Delirium wrote:

daniwo59@aol.com wrote:

...

I know that the Wikimedia is currently strapped for cash. However, I would like to propose that we cover certain key expenses for our elected board members relating to their participation in Wikimedia work. For instance, telephone calls overseas should be covered by the Foundation, and not the elected representatives. A broadband connection should be covered by the Foundation as well.

While every participant is doing their work on Wikipedia and the other projects voluntarily, Ant and Angela are expected to represent us, the users. We should make it as easy for them as possible.

I wouldn't consider this a high priority---certainly far below buying servers, which we already don't have enough money to buy. Unless we find ourselves in a situation where we have so much cash we don't have any place it could better be spent, I think a better approach would be to simply use email to communicate like everyone else does. As for internet connections, I assume anyone involved in the project already has one (how else would they be Wikipedians, given that this is primarily an internet-based project?).

Adding a qualification to this: I wouldn't be opposed to voluntary donations by people who feel strongly about this. If there are expenses that are turning out to be problematic, there could be a fund-raising campaign to provide funding for the board members. But this should come out of specific donations for that purpose: people should know they're donating specifically to the "Wikimedia board of trustees communication and travel fund" or something.

This is something I feel somewhat strongly about, especially since someone mentioned how other organizations routinely do it: they are most definitely not models to emulate. A great many non-profit organizations are inefficient, wasteful, and often simply corrupt, with a relatively small percentage of their money going towards their actual stated mission.

-Mark

Delirium wrote:

daniwo59@aol.com wrote:

...

I know that the Wikimedia is currently strapped for cash. However, I would like to propose that we cover certain key expenses for our elected board members relating to their participation in Wikimedia work. For instance, telephone calls overseas should be covered by the Foundation, and not the elected representatives. A broadband connection should be covered by the Foundation as well.

While every participant is doing their work on Wikipedia and the other projects voluntarily, Ant and Angela are expected to represent us, the users. We should make it as easy for them as possible.

I wouldn't consider this a high priority---certainly far below buying servers, which we already don't have enough money to buy.

I think we should relieve you of your fears with regards to this issue Mark :-)

Last evening, we were discussing of how much money was currently in bank. I made a quick estimate, because Mav in on holidays, so I could not ask him last numbers, but basically I know that mid may we had roughly 5.400 dollars. Add to this the 9000 dollars refund for a server. Plus 10.000 euros received a few days ago by Jimbo for the trophy.

That makes about 24 000 dollars (it is a *very* rough estimate).

JeLuF made a provisional hardware budget for the rest of the year. You may find it here : http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_provisional_budget Current amount indicated is 12000 dollars

We naturally have also to plan for contingencies.

So, I would not say that we do not have *enough* money to buy servers. The problem might be somewhere else.

I would say that we should plan a fund raising time in fall. It will be necessary. But saying we do not have enough money right now is just plain incorrect.

Unless we

find ourselves in a situation where we have so much cash we don't have any place it could better be spent, I think a better approach would be to simply use email to communicate like everyone else does. As for internet connections, I assume anyone involved in the project already has one (how else would they be Wikipedians, given that this is primarily an internet-based project?).

-Mark

Yes. You are correct. But perhaps a board member is not only in touch with wikipedians, but also with the outside world. And though I tried to suggest a couple of journalists to connect to irc or only use emails, I really do not understand why they strongly insist on phone meeting or better, face to face meetings :-).... Same goes for meetings where Wikipedia is presented. Very curious :-)

Adding a qualification to this: I wouldn't be opposed to voluntary donations by people who feel strongly about this. If there are expenses that are turning out to be problematic, there could be a fund-raising campaign to provide funding for the board members. But this should come out of specific donations for that purpose: people should know they're donating specifically to the "Wikimedia board of trustees communication and travel fund" or something.

