I have also just given -- $15.00 US -- for Angela's travel. I have done

as a show of good faith in the board, the individual members, and the

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

contribution again, and I believe that this should be paid for by the Wikimedia Foundation -- *not* by individual wikipedians.

bcorr(a)neaction.org wrote: >I've been watching this conversation with great dismay. As someone else

>said, IMO Mark clearly has a very different vision of the Wikimedia

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(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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.

Delirium wrote: 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.