While I disagree with the modesty of the department head salaries, I feel that it is up to the ED to decide who gets paid what. I have qualms about the increases in expenditures, but am encouraged by the resourcefulness of staff in raising money.

________________________________ From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, August 28, 2009 2:06:07 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009/8/28 Gregory Kohs thekohser@gmail.com:

Thomas Dalton asked:

"Has tech money been spent on other things previously? That is news to me."

For your edification, Thomas, since at least you seem willing to listen, as opposed to some others here who simply "tut tut" at all the "trolling" and the "time wasting" any critics might have to offer:

http://philanthropy.com/giveandtake/article/858/wikipedias-fund-raising-succ...

Please make sure to read my comment there, which references this document:

Your comment there (I didn't read all of it, I prefer to limit the time I spent reading people whine) seem to be mainly complaining about the salaries paid to WMF management. Compared to people doing similar jobs elsewhere, their compensation is decidedly modest.

Anthony's not exactly being fair, though, when he sort of suggests that the shortfall in Technology spending went instead to the Executive Director. As far as I can tell, it went into the bank, to be spent in the FOLLOWING YEARS on the Executive Director's need to expand staff to unprecedented levels.

I think most of the tech underspend was due to spending being deferred. That money will still be spent on tech. Are you objecting to WMF expansion? I think the fact that the WMF can sustain a larger staff is a good thing, it will allow them to do much more.

Pay attention, Thomas. I've discussed this issue in many places. On the Wikimedia-controlled places, I'm often censored or blocked, but there are plenty of other non-WMF venues where facts can be laid out for the curious to learn the truth:

http://www.mywikibiz.com/Top_10_Reasons_Not_to_Donate_to_Wikipedia

I think you mean "Truth", with a capital 'T'. I've never been interested in learning the Truth.

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2009/8/29 Delirium delirium@hackish.org:

I'd personally place myself on the "objecting to WMF expansion" side, at least in general sentiment. With larger organizations, you can indeed do more, but also run more risks. In particular, organizations with large staffs run the risk of bureaucratization; and community/volunteer-based organizations with large staffs risk capture of the overall project by the official organization, rather than the community and volunteers they ostensibly act as support staff for.

It's not inevitable the outcomes will be bad, but it's worth thinking about, I think, especially as the track record of traditional non-profit organizations overall is quite poor in that department.

Those are certainly risks that should not be ignored. I think so far we've done pretty well on that front and I am optimistic that we will continue to do so (the community will simply not allow the WMF to capture the projects). We mustn't be complacent, though - only by keeping a close eye on things can we avoid them heading off in the wrong direction. If we do allow things to go wrong it will be difficult to get back on track.

Samuel Klein wrote:

Hello Mark,

On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 3:38 AM, Deliriumdelirium@hackish.org wrote:

...

I'd personally place myself on the "objecting to WMF expansion" side, at least in general sentiment. With larger organizations, you can indeed do more, but also run more risks. In particular, organizations with large staffs run the risk of bureaucratization; and community/volunteer-based organizations with large staffs risk capture of the overall project by the official organization, rather than the community and volunteers they ostensibly act as support staff for.

Can you say more about this -- both what more you can do and the risks run -- and cite the track record[s] you mention?

Well, the last part is a judgment call: I'm personally skeptical of the extent to which most non-profit organizations remain representative of the communities they were originally started by, as opposed to the professional staff and boards of directors they're currently run by. That is, is the organization itself directing the effort, taking decisions from the top down; or is the organization there to provide legal and financial backing for implementation of a community's goals? I prefer the 2nd variety.

One example I consider near ideal is the relationship between Software in the Public Interest (a non-profit organization) and the Debian project (a community-run project that SPI is the legal and financial backing for). Despite not being a non-profit, the relationship between Canonical and Ubuntu is also almost along those lines, too. In both cases, there's a separate organizational structure for the community and for the legal organization--- SPI does not appoint Debian project leads, and the SPI board does not pass Debian resolutions. Wikimedia so far is run almost like that, though not quite as strongly.

Basically: why does formal organization with legal structure exist at all? For purely online organizations, it *almost* doesn't need to exist. But, a decentralized group of people with no legal status has difficulty maintaining a server room, purchasing bandwidth, and similar things. So one does need to exist. And once one exists, perhaps it can provide some other assistance-- if a group of community members think something ought to be done that requires some legal status or money, they could go to the organization with a request, like we currently do with a paid tech staff that implements (some) (sensible) feature requests. But I'm worried about whether that will creep towards the organization itself increasingly running the show, as opposed to playing mainly a supporting/implementation/financing role.

Do you feel there are similar capacity/risk tradeoffs of larger/more inclusive communities? (some might say that the current editing community is becoming an organization separating itself from the general public, building barriers to participation; and that this [de facto] organization risks capturing the overall knowledge-sharing project within existing guidelines and policies, rather than encouraging bold participation among the wider world, who are the ostensible audience and body of future contributors.)

I think there are risks/tradeoffs there, but I don't see them as quite the same kind. For, say, the English Wikipedia (what I'm most familiar with), "Why does it work at all?" is a pretty large question, but I think to a large extent it comes down precisely to the fact that our community *isn't* the public at large, but is a subset of the public that is generally well-informed, has some degree of shared culture and community norms, and is committed to a set of goals not everyone shares. It's worth thinking about whether we're unnecessarily excluding people who could share those goals, or could change things to improve the quality of the encyclopedia; but I think also worth thinking about whether there are important elements of those cultural norms that are key to the success of the project and shouldn't be messed with lightly.

-Mark