Absolutely. It is very important that people know how their money is spent. I deeply agree. And we know that donations were done to purchase *hardware*, because most donations were sent while wiki was broken, and we made a general call precisely to have new hardware, so no money donated to pay for server should be used for any other means. This is an essential point, and I really wish that no one have any doubts about that.

We provide right now transparent money use history. Mav has been maintaining this for a while now. See

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_bank_account_history_for_2004

Now, you should also know that Jimbo goes on paying some expenses as well, such as when a developer goes to the coloc. This is not reported in the current history.

I think that in the future, we may ask members to indicate if they wish that their money is used for a specific purpose. Till now, the two specific purposes were * hardware * purchase of a computer for Brion

I see many more. Especially for firms funding. A firm or an organisation may wish that the donation money is used in a specific way, such as support of a minority language, or sending computers with wikipedia on it to an given african country, or making a whole set of wikireaders around a specific topic. There are many options and to my opinion, donators should have the possibility to indicate what they want the money to be used for.

Aside from donations, we also recently received an award (10 000 euros), and the money from this award may be used the way we choose to use it. Which mean, we can use it for hardware, or for *anything else*, including to support costs which will help to build the community.

This is something I feel somewhat strongly about, especially since someone mentioned how other organizations routinely do it: they are most definitely not models to emulate. A great many non-profit organizations are inefficient, wasteful, and often simply corrupt,

with >a relatively small percentage of their money going towards their actual >stated mission.

-Mark

I'd like to be very direct and to cite a very specific example. In about 2 weeks, there is a meeting in Paris, for many french speaking wikipedians. I will meet Jimbo there. Jimbo made the great suggestion that Angela meet us there as well. It will allow her to meet with french wikipedians AND it will probably be the first and the last opportunity for the whole year, for the board to meet face to face for really low cost.

I think that though most issues may be solved in irc and emails discussion, it is very highly suitable that the board meets in real life at least once in the year, and this meeting in Paris is the lowest cost opportunity to do so. I deeply believe that on-line discussions can be improved when people have met around a beer once. Hence, I hope Angel will come to Paris. It will strengthen the community to do so. And I do not think a project like our own project, does rely ONLY of hardware considerations; it relies a lot on PEOPLE. And using a bit of money from the Foundation to strenghten the bonds between people does not seen to me to be a waste. Many issues can be fixed on face to face meeting, so that is not inefficiency either. And finally, talking of corruption is perhaps a bit premature Mark.

The board will be very much what you all wish it to be Mark. So perhaps this is what we should discuss right now.

We can solve a lot of organisational issues online. If you want us to be only doing this, that is fine. It has little cost, but for our time and energy.

However, if the board is also expected to meet people outside, to write to american administration, to give interviews, to go to major events, I think paying us the costs of it, the costs for US representing YOU is not very chocking. And has little to do with corruption.

I'd like to personally add a last point. I am a working woman, so I have income. However, I am not rich. Far from it. My family has enough to live quietly. No excess though. Like many many many of you, I chose to give most of my free time (more than my free time actually) for this project, because I very strongly believe in it. I am all dedicated to give my energy to help it and I will.

But it will *not* be to the cost of my family financial stability. That would be highly unfair to my husband and my children.

I will, and I think any board member, will only be what you expect us to be. If covering our costs is too controversial, then let it be :-) We'll do just as with operating costs, we'll remove all these handy little options in special pages :-)

Cheers

ant/flo

--- Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:

.... I think that though most issues may be solved in irc and emails discussion, it is very highly suitable that the board meets in real life at least once in the year, and this meeting in Paris is the lowest cost opportunity to do so. I deeply believe that on-line discussions can be improved when people have met around a beer once. Hence, I hope Angel will come to Paris. It will strengthen the community to do so. And I do not think a project like our own project, does rely ONLY of hardware considerations; it relies a lot on PEOPLE. And using a bit of money from the Foundation to strenghten the bonds between people does not seen to me to be a waste. Many issues can be fixed on face to face meeting, so that is not inefficiency either. And finally, talking of corruption is perhaps a bit premature Mark. ...

