In my own experience of nonprofits, it has not been considered problematic for staff members to express opinions on matters of policy, including organizational governance. At the Electronic Frontier Foundation, at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and at Public Knowledge -- the three nonprofits I worked at before coming to Wikimedia Foundation -- it was considered a benefit, and not a conflict, for staff members to offer input about how they believed the organizations should run. I would hate it if we felt we had to depart from that tradition here.

So... I take it you support board members having the right to comment and debate publicly on every issue under the sun.

There is an inconsistency here: how do you suggest that we have open debates, whilst at the same time presenting a shared vision ?

On 12/30/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: As I said, my preference is to contextualize open debates as such: Implicitly, by asking for opinions on foundation-l and other public lists, and/or explicitly, by labeling them as such. And an open debate should be just that. Outside the scope of an open debate, we should be more careful and judicious when commenting: because we are agents of the Foundation, whether as Board or Staff members, and because constant public dissonance would make it more difficult to execute decisions. So, to me there is a difference between an open discussion about a Wikicouncil, or about the fundraiser, or about offline reader technology, and an announcement of a decision that is contradicted by individual Board members, or the people who are supposed to implement it; there is a difference between an open discussion about hiring policies, and sticking to an established communications framework for something like the Carolyn Doran incident. Obviously there will be borderline cases, but I'd much rather at least have some basic structure to start with. For this, too, we need to establish structures and processes. What is the Board's role in defining the strategy of the Foundation? Different non-profits have answered this very differently: The scope ranges from non-profits with huge volunteer Boards that want to get involved in every operational detail, to those with small hands-off Boards that merely give their ED a thumbs up 2-4 times per year. The best practice for us is probably somewhere in the middle. For the organization with strong Board involvement, it typically becomes a problem to find competent staff members. The kind of ED who can make the trains runs on time is also the kind of ED who wants a certain amount of influence over the vision, and a certain amount of freedom to implement it: if you want skills, you also have to grant freedoms. And of course, the more people are involved in strategy-making, the more likely it becomes that a consistent strategy cannot form at all, and that there is a constant back and forth between several internal forces. Our situation is complicated by the fact that the Board doesn't just exist in the Board room: It's a permanent presence on mailing lists, IRC, and so on, to some extent even more so than the staff. And of course the Board is the ED's boss, and by extension, positioned higher than any single staff member. In a worst case scenario, we end up with confused staff receiving direction from multiple places, with mixed messaging, with a strategy that is constantly being called into question. In a best case scenario, everyone knows and understands their role, and conflicts and tensions arise only infrequently and, preferably, privately. Here are some parameters that could be the basis of an alternative framework. I'm not saying these exact parameters are the ones we should use, but they could be a starting point: * The Board meets, online or in person, four times a year. Beyond emergency decisions and unusual situations like the absence of an ED, it is within the scope of these meetings that the Board should exercise its high-level decision-making power. * The Board can define high-level goals such as http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/4_wishes_for_year_2007 ; these could also include more specific high level goals such as "achieve greater licensing compatibility" or "ensure that our projects are in compliance with the principles of free content". This would be my preference based on the experience e.g. with the licensing reform. * The ED and staff will typically be responsible for preparing a more detailed roadmap which will be approved by the Board, with some feedback and refinements during the Board meetings. * Outside the scope of Board meetings, the Board and Staff would be permitted to begin open debates on a topic, if clearly contextualized as such. The Chair and ED would typically initiate higher level debates ("Should we have a Wikicouncil", "What is the role of the Board", "How should we allocate our resources"), while staff members would do so within their domain expertise. Staff and Board members are equally free to comment in such debates, keeping in mind the obvious constraints such as previous agreements of confidentiality, no personal attacks, etc. Comments are understood to be personal opinions, not policy. Beyond open debates, both Board & Staff members have to be more judicious when commenting, and should generally try to follow agreed upon lines of communication or comment within their area of expertise (e.g. to answer a community question). This is under the assumption that there is no Wikicouncil. In my opinion, a Wikicouncil - if it is to make matters better, not worse - needs to literally assume some responsibilities currently handled by the Board, rather than merely being an extension to the Board's community members. That is, to the extent that the Board currently makes decisions which have a high community impact, the Wikicouncil could make at least some of them in the future. Where significant domain expertise is required, my preference is for the council or its committees (if it does create committees) to function in a consultative, rather than a policymaking role: simply because an elected body is not going to accumulate through processes of candidate election all the expertise necessary to actually make fully informed decisions, and because it lacks the agility (quickness) to acquire that expertise externally. So, in a three-body system, a process like the licensing reform could have worked as follows: * The Board defines greater compatibility between free content repositories as a goal. * The ED creates a workgroup of staff & volunteers to implement this goal. It consults with Wikicouncil, Board, Advisory Board & wider community members as it deems useful. * The final decision to implement a particular license on Wikimedia projects is approved by the Wikicouncil.

