The Advisory Board hasn't really been used that well, at least not to my knowledge.  There should probably be more effort placed on taking advantage of that expertise there, but also keeping in mind the community-related expertise (ie. this mailing list).  It's all a balancing act that we'll need to get the hang of.

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:24 PM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: [snip] Presumably a chair can track membership and expertise and handle routing messages to the relevant parties, participate with recruiting, and otherwise act as an impedance match between the board proper and the advisory board.  I'm not sure if that was what was envisioned, or if chair is the best name for it, but I think that it's a reasonable alternative to the sort of flat structure that you're describing.

There are a lot of differences between a board member and an advisory board member. The most important difference is the dedication. As a board member you MUST attend board meeting, you MUST take part in discussion. As an advisory board member you are not obliged to do that.

I also need not to mention that it is totally different to talk with someone from face to face or via e-mail and we cannot fly all advisory board members whose expertise are needed in to the board meeting.

Well, I have never understood why the board is so involved. Generally in business, the Board hires and fires the CEO and that's it.

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 6:35 AM, Ting Chen <wing.philopp(a)gmx.de> wrote: Why isn't it? What's the difference? Is it just an ego thing? People are willing to commit to something if they can put "board member" on their resume, but not if they can put "advisory board member" on it?

a) Could you give an example of an organisation with over 100 board members?

b) You haven't answered the question. Why couldn't the dedicated experts that currently go on the board of trustees go on the advisory board instead?

2009/8/28 Ting Chen <wing.philopp(a)gmx.de>de>: Now we're getting to some real reasons. I don't agree regarding authority - the board as a collective body has the authority, they can exercise that authority on behalf of an advisory board member if necessary. The difficulty in drawing lines between different parts of the role is valid, though. I expect it can be overcome with some effort, however.

2009/8/28 Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org>rg>: like of I don't see why. I donate lots of my time to the project and don't get any board votes.

supports the cause not because he is power hungry.

a That is an interesting idea. A ratification process wouldn't be too difficult logistically and would help keep the real power in the hands of the community, where it should be. The WMF as a membership organisation would be great, but I don't think it is practical.

Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: Why? What's broken at the moment? The servers are running, and I really cannot see how a different form of organization would have any favourable impact on a few million people writing the best free encyclopedia (*1) in this solar sys- tem. Not to speak of this thing with the sum of all know- ledge being shared by every single human being.

Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: I did not ask what you think other people want, I asked what you think is broken at the moment and how that could be mended by another form of organization.

Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: Given the fact that no candidate for the board seems to have campaigned prominently for this issue in this year's elec- tion and it does not even seem to have been mentioned in the two before, I do not see why the board should have decided otherwise.

Tim Landscheidt wrote: This is not actually that large a surprise as it seems. A candidate choosing dumps as his main plank of attack in running for the board would most likely be perceived as somebody working as a Trojan Horse for a serious attempt to fork. The one thing good dumps preserve is the possibility of rejuvenating our projects should WMF ever fail - heaven forfend! But they also not-inconsequently are vital to an attempt at forking, even while the WMF were alive and well. So as a former candidate, let me just state that for the best of reasons - sustainability - dumps are indeed a priority for all that take sustainability seriously. This is not a matter of opinion, but just a bald fact. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Anyway, back then it didn't need board member campaigning - whole board knew it is important task, it needed executive level decision, that we need someone dedicated to this task, and once such discussion was made, dumps started rolling.

execution, which got resolved somehow, right?

You seem to fail to understand, that for years tech team was also a volunteer body - though of course, eventually more and more people got on the paycheck.

Frankly, the major input about the dumps that the tech team got from the community was "you suck where are our dumps" kind of input - with lots of whining and no rationalization :-)

That work is being done at the moment, I'd think that it is being handled properly. On the other hand, I'm no longer in position of judging that from above, and can enjoy fully not caring ;-)

How many?

I'll believe it when I see it.

AFAICT, the dumps still don't work, and you still haven't hired a new CTO.

1.7

The first step in fixing a problem is identifying the faults.

The CTO came up with a budget. He submitted that budget. That budget was accepted. Then the money which was budgeted went unspent, while glaring problems which required spending remained.

It's not a matter of motivation, it's a matter of reality. If you're going to limit your selection to people who are independently wealthy, you're not going to get as many qualified individuals for the task.

If there are people willing and able to fix the dumps for free, and you can find them and give them the tools they need to do it, fine. But that didn't happen, and *in this particular case*, it's probably unrealistic.

Three years ago, before the economy went into the crapper, you probably could have found someone to do it. I probably would have even done it myself, if someone had given me access to the servers so I could do it.

What I remember from the time is that the story was always "this is being worked on", not "we need someone to volunteer to redesign this".

Actually I was under the impression then that you didn't really want to fix the dumps - remember this was during the beginning of the oversight days.

But today it's probably tougher finding qualified individuals willing and able to do it for free.

Whatever. Whether it's done for free or for a price isn't what's important. What's important is that it gets done.

Have any of these people fixed the dumps?

Maybe if the current system wasn't written in Python you could have found someone to do this, but as it was, it simply wasn't a task which anyone was motivated to do for free.

