please could you unsubscribe me. thank you esther fiteni
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Subject: foundation-l Digest, Vol 26, Issue 50
Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 20:00:30 +0000
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Where we are headed (Samuel Klein)
2. Re: Where we are headed (Ray Saintonge)
3. Re: Wikimedia main office (Daniel Mayer)
4. Re: Where we are headed (Gavin Chait)
5. Re: Catalan Wikinews set up (Arbeo M)
6. Re: Where we are headed (Jimmy Wales)
7. Re: Wikimedia main office (Ray Saintonge)
8. Re: Wikimedia main office (Ray Saintonge)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 22:02:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0605292200340.31303(a)hcs.harvard.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="x-unknown"
On Tue, 30 May 2006, Anthere wrote:
Jimbo says
"... nous souhaitons g?n?rer une version
? stable ? des articles, v?rifi?e et approuv?e par des experts sur le
sujet, tout en maintenant la possibilit? de le modifier. Il est hors de
question de demander aux b?n?voles de faire le plus gros du travail, et
de demander ? un expert de peaufiner le rest."
Translation
"We wish to create a stable version of all articles, checked and
approved by experts on the topic, whilst keeping the option of
modification of the article. It is excluded to ask volunteers to do most
of the bulk work, and to ask to an expert to just take care of the
polishing".
What was meant here ?
I don't know, but experts are volunteers too, something most of the world
constantly forgets. We need a list of contributors who are experts --
divided
into those who contribute in their field of expertise, and those who avoid
that
like the plague.
Sj
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 21:44:48 -0700
From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <447BCDC0.3020903(a)telus.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Gavin Chait wrote:
The most immediate concern for the Wiki Foundation
is less the idea of an
office with furniture and windows, or even the difficulties of
collaboration, mostly it is continuity.
At the moment the founders are involved. They have an idea of what they
want and how to achieve that. There are now thousands of regular
contributors who are influencing that direction. There are millions of
occasional contributors who muddy the edges. How do you ensure
continuity?
This is a question with profound
implications. Accomodating these
segments of our society without losing focus is no trivial problem.
One of the first development organisations I
worked in 15 years ago was a
student-run endeavour at the University of Cape Town. Every year
hundreds
of students volunteer and contribute to different
projects. Each project
is
run by older students. Continuity is difficult
where students graduate
and
>leave each year. Sometimes entire projects vanish when the students who
>know how to run them fail to come back.
Students enrolled in a programme of finite
duration are more likely to
make provision for their successors. If a project vanishes when they
leave maybe it has outlived its value. Our senior people are here for
an indefinite period, and may find it more difficult to envision their
project mortality.
The solution was to employ a small band of
professionals whose task is to
make sure that projects are properly budgeted and accounted for, keep
track
of how the different projects interact, and ensure
that the overall
emphasis
of the organisation remains focused. The
professionals ensure
consistency
while the volunteers contribute fresh ideas, fresh
thinking, new
directions
>and lots of enthusiasm.
>It has worked well for more than 50
years for this organisation.
>Offices are far less important than
continuity. And the more you rely on
>volunteers, the more important it is to have a solid base of
professionals -
>where-ever they may be.
Your conclusion is well taken. But before
this can happen there needs
to be a fundamental understanding about the role of the professional and
the role of the volunteer. Larry Sanger was good for Wikipedia at the
time that he was here, but someone like him would be totally unsuitable
to the present circumstances. Decisions often _must_ be made without
waiting around debating like the Paris Commune. The questions that then
arise are What do we want our professional to do? What do we want him
not to do?
Ec
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 22:02:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <20060530050209.7068.qmail(a)web51608.mail.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
--- Andrew Lih <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/29/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)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
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 09:46:26 +0200
From: "Gavin Chait" <gchait(a)gmx.net>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed
To: <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <003e01c683c0$1ccaa580$7a7219c4@nowdomore>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original
Continuity is less about individuals than it is about systems and the
organisation of information.
This means that the system must be defined. Definition does not imply
limitation. It is important to know how new projects are organised, run
and
scrutinised without declaring what they should be. How far one goes with
the hierarchy is also important. Are different language versions or large
sub-projects of a common project different projects? Many "embarrassing"
moments have come out of English content wikis. How many potential
pitfalls
are waiting in other languages? How feasible is it to have language
experts
for each of the wikis? Recognising limitations inherent in the system is
also important - these should be declared.