First problem: who can be defined as a community member ? What is community ? We worked on that problem a year ago during the chapter meeting and no satisfactory solution was found.

Marc Riddell wrote: > on 12/30/07 11:46 AM, Florence Devouard at Anthere9(a)yahoo.com wrote: > > <snip> >> First problem: who can be defined as a community member ? What is >> community ? We worked on that problem a year ago during the chapter >> meeting and no satisfactory solution was found. >> > Florence, > > This is a rather critical question here in the Project. References to > "Community", "the Community", "Community Member(s)", etc., are made nearly > every day throughout the various communications. When you worked on the > problem a year ago, what was the final conclusion as to a definition of > "Community" as relates to the Projects? > > Marc Riddell

Unfortunately, not satisfying answer. Community is too amorphous a concept. In its largest meaning, community is "human population". The people we are working to create content for. Some, in particular with regards to elections, consider that "community" is "every person interested in what we are doing". This will be a reason why some will consider that Larry Lessig, though not a participant of our projects, though not knowing anything of our internal workings, is a community member. A more restricted definition will be "every person involved in what we are doing". That will involve editors, but also our developers for example. Note that some members of our internal community belong to this group, though they have hardly ever be editors; we would nevertheless consider them as "part of the community". Note that this definition is not the one followed by current elections (people who are developers, and have hardly ever edited do not have the right to vote). I consider more or less this definition as being the definition of "the organization community". An even more restricted definition is "those who have at least xxx edits on one of our projects". This is the current election definition for voters. Of course, even the more restricted definition of community allow further division. There is the Wikipedia community, the Wiktionary community, the Wikibooks community (the first being dominant but the other ones fighting for their recognition and the recognition of their own specificities, which is good). Then, there is the english community, french community, japanese community. And every mix we could imagine, english wikipedia, german wikibooks, spanish wiktionary. I'll be happy to add there the mediawiki community, overlapping largely with all others. And it would be fair to say that there are two other communities, which to the contrary of ALL others, are closed and very little flexible. The internal community, and the comcom community. And I think I can not leave aside the chapter communities, which is also a group of sort. I probably forget a couple of communities... The meeting in oct 06 was unable to decide what "community" was, because it is simply impossible. However, I thought we should have tried to work on the definition of "community" meaning with regards to representativity. -------- The current situation at the board level is broken, because we stated that "we want a majority coming from community" (through elections or appointement), but without defining what community is. So, current situation is that for example, some are arguing that Jan-Bart is not from the community; but others are arguing that he is from the community. Both statements are correct, depending on the definition. For JB, it is probably very hurting to tell him "you are an outsider", however, he has never put his hands in the practical job. For example, some are arguing that Jimbo is not a community member, whilst Jimbo argues that he is. He knows some of our communities, but it would be fair to argue that he always had a special position, and as such, can hardly represent those with no special position. For example, some argue that Larry Lessig is a community member, whilst most do not. Larry knows part of the free world, does that mean he could represent the editors or developers playing with the clay every day ? --------- What I would love seeing is a rather more granular definition of community, without going radical. By and large, there is * the editing community, and I would suggest breaking it down by projects, then perhaps by languages if necessary * the developer community * the chapter community Each of these three communities would have a certain number of seats reserved on the board, each seat being clearly labelled as "representing the 1) editors, or 2) developers and 3) chapter, communities". It is up to these three communities to decide how they want to select their representative. I would freely suggest chapters could do so by direct vote of all chapter members; it would make wonder to push chapters to get a common voice. I would freely suggest developers could do so by direct vote of all developer members; with "eligeability" to vote being "have submitted at least xx number of accepted patches, or whatever allow them to recognize real developers from jerks". I would freely suggest editing community to think of moving toward indirect vote, thought the wikicouncil. All this draw a picture of three main communities. * Those editing the projects * Those helping through technical maintenance or software improvement * Those facilitating content development, distribution and lobbying, through legal structures (wikimedia chapters) ---------- We could imagine 6 seats being reserved for these three communities. Such as 1 for developer, 2 for chapters and 3 for editors. That would let 5 seats. Which could be filled up directly by board itself through appointment, or be filled up by a nominating committee, if there is such thing one day.