Delphine Ménard wrote:
On 6/15/06, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Thanks for your feedback Delphine. I'll put a comment or two below and there is one correction to describe what their model is.
I have given a bit of thought in the issue during the past few days, in reading all the emails on this list, and I had the opportunity today to talk with one of the co-founder of the Apache Foundation, in particular about the way their Foundation is organised. I put wikitech in copy, because I am pretty sure some of the guys there know the organisation and will be able to correct me if necessary.
I thought that his description of his Foundation... would very possibly fit pretty well what it seems many on this list are looking for and solve some of our current problems.
Thanks for sharing that.
Let me try and summarize in "applying to us" to see if I have understood well.
So we'd have the following defined roles
*Community members (members of all Wikimedia projects)
*Project management committees - for us, these would be people within the community appointed by resolution of the board of directors of the Wikimedia Foundation. Once appointed, the PMC members have a right to propose to add members in their PMC. The PMC would be in charge of making sure the legal aspects of each projects are taken care of and observed, make sure that procedures are followed in the development of the projects. These are not automatically the editors with the greatest number of edits, but rather those who have shown a commitment to the organisation and the day-to-day running of the projects, taking care of legal issues, procedure issues etc. They'd have a responsibility and an oversight role. Not an editing power as such (ie. they can't impose their POV on an article). Their frame of action will have to be very clearly defined, but if it is, they'd be an asset to the projects.
Correction : in the ASF, the PMC are chosen by the community itself. By support from the community (a bit as we agree on our sysops). In our case, that makes sense, because the board does not know enough the local community to suggest names necessarily in a wise fashion. It seems to me as well these PMC should pretty much be self-organised. However, it would probably be best that the board has a veto over those. Another option would be that they be appointed by board upon a suggestion of names given by their community. I would myself support "elected by community with board veto".
The PMC have a couple of officers, such as a chair and a secretary. Those could either be appointed by the board or appointed by committee members with veto from board. But in any cases, the officers have a legal responsability, so should absolutely be RealPerson.
*Wikimedia Foundation members - those would be nominated by the board, proposed to the board by anyone else who feels someone should be a Foundation member. They could be issued directly from the community, from the PMCs or from anywhere else.
Correction again. WMF members should not be appointed by the board. They should be elected by the community. I would even go as far as to suggest that there should be NO board veto over these ones. If a problematic person slips in, it will not be a big deal, because of the size of that membership. We could expect a membership of over 100 people. They could indeed be issued from anywhere.
*Wikimedia Foundation board of directors - are elected within the pool of members of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Note : in the ASF, all board members are actually *from* the pool of members and elected by the members. We might wish to make it possible for "externals" to join the board as well. In this case, we could imagine having the membership pool electing for an "external" to join the board (now, the question is, could we imagine 100 people voting to allow, say, Stallman, to join the board ? Would that be reasonable ?). Or we could have board members been allowed to appoint up to xx external people to get on the board.
*Special tasks committees : those are issued from the pool of members of the Wikimedia Foundation, or created around and with external individuals which show the necessary skills to lead/participate in those committees.
yes
I think that's it.
As I see it, this is indeed an interesting bit. To answer Tim's concerns (and I agree with Lukasz comment, btw), I believe the fact that members of the Wikimedia Foundation would be appointed by the board actually make it pretty "safe" for anyone who might have a problem with a community elected body. For the record, I am one of those. A great editor in a virtual project does not make a great board member in a real-life organisation, and the predominance of one language or one project does not ensure harmonious representation. The model might seem restraining at first (only the board's "friends" could be considered as members of the Wikimedia Foundation) but in a mid-term perspective, I cannot see the board only appointing their best friends/supporters, as it would not scale. And the larger the body that nominates, the more diversified the people on it.
This is the place where I do not understand your explanation. If the board appoints members, and is then elected by members... we might just get stuck in a loop. This is not at all what the AFS did. The community elect the membership. The membership elect the board. I think that this model could get very much in the wrong direction... if the membership is very limited in size (it would actually be a pre-election of the board). But if the membership is rather around 100 people (for example), then the risk of having a total mess in the elected body is actually pretty limited.
Note that a suggestion I would do is to include amongst groups of voters, meta and chapters. This would largely tip the balance in favor of those who are *actually* working for Foundation issues.
We might get to something like * Wikipedia can elect up to 30 members overall to become members * Wikibooks can elect up to 20 ... * Wikiquote can elect up to 1 ... (just kidding) * Meta can elect up to 20 members * All chapters members can elect up to 20 members
etc...
It may be that people are supported in two places. So what ? Who cares if there is no strictly fixed number ?
There is another point... You said "a good project editor does not necessarily make a good Foundation member". Yup... so what about "forcing" people to make a *choice* ? Either PMC member... or Foundation member ? The same skills are not required...
(as a reminder, all PMC must have 2 Foundation member on them. These 2 guys may volunteer or be appointed by board or appointed by MWF members. But only these 2 may be both on WMF membership AND a PMC).
The way the PMC are set up also gives the board an oversight. However, it would be stupid from the board to appoint on the PMCs people who have absolutely no community support, because it would make the PMC members' job way harder. So in our case, the appointement of PMCs could be coupled with polls within communities as to who should be on the PMCs. Note that as I understand it, PMCs members have a real life responsibility, which would call for a disclosure of their real life identity. I would argue that PMC members are not necessarily stewards or bureaucrats, which would still be elected as "trusted" community members", but rather people who have made clear what their skills and agendas are as to the responsibility they are offered in being part of a PMC.
Nod. The PMC members could be elected by project, with a veto from WMF. Or a pool be elected by project, and the final members appointed by WMF (roughly, the english arbcom system). I would not suggest that all should give their real life identity as it would exclude too many people. We might require that only from the chair and co.
The *most* important point would be to very very clearly define their scope of action. They would have no particular rights as editors over the other editors for example, nor would they have the right to run/manage the local projects as "editor in chief".
I would probably still consider a body such as the Wikicouncil in such an organisation of things, ie. people voted as "community" representatives, who have no "real life" responsibilities per se, but are tasked with making sure the communication between community members and the Wikimedia Foundation flows. It is high time the community be represented by someone(s) rather than speaking through a myriad of individuals who, in the end, have no other voice than their own.
I believe that in the end, it is indeed an interesting model. At least, it seems to me to make a very clear distinction between projects and organisation (the PMCs are the organisation's representatives in the projects). My belief is that in the mid-term, this lack of separation can be very dangerous, both for the projects and the Foundation. This model makes the separation very clear, without shutting out the community from accessing the responsibilities within the organisation, and without shutting it out from decision, as it provides a model for working harmoniously together (everyone knows what they have to do and what they're here for).
Delphine
ant