principles are respected. I'll cite two cases : the french wikinews is out of our projects principles, and strongly borderline very frequently. This is due to the presence of a very small number of editors, who have never been involved in wikipedia, so lack some "habits". So I have it on careful watch. This is micromanagement, but this allow me to stay an editor as well :-)

Another example : I think we (the Foundation) are currently on the verge of closing ourselves too much, and I do not like this. We recently set up a private wiki and as long as the management of access groups is not developped (by Brion), access will be restricted to board, officers and chapters board members only. I think this is very very unfortunate, because 1) there are plenty of good trusted people who are not in this group and 2) we are reducing the number of people who could help, though we need them.

There are some other "roles" of the board. But I guess I wrote enough. Mostly, we need not to rush. Imho.