I very much agree with this. The trustees do need to meet face-to-face at least once per year. The budget committee needs to work out a way to make at least that happen and also look into the possibility of having quarterly face-to-face meetings of the trustees. Those meetings could be conducted in different parts of the world and coincide with Wikimedia meet-ups. Video streaming and phone conferencing could also be set-up so that non-board member officers could virtually attend the meetings (such as the financial officer ;). But it is very important for at least Jimbo and the representative board members to actually *be* there. Thus we need to reimburse at least those board members for travel expenses.

For now we could depend just on the Ars-Electronica award for this, but in future fund drives we would just say up front something like "no more than 10% of the money generated from this fund drive will be used for non-server-related expenses (such as office or meeting/travel expenses of the board)."

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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Andrew Lih wrote:

It is standard for Trustees to be compensated for travel to convene Board meetings, and this would be exactly that. This should not be construed to endorse the other things discussed recently, such as phone calls, broadband, etc. That should be decided with full careful discussion.

However, having served on boards of other US-based nonprofits, paying expenses for convening Board of Trustees is a normal practice. I hope it can be agreed upon rather quickly that laying out this expense of less than 400 euros is money well spent.

I don't think it'd be money well-spent, and the fact that other US-based nonprofits do not spend their money wisely (a well-known fact, that occasionally results in some public outrage in specific egregious instances) isn't really a good justification for it.

If I were to think of what we should spend money on that we're not spending money on, there's a million things that are better options. The immediate one is some sort of bounty system to pay for software improvements or configuration improvements that are beyond the scope or interest of the people doing our so-far-volunteer development work. As someone mentioned on the wiki-tech list recently, throwing more hardware at the problem isn't always the best solution, although we do also undoubtedly need more hardware (and will need even more by the end of the year).

So if we're going to start spending money on various things, I'd propose the first thing we do with a spare 400 euro is identify four important software changes that need to be made, and put bounties on 100 euro on each of them.

-Mark

Delirium said: So, I'd say funding for such niceties as face-to-face board meetings should take place only after the developers have the money they need, which may include hiring additional developers for specific areas in which we have no sufficiently knowledgeable volunteers, or at least putting in place a bounty system to attract some semi-paid developers. I could easily see EUR1000-2000 in the immediate future being very desirable for this purpose.

Delirum, we've spent a *lot* more money and resources on software development and server hardware than we have on planning and strategy for fundraising, which would immediately benefit if we got Jimbo, Ant and Ang together.

I had the pleasure of meeting Ang in person in London and she had great ideas and energy about fundraising in areas we are currently neglecting. I also enjoyed a long lunch with Jimbo the day after the London get together, and we exchanged ideas and thoughts about Wikimedia in ways we never could have by email. I can only imagine the great synergy that will arise to get the board members in the same room.

Virtual collaboration is wonderful. It's what makes Wikipedia so great. But you also need face to face contact for folks who are putting in so much time and effort to work with Wikimedia's future. We should not be so stingy about investing in our human capital.

-Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado)

--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:

Sort of to follow up on the last email in more general terms:

• I don't disagree that, ideally, we would provide a small amount of

funding to the foundation members for specific purposes.

• However, I also think we should provide a small amount of funding to

our software developers, who have done a lot more over the past few years (and currently) to make Wikipedia what it is, and need more resources to continue doing so at the same rate (or, ideally, an improved rate).

So, I'd say funding for such niceties as face-to-face board meetings should take place only after the developers have the money they need, which may include hiring additional developers for specific areas in which we have no sufficiently knowledgeable volunteers, or at least putting in place a bounty system to attract some semi-paid developers. I could easily see EUR1000-2000 in the immediate future being very desirable for this purpose.

