I've been watching this conversation with great dismay. As someone else has said, IMO Mark clearly has a very different vision of the Wikimedia board, and an incredibly negative opinion of boards in general. For the record, I completely disagree with him and believe that the board is important, and that reasonable expenses like the ones being discussed ought to be paid for gladly and without reservation
I have also just given -- $15.00 US -- for Angela's travel. I have done this as a show of good faith in the board, the individual members, and the process that led to the board's creation and the recent elections.
*However* I hope that this does not set a precedent, and will not make such a contribution again, and I believe that this should be paid for by the Wikimedia Foundation -- *not* by individual wikipedians.
And finally, I hope that this discussion ends soon. It's very demoralizing for me to see this long debate full of accusations continue after so much good will was recently created among the various projects and languages through the board elections -- and I can only imagine what it must be like for Angela and Anthere.
Let's move on, and if necessary develop a *process* to decide how board travel expenses will be handled in the future, rather than a debate about the pros and cons of a board and what it should or should not do. And if also necessary, we can develop another process to discuss and debate, and decide the pros and cons of a board and what it should or should not do
Thanks, Brian (BCorr)
To seek consensus on the topic of covering Angela and Anthere's travel expenses, I have created a meta page and have added a link from the en and simple wikipedias on their http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_vote_poll. Please not the preamble at the top of the page.
Corey Burger aka Burgundavia
Brian said:
I have also just given -- $15.00 US -- for Angela's travel. I have done
this
as a show of good faith in the board, the individual members, and the
process
that led to the board's creation and the recent elections.
*However* I hope that this does not set a precedent, and will not make
such a
contribution again, and I believe that this should be paid for by the Wikimedia Foundation -- *not* by individual wikipedians.
Absolutely. This was something I was intending to say in a follow-up mail. While I've contributed to this (my donation has now been sent to the foundation via PayPal) that was in order to put my money where my mouth is and to get things moving for this meet-up. I firmly believe this should not be a precedent. Such expenses should be a normal part of the budget.
By the way - I think someone mentioned the election results as an example of non-transparency. However they were given in full on Meta: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_results in response to the criticism - a good example of the way the board is responding to the community I think. (This must have been said somewhere or I wouldn't have known - but perhaps it should have been announced more widely.)
-- sannse
bcorr@neaction.org wrote:
I've been watching this conversation with great dismay. As someone else has said, IMO Mark clearly has a very different vision of the Wikimedia board, and an incredibly negative opinion of boards in general.
It's quite possible that the majority of Wikimedians have a different view from me of what the board ought to be, but this was never really consulted in forming the board. The board was *not* formed because we thought it would be a good idea to have a board to govern the project; it was formed because as a matter of the law on non-profits of the State of Florida, we are required to have a board. Therefore, we do. However, that in itself is simply a legal formality. If we are to hand over to the board significant powers, not only in the technical sense that legally they have powers, but in the moral sense that we are giving them a particular role in running the project, then that ought to be done explicitly.
My viewpoint, of course, is that we ought to do as much of our decision-making as possible in the wiki way. There are many different viewpoints on how this is best done, and many can be read in depth, with arguments for and against various approaches, at the meatball wiki (http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?MeatballWiki). I have my particular views on what sorts of processes I think work best, but of course many others are possible, and I haven't insisted we pick any particular ones. However, "elect a board of trustees to make decisions for the users" is not one of the wiki-style organizational methods I've run across, though I may have missed it.
Take, for example, the issue of dues. One way to decide it is to have the board debate amongst themselves (either online or in person), solicit input from users, and then make a decision on what level to set the dues at. Another possibility is to have a wiki-style discussion it, possibly on meta (I'm willing to use meta over mailing lists if that's the preference of most other people). If a consensus emerges, then we set the dues at the consensus amount. If there are strong disagreements, then we can identify a few of the leading choices and hold a vote. Given that we already have voting software that has been used successfully, this is fairly easy to do.
