On 27/05/06, Angela &lt;beesley(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I apologise if i came across preachy or whiney or anything and i appreciate being on the board can't be easy what with constant howls of cabals and whatnot by the tinfoil hat brigade. What i am perhaps getting at here is asking if anyone knows/cares if the majority of wikimedians agree (or even know about) the current direction being taken by the foundation. That is making the foundation more than a body who provides servers, bandwidth, developer support, and deals with legal issues arising from writing the world's biggest and best encyclopedia, dictionary, source of free books, news, and open content repository (did i miss any?). Tim Starling has said before (and i apologise if i am misquoting him) that we basicly got lucky with the idea of a wiki encylopedia and that we should really just stick to what we are good at. I have always disagreed with this point of view but lately have been coming around to it, because you know what what, the results of what the average wikimedian does have been hugely successful but other things we've tried or talked about trying just don't seem to live up to its success. I just don't think it is our role to deal with the problems of Africa and any of the other projects envisioned. That is not to say that all the amazing idealism and good intentions constantly shown are a bad thing TM. I am just throwing this out there as an idea but perhaps we should have to separate but linked organisations. One non-profit organisation whose only charge is to own and buy servers/bandwidth, support devs and to provide the legal backing for wikimedia this would be as small and lean as possible (though would presumably hire at least one lawyer and accountant). The other would be a more traditional charity and would be charged with overseeing and sponsoring wikimania, getting grants for special projects and trying to get wikipedia on to mobile phones and all the other cool stuff people want to do. People would be able to choose to which of the organisations they would like to donate. Perhaps two organisations is too radical but perhaps some kind of internal breakdown of the foundation into core functions and non-core functions. I dunno. I'm just throwing this out there as an idea to start a conversation because I appreciate that although the foundation has worked hard to try to be inclusive, there are a large number of people (or at least i get the feeling that there are anyway) who feel like the foundation is going in a direction contrary to where they would like it to go. Then again maybe i'm misinterpreting the wikimedian community (i only subsist in a very small bit of it) and everyone is quite happy with what the foundation is doing and where it is heading. I dunno. paz y amor, -rjs. -- DO NOT SEND ME WORD ATTACHMENTS - I *WILL* BITE! <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sylvester-response.html> Hit me: <http://robin.shannon.id.au> [broken] Jab me: &lt;robin.shannon(a)jabber.org.au&gt; Upgrade to kubuntu linux: <http://releases.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/breezy/> Faith is under the left nipple. -- Martin Luther