Hi Robert,
Thanks for your input. I have some comments which i hope will lead us
to a productive dialogue.
On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Arie R. Scheurwater
<me(a)ariescheurwater.com> wrote:
1. Surnames on the website (
www.wikimedia.org.za)
It would be a good idea if people put their surname on the Wikimedia
ZA website next to their name, because it will make it easier to
reference people in emails.
This is an excellent suggestion, and I'll do that for myself. Note,
however, that those of us who are active on the mailing list can be
easily identified from our email signatures.
2. The responsibilities of a "Board of
Directors"
A lot of people in the "community" currently wanting to become a
"director", but understanding of the term "director" is
misunderstood:
- Your first responsibility of a "director" is too giving legal
responsibility of the organization to the government.
I'm not quite clear what you're saying here, can you please rephrase it?
- Your second responsibility is to make sure everyone
is doing their
duty.
- Your third responsibility is to take up responsibility for other
people's mistakes.
I'm surprised by the priority which you give to these points. Certainly
it is true that our directors will have a direct management role to an
extent, but this won't be a normal company. I'd rather say that the
directors will be there to take the input from the members on what we
want to achieve, to frame it in terms of a program with individual
projects and actions, to identify which volunteers have the right
level of expertise and enthusiasm to carry the actions out, and to
entrust them with the tasks. The directors will also be responsible for
outside communication - primarily with the media and with funding bodies.
People think that a director is a person that leads an
organization
which is not true, because the person that leads the organization are
all the members together.
I applaud your democratic spirit here, but with respect, I feel that
you're confusing the issue. The members will certainly own the
organisation and have final power through their vote, but they entrust
the leadership (in terms of setting and following an agenda, and
managing the assets of the organisation) to their directors.
3. The legal structure of Section 21 companies
I know the legal structure has already been decided by Mr. Tobias
(unknown surname).
Tobias Schonwetter did not decide the structure. He gave a well-argued
legal opinion which was then discussed on the mailing list. Please find
it attached. We acknowledge that there is more overhead to running a
Sec. 21 company, but we don't know how big this chapter will get
(hopefully big enough that it's worth it!), we would like a structure
that protects the directors/members from legal and financial liability,
and we want a structure that will inspire trust in our potential donors.
I don't think we should re-open this discussion now.
4. Wikimedia ZA not Wikimedia SA
I have noticed that a lot of people are calling the chapter and
organization Wikimedia SA which is an issuse that needs to get
address, because SA means Saudi Arabia not South Africa according ISO
3166 code standards. I do not think we want people to misinterpret
"us" (the chapter and organization) as Wikimedia Saudi Arabia.
While I agree that ZA is the best abbreviation for formal purposes (for
example in the logo that Bence and I created) because of its
language-neutral stance and connection to our internet TLD, we will have
to resign ourselves to the fact that most South Africans talk about "SA"
when referring to South Africa, and that we will see people referring to
Wikimedia SA in informal settings. I sincerely doubt that this will
cause the confusion that you fear.
5. Difference between Reply To and Reply All buttons
People say time is money, its true, so please don't use reply to all
if its not nesserary to do so, because it wastes people's time.
I have a different opinion on this point. Let's have as much as
possible of our communication on the mailing list and on the wiki site:
that way everyone is in the loop. I know we're all busy people, but I'd
rather have to spend 2 minutes ignoring and archiving 10 emails than
miss one important one at this stage.
Kind regards,
David
--
David Richfield
e^(πi)+1=0