I don't see any particular reason to favor the top-down decision-making process, especially given how alien it is to the way we (not to mention just about all others wikis) have been doing things to date, which has been rather successful in most respects.
-Mark
Mark,
You've made your point plenty. As a basic and regular suscriber to this list, I'm getting tired of *your* point of view, not because it's yours but because I got it enough. When you have nothing to say but to repeat over and over the same stuff, you're on the verge of spam. Thanks.
JCC aka Aurevilly on w:fr
PS: not to mention I totally disagree with the fake pragmatism you've exposed.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Delirium" delirium@hackish.org To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 11:03 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Bounties and expenses
bcorr@neaction.org wrote:
I've been watching this conversation with great dismay. As someone else
has
said, IMO Mark clearly has a very different vision of the Wikimedia
board, and
an incredibly negative opinion of boards in general.
It's quite possible that the majority of Wikimedians have a different view from me of what the board ought to be, but this was never really consulted in forming the board. The board was *not* formed because we thought it would be a good idea to have a board to govern the project; it was formed because as a matter of the law on non-profits of the State of Florida, we are required to have a board. Therefore, we do. However, that in itself is simply a legal formality. If we are to hand over to the board significant powers, not only in the technical sense that legally they have powers, but in the moral sense that we are giving them a particular role in running the project, then that ought to be done explicitly.
My viewpoint, of course, is that we ought to do as much of our decision-making as possible in the wiki way. There are many different viewpoints on how this is best done, and many can be read in depth, with arguments for and against various approaches, at the meatball wiki (http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?MeatballWiki). I have my particular views on what sorts of processes I think work best, but of course many others are possible, and I haven't insisted we pick any particular ones. However, "elect a board of trustees to make decisions for the users" is not one of the wiki-style organizational methods I've run across, though I may have missed it.
Take, for example, the issue of dues. One way to decide it is to have the board debate amongst themselves (either online or in person), solicit input from users, and then make a decision on what level to set the dues at. Another possibility is to have a wiki-style discussion it, possibly on meta (I'm willing to use meta over mailing lists if that's the preference of most other people). If a consensus emerges, then we set the dues at the consensus amount. If there are strong disagreements, then we can identify a few of the leading choices and hold a vote. Given that we already have voting software that has been used successfully, this is fairly easy to do.
I don't see any particular reason to favor the top-down decision-making process, especially given how alien it is to the way we (not to mention just about all others wikis) have been doing things to date, which has been rather successful in most respects.
-Mark
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Jean-Christophe Chazalette wrote:
You've made your point plenty. As a basic and regular suscriber to this list, I'm getting tired of *your* point of view, not because it's yours but because I got it enough. When you have nothing to say but to repeat over and over the same stuff, you're on the verge of spam. Thanks.
If all you're going to write is "lolz shuts up plz!!!!!!!!!!!", then please don't post.
Thanks, Mark
Delirium wrote:
It's quite possible that the majority of Wikimedians have a different view from me of what the board ought to be, but this was never really consulted in forming the board. The board was *not* formed because we
The difference between a cow grassing on a meadow and a man at a beer table, says the old Icelandic Edda, is that the cow knows when to stop. When she is full, she walks home.
Havamal, verse 21:
Herds know the hour of their going home and turn them again from the grass; but never is found a foolish man who knows the measure of his maw.
Hjarðir þat vitu nær þær heim skulu ok ganga þá af grasi; en ósviðr maðr kann ævagi síns of mál maga.
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Delirium wrote:
It's quite possible that the majority of Wikimedians have a different view from me of what the board ought to be, but this was never really consulted in forming the board. The board was *not* formed because we
The difference between a cow grassing on a meadow and a man at a beer table, says the old Icelandic Edda, is that the cow knows when to stop. When she is full, she walks home.
So where does the person who goes around telling people to shut up rather than offering any reasonable comments fall in?
-Mark
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org