The professional project manager can still be a volunteer. There are large
numbers of astonishingly talented people willing to work for free for
causes
they believe in. The difference between a volunteer and a "professional"
is
not about paid / unpaid it is about the time dedicated to a project and
their accountability. Some projects are large enough to require full-time
commitment. Project managers must accept this and be responsible. Not all
the things that need doing are glamorous.
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. If something goes wrong, they must sort it out
immediately and understand and report back on how it happened. They are
also there to find their own successor.
There must be a project log, and project manual that details exactly how
things are done (thus ensuring a consistent approach). Clearly the manual
can evolve but it must be the DNA for the project.
A simple project blog or mailing list isn't good enough since the quantity
of information produced (and the various diversions it follows) makes rapid
decision making impossible. In reality, each project needs its own
moderated (and access limited) wiki where the basics are paired down: how
things are done, daily / weekly / monthly ... tasks, etc. At the moment
projects may be run by the person who started them or someone one or two
iterations away. What happens in 50 years?
The organisation itself requires a similar approach with a slightly larger
set of responsibilities: PR, legal, accounting, admin and an overall
director. These are the trappings of any formal development organisation.
Having them doesn't limit the activity of the volunteers, it is simply a
responsible way of handling information generated by the organisation.
The director also needs feedback and that will come from your board.
Each of the tasks can be defined and each of the roles can be filled. A
mechanism for recruiting and training new people to fill each task is much
more straightforward when you know exactly what that task is.
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. Some of these tasks are full-time, some
are
not. The person accepting major tasks does so recognising what the
commitment is and what it will cost them (if the tasks are unpaid).
This is continuity. It doesn't limit the content, projects or creativity
of
the organisation. It channels the most capable people through a system
that
maintains the integrity of their knowledge while still allowing the
organisation to evolve and meet future needs.
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 13:35:53 +0200
From: "Arbeo M" <arbeo.wiki(a)googlemail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Catalan Wikinews set up
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<e1406ce00605300435o2aff3f82ia2d17204ee8b8cc(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
On 5/26/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Wikinews has a bit of an unusual process. Individual Wikinews language
editions have to meet much higher standards than, for example,
Wikipedias to be launched.
...
The procedure for creating a new Wikinews edition is at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Start_a_new_edition
Thanks for the info. Didn't know about this special procedure wrt Wikinews.
A.
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 16:22:05 +0200
From: Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <447C550D.7050301(a)wikia.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Anthere wrote:
> By the way, a citation published on a french site recently (an interview
> from Jimbo).
> Jimbo says
> "... nous souhaitons g?n?rer une
version
> ? stable ? des articles, v?rifi?e et approuv?e par des experts sur le
> sujet, tout en maintenant la possibilit? de le modifier. Il est hors de
> question de demander aux b?n?voles de faire le plus gros du travail, et
> de demander ? un expert de peaufiner le rest."
> Translation
> "We wish to create a stable
version of all articles, checked and
> approved by experts on the topic, whilst keeping the option of
> modification of the article. It is excluded to ask volunteers to do most
> of the bulk work, and to ask to an expert to just take care of the
> polishing".
"We wish to create a stable version of all articles, checked and
approved by the community, using a process which meets or exceeds the
quality level of traditional encyclopedias. Such a process should
involve people with expertise, of course, but it would not be acceptable
for us to take the attitude that "ah, thank you to the volunteers, but
now we have experts to come in and finish the job". Rather, we seek to
extend our community process in new ways over time, always remaining
open to new ideas for higher quality."
--Jimbo
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 12:51:13 -0700
From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office
To: dmayer(a)wikimedia.org, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <447CA231.90902(a)telus.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Daniel Mayer wrote:
>--- Andrew Lih <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>On 5/29/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)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
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 12:42:43 -0700
From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office
To: dmayer(a)wikimedia.org, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <447CA033.8090709(a)telus.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Daniel Mayer wrote:
>--- Andrew Lih <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>On 5/29/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)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
------------------------------
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