This is something that the as-yet-to-be-created Wikimedia budget committee should be working on. Also, there should at least be one face to face meeting of all board members each year (which could coincide with a Wikimedia meet-up). It is not at all unreasonable for those board members to be reimbursed for their basic travel expenses (transport, hotel, and a small amount each day for food). These expenses will be rather small compared to all our other expenses.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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Anthere wrote:

In considering paying developers to stimulate them to work more,
while covering our costs is seen by you as a complete loss of
money with no good foreseeable justification, you are being plain
rude to both Angela and I.

If we are to use our energy, our time and now even our personal
money on this project, I think we can expect perhaps a little bit
of politness, recognition and appreciation for the work we do.

---

I did not say it had no possible justification, merely that paying developers ought to be a higher priority. The developers have spent a lot more of their energy, time, and personal money on the project, over the course of several *years*. Beginning to reimburse board members who have hardly served for a *week* does not seem even remotely in the same range.

-Mark

Andrew Lih wrote:

PS: And you've certainly entered "rude" territory by belittling Ant and Ang's extensive contributions to Wikipedia so flippantly.

I don't see how this is the case. They have currently, to my knowledge, made next to no contributions as board members, as the board has just been constituted within the past week.

As far as making contributions as Wikipedians, that is true of many people: certainly at least 100 or so. And as far as I know, we haven't reimbursed any of them, and there aren't any immediate plans to do so.

-Mark

Daniel Mayer wrote:

Volunteering time to create articles is one thing, paying travel expenses for board members to attend meetings is very different. They are not comparable and also note that the board members would *not* be paid for their time to attend the meetings, they would be reimbursed for any direct expenses they paid to travel to and stay at the meeting site for the duration for the meeting. They would *still* be volunteers and would *not* be making any profit - just like the rest of us.

I don't see it as very different. Many Wikipedians have spent their personal money in contributing to quality articles, including buying out-of-copyright books from eBay in order to scan in images, to name just one example. We don't have plans to reimburse people for this expense.

Besides, if we *were* going to start reimbursing people, Jimbo would be the obvious person to start with. I think of the five trustees, he has by far incurred the most personal expenses as a result of this project. The next-most of the five board members would probably be the other two initially-appointed board members, who I believe are co-owners of Bomis, which has incurred significant expenses in the running of Wikipedia (and continues to not be reimbursed by the Foundation for the cost of its bandwidth).

There are plenty of things that would be nice, but none of which I think the Foundation's money should go to. For example, developers may well be able to coordinate faster if they all flew to one location for a weekend to draw up plans in person, and then flew to the colocation facility to set up new machines in person rather than relying on ssh and occasional phone calls for someone to reboot the machine locally. But they get by without this luxury.

-Mark

The

developers have spent a lot more of their energy, time, and personal money on the project, over the course of several *years*. Beginning to reimburse board members who have hardly served for a *week* does not seem even remotely in the same range.

-Mark

Well. A week. Sure.

I think Mark, that it is **never** a good idea to belittle the amount of work **offered** by a **volunteer**, be it a developer, a board member, a graphist, an editor, a check speller or any one.

Well.

I do not do good work when I am in a bad mood. I am in a bad mood.

I will be away for a few days to focus on my childen, my husband, and my real life job, very much neglected since february 2002. I will need a raise next year to be able to pay to participate in a constructive way :-)

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Anthere wrote:

I think that in the future, we may ask members to indicate if they wish that their money is used for a specific purpose. Till now, the two specific purposes were

• hardware
• purchase of a computer for Brion

I'd just like to point out that no Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. funds went to the purchase of my PowerBook (which has been a big help in browser compatibility testing, and I've fixed a number of icky wiki bugs during my commute thanks to having it!)

Rather, I have a separate personal donation page (predating the Wikimedia fund drive, I think) through which a number of very kind people have kicked in a few bucks now and then, including a generous personal donation by Jimbo. (Thanks again to all who helped!) I haven't taken any wiki-related money that wasn't sent directly to me by the donor.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Hi,

Le Monday 21 June 2004 11:42, Anthere a écrit :

I am glad we convinced Jimbo to come and I will be even happier if Angel comes.

