[Foundation-l] Would you consider being on the Board?

[Alison Wheeler]

On Mon, June 5, 2006 20:20, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> We have
> some very good board candidates who are not famous in the community and
> who could bring to the table professional expertise that we greatly
> need, but who would not put themselves through the troll wars of an
> election.

To pick up on this point, it has become a truism that there are editors
who think this is a social democracy of some sort - that user interaction
is the main point of our projects - and those who are more aware that this
is about the creation of a freely-accessible encyclopedia to every person
on the planet*. But whilst volunteers like me and you may find the social
aspects to our activities here very enjoyable, that creation process is
what matters far more.

This means that whilst the projects themselves can be pretty much
self-organised and democratic, the foundation really cannot be. The
foundation has legal requirements upon it; it is a Company with its own
legal and financial identity and the management of that company has to
move to a more secure and 'professional' basis, which means that it isn't
a matter of 'support by the masses of registered users' but demonstrations
of experience, skills and knowledge that can be brought to improve the
prospects of reaching that target we all seek.

During the last five years of founding and growth Wikipedia has been
pretty much like one of those garage companies; the choice of people
getting involved as much for their connections with the founders as their
skills. Nothing at all wrong with that; some great companies have started
out like that. But they've all known that at some point some changes would
have to happen in order to reach the next level. We need to grow our
finances and our public relationships to match and support the plans of
our editors, and the bigger we get the more that really matters.

And this is the point that, it seems to me, we have recently arrived at.
We shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater; the way the projects
work is mostly brilliant, and what isn't people are working on. But the
Foundation has to have a secure basis on which to proceed, so some
selectivity has be used if it is to continue to support the projects in
the way we all want and expect.

I would hope that anyone interested in joining the board - now or in the
future - would be someone already aware of the way we work well together
(mostly!), someone who has been 'around here' a while, but that isn't all
that can matter anymore.

Alison Wheeler



* Those in orbit are very welcome too!