Tomos at Wikipedia wrote:
I think there are two separate issues on this debate.
- Are the Trustees expected to serve as the "top" for us?
- Is the meeting of the Trustees that important compared to others?
For the first question, I think the majority opinion is that the Trustees are supposed to listen to us, serve as, and act upon our (multilingual wikimedia communty's) concensus. And from what Angela and Anthere expressed when running for the election, we can believe that they want to do that.
Mark should not worry that much, and I think many people are not that different from Mark's view on this issue.
Tomos is very insightful here. While I sympathize with Mark's concerns about top-down decision-making by the board, I am quite surprised that he apparently considers it such a significant present danger. I have yet to see any indication that Angela or Anthere are going to start dictating decisions to the community, and they have gone to considerable lengths to solicit community input so far. And from what I can judge of their personalities, Angela and Anthere both are among the last people I would expect to adopt a top-down management style, which may have something to do with why we elected them to the board.
Regarding the second question
...
I am surprised to see that so many on this list seem to be on the strong supportive side.
In the future, there might be a meeting in the U.S. Is it okay to pay, say, 1500 dollars to reimburse the travel expenses of the two Trustees from Europe? I don't know. I would like to know the agendas for the meeting and think how important it is, rather than to say "Trustees should always be paid for that."
But if we decide not to pay, it means that some quality people might not run for the next election because they do not have enough money to attend the meeting. This is not a happy consequence for us, either.
I think that as to this second question, Tomos, most people understand that we have an extraordinary opportunity (in terms of physical proximity), that the cost will be minimal, and that there are real benefits to having the Trustees meet in person at least once. That is why so many people are willing to be generous with their money. If we can show this kind of value and efficient use of donations in all our fundraising efforts, getting the funds we need should be a straightforward proposition.
This is not a precedent that the Foundation will start paying travel expenses for all meetings, because it is also not a precedent as to how future meetings will be held. I'm sure that Angela, Anthere, and Jimbo will have several more meetings during the year, but they will probably conduct these by telephone or IRC or some other means.
--Michael Snow
Michael Snow wrote:
This is not a precedent that the Foundation will start paying travel expenses for all meetings, because it is also not a precedent as to how future meetings will be held. I'm sure that Angela, Anthere, and Jimbo will have several more meetings during the year, but they will probably conduct these by telephone or IRC or some other means.
This is not how I understood it. If it were a single meeting, done because of convenient circumstances, that would not be an enormous issue. However, the email introducing this issue (the first one with the subject "Funding for the newly elected Board Members") said:
"...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."
This sounded more like a routine budget than an extraordinary one-time expense. Several other people also do seem to explicitly favor regular in-person meetings, with the one in Paris being merely the first of many, and even an overhead/expenses budget allowed to run as high as 10% of our total income. Those are different sorts of matters than a single one-of-a-kind trip.
-Mark
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org