Hello Craig and Gregory
Well... I think Erik said what I meant to say with more eloquence than I could ;-) So there is little to add here. Thanks a lot Erik.
I'll repeat one point which I think is important. The 3 weeks dedicated for candidates statements are in most part envisionned as an special time to have the opportunity to ask all candidates questions. For all of us (but Sj who candidated at the last minute), talk pages were available for you to ask us to clarify what is necessarily heavily summarized in a 1000 caracters statement. I invite you to ask more questions here as well as on the appropriate candidate talk page if you feel it necessarily.
Another point I'll add is that if all candidates seem to hold the same views to you (a strange statement for me anyway), then you should go further and consider personalities. The 6 candidates are very very different, and even though they probably agree on some points, they will use different methods to reach certain goals.
Lastly... It is not of my opinion that it is necessarily good a candidate has a strong opinion on everything and is able to answer to each question by a "I believe in this and to achieve that goal, I will do that". Some certainties are certainly important, but to my opinion, a board member must not only rely on his or her strong certainties, but also simply listen to the people around, and make his or her opinion according to what s/he hears and according to his or her internal ideals and beliefs. The final decision will be a balance of everything. The good point of this is probably that if you offer the proper reasonable arguments, you may make the person change his mind. If you ask for someone with strong opinions on everything, then you are looking for another type of board member, one who will lead you on a path while explaining to you what is good for you and what is not.
please, if you have a question left, ask it.
Anthere
Erik Moeller a écrit:
Hello Craig,
But I do have an opinion. The positions of all the candidates seem to be essentially identical, "we love Wikipedia and NPOV".
I don't think that's accurate at all, but even if you do think that, you should look at the track record of our current trustees to get an idea what their future actions are likely to be. To wit:
topics of copyright
A new, semi-private mailing list, juriwiki-l, was created to discuss and resolve these issues as they occur, in collaboration with legal specialists. Angela and Anthere also use the Wikimedia e-mail ticketing system, OTRS, to respond to copyright inquiries. Indeed, from what I know, I would say that the Board is spending a great amount of time to deal even with the silliest complaints and threats.
There have been discussions with the FSF and Creative Commons to improve the GFDL, but moving this forward is not just up to the Board.
Copyright, in my opinion, is such a large issue that the community needs to be highly involved in forming policy. The Board has allowed this to happen on the Commons, on Wikinews, with the ESA licensing effort, in the different language communities, etc., while generally keeping a watchful eye on what is going on, even in languages they do not speak, relying on trusted individuals to relay information.
promotion
The Board has tried to energize promotion efforts by establishing a logo and trademark policy. Local promotion efforts are up to individual chapters where they do exist. The Board has helped with official press releases, a newsletter (the Wikimedia Quarto), and the Foundation website. It has also appointed a press officer (Elian).
Given our limited budget and our natural growth, I think it would be unwise to allocate a significant amount of resources to promotion at this point. Instead, the Board should continue to do what it has done in the past: encourage the community to design and distribute promotional materials.
hardware
A hardware officer advises the Board on what machines to purchase. This has so far worked very well. The successful cooperations with Kennisnet and Yahoo! and the negotiations with Google were coordinated by the Board, and I think it has played exactly the role it should: Establishing partnerships while leaving the implementation details to qualified individuals. Wikimedia is probably also the only major non-profit whose President (Jimbo) not only looks over every hardware order, but who also installs the machines and makes sure they are working.
There are at any given time secret, confidential discussions underway, some of which fail because of unacceptable demands from would-be sponsors.
or managing growth.
The fundraising efforts, hiring of Brion and Chad, appointment of a CTO, CRO and Hardware Officer, partnerships, attempts to build spare capacity, efforts to eliminate points of failure, and so forth, have all served this goal. I would indeed say that the Board has made this one of its key activities, and that this has been possible at all on the budget we're operating on (while similarly large websites employ a staff of hundreds) is a testament to Wikimedia's efficiency.
The candidates all propose to increase community input to the board, but don't say exactly how they will do this.
Both Angela and Anthere have generally tried to listen and to fully document what the Board is doing. The various surveys such as http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda/Open_questions and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser are good examples of this. As Chief Research Officer, I also see it as my role to communicate technical needs from the community to the Board.
You have had a lot of time to ask the candidates questions already, and you can continue to do so. I think engaging in dialogue is a much more constructive use of your time than a blank "protest vote." I find it somewhat saddening that we have so few candidates this year, but it is also an expression of respect for the work Angela, Anthere and Jimbo have done -- for no pay, and indeed, often investing their own money in phone calls and travel. The Board is not above criticism, but given the exceptional job it has done so far, such criticism should be well-founded.
Best,
Erik