Hello Elias,
Welcome to the mailing list.
On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 1:25 AM, Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva
<tolkiendili(a)gmail.com> wrote:
2010/5/9 Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)yahoo.com>om>:
(..)
board to
do things is to give guidance to the communities. But, this
topic is already pending for years. Looking back into the archives of
foundation-l or village pump of Commons there were enough discussions.
If the problem cannot be solved inside of the community, it is my
believe it is the duty of the board and every board member to solve the
problem.
Ting
I see no indication so far that the community *is* able to solve the problem.
Sorry, I have never posted here, but I feel so sad reading such
words... and other words spoken here at foundation-l.. the projects
under the umbrella of WMF are so beautiful, so precious, to be treated
this way... =~~~~
Thank you for your kind words for the projects.
But well, so that's the reason Jimmy Wales must be
so authoritarian?
Because the Community of Commons can't solve this issue through
consensus?
Is solving this particular issue really more important than reaching
consensus? Why?
It seems to me the only way a project can work through this sort of
complex issue is through careful consensus and decision-making.
I do not think solving it somehow is more important than reaching
consensus, or a decision that everyone can live with. Questions of
how to deal with highly controversial content -- from images of
Muhammad to private personal information to explicit images of sex --
are often difficult to solve.
This may be the sort of complex decision that would benefit from a
community-run advisory or policy group, with representatives from many
projects. Such decision making can take many months, and needs slow
but persistent attention and progress towards a balanced resolution.
[often our current practices of wiki-based decision making simply lose
steam after an initial burst of interest, and future iterations on the
theme have to start over from scratch.]
Are you a member of the Board of Trustees or
something?
Could you inform me if the whole board has this kind of position?
No, the whole Board does not have this position. (not to speak for
others -- I am on it, and I am opposed to the idea.)
This is out of scope for the Board, which like the Foundation itself
generally stays out of content creation, policy-making, and governance
of the individual Projects.
BTW, I also have a broader question. Who entrusted
power to the Board
of Trustees? They are serving the interests of who? And who can revoke
the trust upon a specific trustee, or the entire board, in the event
it was misused?
The Board governs the Foundation to support the interests of the
mission and the needs of the Projects.
In an emergency, the Board itself could remove a Trustee; in practice
there are elections and appointments each year. Of our ten trustees,
there are six 'community trustees': three elected by the editing
community every two years, two selected by the national Chapters every
[other] two years, and Jimmy as founding trustee, reappointed each
year. The other four trustees are appointed each year by the
community trustees.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_board_manual
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_member
PS: I may look inquisitive, but I see this anti-porn
campaign
contrasting to the complete lack of action when it was found that
wiki-en was grossly offending Islam for no better reason.
I agree that the issue of images of Muhammad is similar to that of
explicit sexual content -- both are highly controversial, considered
by some to be educational or important; and by others to be useless
and offensive. We must find a way to deal evenly with all
controversial material, and to understand the perspectives of
different audiences.
SJ