"Let's just wait a few years and see if someone turns up" isn't the answer to that problem. "Let's spend a little of this 1.7 million we have sitting in a bank account doing nothing" is.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but here's what I can gather: Total spending was $1.7 million less than budgeted. Tech spending was $1.7 million less than budgeted. And $1.7 million was sitting in the bank accounts at the end of the fiscal year.

The solution to not being able to afford "proper .com-level salaries" is to offer people nothing?

I'll fix the dumps for minimum wage plus daycare for my two kids.

I don't know about that. It's a pretty cool problem, it's just a difficult one to solve. Or maybe it's a cool problem because it's difficult to solve.

It would certainly help. The problem with the dumps is that they're so huge.

Not being able to test solutions on a system just as huge is a serious constraint.

Plus you have to remember that the WMF's particular installation is not the common one.

There's probably enough information out there to pretty much replicate it, but that's another serious constraint. I'm certainly not willing to deal with those unnecessary constraints.

It was the existence of the history dumps that enabled Judd and I to find the oversighted SlimVirgin edits.

Once again, I've heard that for three years now, so forgive me for not believing it until I see it.

And that has proven to be a huge misjudgment.

Could be. But then, I'm probably interested in different types of problems than you. And I'm not sure you've considered this problem in the same way that I have (I'd like to modify the compressed files "in place", though that short description doesn't really capture the solution).

The WMF tremendously overestimated future hardware costs by making

assumptions, which I pointed out on this very list. That depended

on the WMF.

Thomas wrote: Or not done anything \o/

Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: JFTR: I did not claim in any way that there was nothing to fix. I asked what - in your opinion - was to be fixed and how a different form of organization - in your opinion - would affect that process positively.

Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: Why? What's broken at the moment?

Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote: And that would work if the WMF were a membership organiza- tion? Interesting.

2009/8/28 Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org>rg>: power It's set technology, Has tech money been spent on other things previously? That is news to me.

2009/8/28 Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org>rg>: area I'm There were explanations for all those over- and under-spends. I considered them all to be good explanations. I would have to look at the report again to be sure, but I think there was a better than budgeted surplus in the year you are talking about, so the reason for not spending the full tech budget wasn't lack of funds from having spent them elsewhere.

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 1:35 PM, Tim Landscheidt <tim(a)tim-landscheidt.de>wrote;wrote: If it were once again a membership organization it would imply that the Foundation had not reneged on the original vision without the ability of the community, which approved that vision, to provide input on the modified input. It would turn around the Foundation's usurping of community power. It would give each community member a voice.

Brion and Véronique have that expertise and could easily be brought in to whatever meetings they are needed for.

2009/8/27 Michael Snow <wikipedia(a)verizon.net>et>: If you read the entire email I sent you will find that I addressed exactly that point. Please don't selectively quote to misrepresent people, it is either extremely stupid, extremely immature or extremely malicious, and I'm not happy with any of those qualities in the chair of the WMF board.

That's only because we don't specify such an obligation. There is nothing stopping us having such an obligation included in the rules for the advisory board.

Brion and Véronique have that expertise and could easily be brought in to whatever meetings they are needed for. Sue seems to be pretty good at that kind of thing.

Hi Thomas, one year ago when I run for the board election I came with the same proposal as you. Meanwhile I have changed my oppinion. The problem is that this would not work out. I totally agree with you that voting is the minor part of the board decision making process. Actually in many cases it is only for the protocol and formality. The really big part is before voting, while discussion. Here you are totally right. There are a lot of differences between a board member and an advisory board member. The most important difference is the dedication. As a board member you MUST attend board meeting, you MUST take part in discussion. As an advisory board member you are not obliged to do that. Naturally, if we have an issue and we feel lack of expertise, or simply because we want to get more input from more sources, we go out and ask members of the advisory board. This is for example why some of our committees has advisory board member in it. This is also why the advisory board would play a crucial role in the strategic planning. But it is totally different between that expertise is already inside of the board or if the expertise must at first be asked from outside of the board. The best examples you can see are Stu West and Jan-Bard de Vreede. Stu with his technical and financial expertise is simply there, in every meeting, in the board mailing list, we don't have to go out and ask someone from the outside, especially because these expertise are really direly needed in every meeting and most of our topics. The same is it with the organizational expertise that Jan-Bard brings into the board both in how an ordinary procedure should look like as well as how discipline must be excercised in the board. This is the reason why they are asked to be on the board again and again and why they hold so important offices in the board. Indeed, my experience with both of them is why I have changed my opinion. I don't know Matt that long yet, just met him in one board meeting. But I do feel that in this one meeting he gave very interesting and important insights. For example how measurement of success should look like. There are also other reasons why we need expert seats. One is that sometimes you are in a discussion and stumbles over something where you didn't see the need of an expert before but where you feel really thankful to have one in the board. Naturally you can say, hey, we need here an expertise, let us at first ask someone in the advisory board and then make a decision. This actually happend in the past year more than once. But this is a slow process, you would go out and e-mail that person, she or he would answer, there would maybe more questions that you would ask again, or the board must first discuss internally and then ask again. This is totally different as if you have already that expertise in the meeting and can directly go forward. I also need not to mention that it is totally different to talk with someone from face to face or via e-mail and we cannot fly all advisory board members whose expertise are needed in to the board meeting. As I said before I had the same idea as you last year. But some times a change of perspective or new experiences show that the idea doesn't work. Greetings Ting