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

[Erik Moeller]

On 6/14/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
> Instead he announced he would stack the Board to protect the project
> from the feared arrival of the unwashed masses (can not lock them out
> after all .... most of them know some stuff we want them to give us to
> publish freely) and proceeded to put two handpicked trustees/employees
> along with himself and designated two slots to be elected by count of
> active handles or sock puppets.

Are you saying that the election of Anthere and Angela was not
legitimate ("active handles or sock puppets")? I would beg to differ
on that point. While I sympathize with Tim Starling's point that
membership would be a reasonable method to guarantee the
organization's long term independence, I think the elections that took
place were unquestionably fair and open, and reasonable measures were
taken to deal with manipulation.

Again, I would also like to remind you that wikipedia.org is
wikipedia.ORG today. We take this for granted today, but it was by no
means a guaranteed outcome, especially for a project created by an Ayn
Rand objectivist. ;-) I would even go so far to say that Wikipedia
could be _very_ successful (not as successful as it is, but still)
while being proprietary. And it could have made Jimmy _lots_ of money.
Instead he put a lot of his own money into Nupedia and Wikipedia, and
is unlikely to get much, if any, of it back. As often as I may
disagree with him, it is absurd to assume greed as a factor in his
principal actions. If Jimmy wanted to be "filthy rich" (rather than
independently wealthy), he would already _be_ filthy rich, and
Wikipedia would be Wikipedia.COM.

That is not to say that there aren't conflicts of interest. Certainly
Jimmy wants to make Wikia succeed, and it is important for the
organization to be set up and run in such a way that people associated
with Wikia (Michael, Angela and Jimmy) can (yes, _can_) recuse
themselves when there is an obvious COI. The fact that 3 out of 5
Board members are associated with a for-profit that stands to benefit
from certain actions of the non-profit they lead does of course lend a
lot of weight to arguments for a larger and more diverse Board, and
more community involvement in the executive body. But these arguments
should be made under the full assumption of good faith of everyone
involved.

Erik