From: "Elisabeth Bauer" elian@djini.de
Alex T. wrote:
My suggestion is to make it as minimal and egalitarian as possible, each wikipedia community can do what it wants to do, if you want a lot of structure, o.k., if you want no structure, some minimal foothold for dealing with issues. I agree with you Brian, each project is independent but with so many people complaining that the Board of Trustees are a bunch of shills of Jimbo perhaps there needs to be a line drawn in the sand. This proposal is that line.
And IMO seems to be a good line.
Could these points be stated explicitly in the bylaws, please? I got another impression by reading the bylaws.
Why does everything have to be stated in the bylaws, the bylaws are just a general governing body document, they don't have anything to do with the day to day activities of the various Wikipedia projects,
The bylaws say otherwise at the moment - they give the board of trustees the right to interfere with the projects. And, giving you the same answer Jimmy gave the German wikipedians: this may be fine now, but we have to think of the situation in 20 years. Even in 20 years, it should be guaranteed that the welsh wikipedians decide over the policies of the welsh wikipedia, the wikibookists over wikibooks and so on.
The wikimedia foundation is for keeping the servers running, collecting funds and defending the projects against legal threats, but not for enforcing rules (or a however defined code of ethics) upon all projects.
There must be some ultimate forum for enforcing rules whomever makes them up. What this committee structure is stating is that each Wikipedia and other wikimedia project makes them up. The board of trustees is who has to deal with lawsuits, not individuals who are only voluntary commitees. The rules are ONLY enforceable by the Board, they may delegate them, let members make them up and do whatever they want but the Board is the final arbiter of those as it is protecting the corporate entity which is not just the servers, it is the sum of what Wikipedia is, that is what people are giving money for, to make sure Wikipedia keeps running, not just to make sure there is server hardware and bandwidth.
As far as what is going to happen in twenty years no one knows. The Bylaws do not give anyone any more certainty in this regard. They can be changed, any corporate document can be changed. Right now it can be changed by three people, later it will be five. I would rather that they delegate their authority to governing committees and let the governing committees run the individual Wikipedia and other wikimedia projects. As far as the future is concerned this is not the United States of Wikipedia or the European Union of Wikipedians, it is just a small group of volunteers having the time of their life creating the world's largest knowledge base encyclopedia. At this point that encyclopedia can exist even if Wikimedia dies a sudden death, so what is the big deal about a few bylaws that are required for a bunch of accountants and lawyers to justify their jobs. Let them have their bylaws I say and let's get on with making more Wikipedias! No one is going to start telling the Welsh Wikipedians what to do, except more Welsh speaking volunteers, you know that don't you? Isn't that obvious? What is Jimbo going to do, start finding translators to read every page on every different language Wikipedia to make sure that no one is breaking the rules? No, it is obviously going to be self enforcement. Each individual project makes its own rules, if there is some need for a final statement, i.e. you are banned from this project, then the Board of Wikimedia can just make a final statement for that committee. The committee can then rely upon the Board to make sure that the decision is implemented and in a way the Board of Trustees becomes a limited type of appeal just to make sure that there is nothing that would call Wikimedia's not-for-profit status into question. That's all. Why don't you see that?
Alex756