I think it's fine if the fundation pays Angela's travel expenses to Paris.

This travel will be optimised, as I will meet on saturday the 3rd, some people currently doing a CD Rom on sustainable development. They are willing to give us under gfdl part of their content, but want to meet first to discuss which content will be transfered, and how. Looxix will come to that meeting as well.

Aside from the content consideration, which will be great, I see this as an important move for the french wikipedia, and perhaps a step in a direction which will bring funds when the french association will be created :-)

This content donation was suggested by Bruno Oudet, who I met in Lyon, during a meeting in may. You may find a cv of Bruno Oudet here : http://web.archive.org/web/20030501121123/www-leibniz.imag.fr/SI/index.php? page=cvbo. I believe this person might help us further penetrate the french information network, but this very likely imply "meeting" him again in other circonstances.

I have to add that it's Bruno Oudet who invited me to present Wikipedia to a meeting on "sharing information on the Internet" last January. He was also present during the presentation I made last May in Aix-en-Provence, in south of France.

So there is no doubt that his contributions will be helpful to the project.

ant

Yann

hcheney wrote:

If the Wikimedia Foundation starts giving the trustees "perks" I feel that fundraising could be quite a bit harder.

Firstly, phone calls made for Foundation business are hardly "perks". Secondly, I don't see this sort of expense coming out of the normal donation funds. People have given those expecting they will be used on hardware and related purchases, so that is exactly what should be done with them.

However, not all of the money in our account is from donors. We already have €10,000 from the Ars Electronica award, and one of the things Anthere and I plan to do over the coming year is to find funds from alternative sources. We can't rely purely on donations from within the website, so there is no need for actual donor money to be spent on board expenses.

I expect the vast majority of our communication to be carried out over IRC. However, there are situations where this is not plausible. As well as the press contacts Anthere mentioned, applying for grants is one example where face to face contact, or at a minimum, phone contact, is far more likely to result in success.

Delirium wrote:

As for internet connections, I assume anyone involved in the project already has one …

I agree. I don't see my internet costs as being something the Foundation should be paying for.

Anthere wrote:

In about 2 weeks, there is a meeting in Paris, for many french speaking wikipedians. I will meet Jimbo there. Jimbo made the great suggestion that Angela meet us there as well. It will allow her to meet with french wikipedians AND it will probably be the first and the last opportunity for the whole year, for the board to meet face to face for really low cost.

I have mixed views about this. It is a great opportunity for the three of us to meet, and probably the only opportunity over the following year. However, I am not entirely comfortable about having to take the Foundation's money for it, as Jimbo has suggested I do. On the other hand, I recognise that starting the year with a real life meeting is likely to be very beneficial, so if the community supported the idea that some of the award money (not donor money) could pay for this, then I would be delighted by that. However, I absolutely do not want this to happen if it is going to cause a huge controversy. People have expressed views against board expenses, and so this issue needs to be treated sensitively. I have no intention of upsetting the people who so recently voted me into this position.

Anthere wrote:

Danny added to possible official positions, the possibility of having an ombudsman. I personally think it is premature right now…

I don't think this is premature at all. I think it will ease a lot of the concerns surrounding the idea we're about to jet off to Florida each week. :) Having an outsider monitoring the spending within the project sounds a very beneficial idea to me.

Angela.

I would like to thank Angela and Florence for serving on the board. Being elected trustees, a sort of hybrid between trustee and politician, they will experience the worst of both worlds. Having been on a governing board of a non-profit myself, I understand that building consensus among the users, contributors, donors, and other trustee will be a very challenging task.

Before I mention "weekly trips to Florida", I would ask that readers take my comments with a grain of salt because I am a notorious tight wad. I am reminded of this daily because my wife does not appreciate my energy conservation during the Florida summers.

If Angela did go to Paris for a "trustee meeting" it would be an invalid trustee meeting unless one of the trustees, or the computer hosting the meeting, were in the State of Florida.

I feel administration costs should be kept to a minimum, hopefully less than 2% of revenue. At the present time the Wikimedia Foundation has a pressing need for new hardware and improved software. I also feel it is very unfair that Bomis is continuing to give the bandwidth to Wikimedia, and I hope that Wikimedia will be able to lift this part of this burden soon.

Though I feel it is important for board members to meet in person, I feel it is much more important for other issues to be addressed and funded.

I hope that the Board of Trustees will stick to the "meat and potatoes" of non-profit governance: auditing financials, appointing the chief administrator (Jimbo), setting very broad goals, promoting the organization, and raising money. In reality, most non-profits boards serve as a vehicle for socializing - which is great fun - but should not be at the expense of the foundation (in fact, I would hope that maybe someday there could be an International Convention of Wikimedians with the proceeds benefiting the foundation). Just about everything that can be discussed in person, can be conveyed by e-mail.

Until the foundation has the financial strength to support growth and operating expenses independently, I feel trustee expenses should be kept to an absolute minimum. Maybe it was a little bit too early in the foundation's history to have elected trustees. However, trustees should be prudently funded in their attempts to secure further donations and grants. In so far as reporters and the such, most reporters will call you or come to you.

I am troubled that this controversy will further encourage the fragmentation of the Wikimedia movement into nationalist or linguistic factions (such as the German society), making it all the harder for the foundation to obtain vital general funds among a sea of grants.

Once again, I would like to thank all of the trustee for their work.

H. Cheney

--- Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:

hcheney wrote:

...

If the Wikimedia Foundation starts giving the

trustees

...

"perks" I feel that fundraising could be quite a

bit

...

harder.

Firstly, phone calls made for Foundation business are hardly "perks". Secondly, I don't see this sort of expense coming out of the normal donation funds. People have given those expecting they will be used on hardware and related purchases, so that is exactly what should be done with them.

However, not all of the money in our account is from donors. We already have €10,000 from the Ars Electronica award, and one of the things Anthere and I plan to do over the coming year is to find funds from alternative sources. We can't rely purely on donations from within the website, so there is no need for actual donor money to be spent on board expenses.

I expect the vast majority of our communication to be carried out over IRC. However, there are situations where this is not plausible. As well as the press contacts Anthere mentioned, applying for grants is one example where face to face contact, or at a minimum, phone contact, is far more likely to result in success.

Delirium wrote:

...

As for internet connections, I assume anyone

involved

...

in the project already has one …

I agree. I don't see my internet costs as being something the Foundation should be paying for.

Anthere wrote:

...

In about 2 weeks, there is a meeting in Paris, for

many french speaking

...

wikipedians. I will meet Jimbo there. Jimbo made

the great suggestion

...

that Angela meet us there as well. It will allow

her to meet with french

...

wikipedians AND it will probably be the first and

the last opportunity

...

for the whole year, for the board to meet face to

face for really low cost.

I have mixed views about this. It is a great opportunity for the three of us to meet, and probably the only opportunity over the following year. However, I am not entirely comfortable about having to take the Foundation's money for it, as Jimbo has suggested I do. On the other hand, I recognise that starting the year with a real life meeting is likely to be very beneficial, so if the community supported the idea that some of the award money (not donor money) could pay for this, then I would be delighted by that. However, I absolutely do not want this to happen if it is going to cause a huge controversy. People have expressed views against board expenses, and so this issue needs to be treated sensitively. I have no intention of upsetting the people who so recently voted me into this position.

Anthere wrote:

...

Danny added to possible official positions, the possibility of having an ombudsman. I personally think it is premature right now…

I don't think this is premature at all. I think it will ease a lot of the concerns surrounding the idea we're about to jet off to Florida each week. :) Having an outsider monitoring the spending within the project sounds a very beneficial idea to me.

Angela.

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