[Foundation-l] the easy way or the less easy way

[Birgitte SB]

--- Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
  Different parts of
> the free culture movement
> are more or less affected by each undertaking of the
> Foundation, and are of
> varying degrees of interest to many.  I think the
> Foundation's mission is
> simply too broad to decide to govern it through
> direct reliance on
> formalized elected constituencies.  Creating
> representation from the
> existing pattern of projects is also inherently
> political.  If the
> Foundation is successful, the massive trend will be
> towards languages and
> projects with many fewer articles and users now, and
> millions more speakers
> and writers worldwide yet to be connected.  So,
> there is a shift ahead no
> matter which way you look at it, provided the
> projects continue to grow as
> they have.

I can agree with your dislike of formalized elected
constituncies.  My personal dislike of them is largely
logistical.  What I liked about the Apache Model it is
*not* a representaion model.  Maybe I read it
differently than everyone else, I don't know.  It
seemed to me perfectly scaleable and I envision it as
very suitable for including new languages worldwide.


> Those who are concerned about this kind of
> governance issue would be better
> served, I think, by focusing attention on board
> composition and expansion,
> as some have done.  Jimmy and the other board
> members are of an open mind as
> to what the future of the board will be, what it
> will/should/could look
> like, and there is a lot of discussion about all
> this.  We may disagree on
> various points for legitimate reasons, but I hope
> everyone agrees the
> conversation is healthy and beneficial to the
> organization.
> 

I do not mean to ignore the near-term composition and
expansion of the board by discussing this model.  It
is good everyone is examining the possibiliies of the
future Board, but there is a great need for a larger
infrastucture within the WMF (If you only edit at
Wikipedia you probably do not see this need).  And it
is not just to know who is member or who may vote in
Board elections.  

The expanded Board and expanded commitees even would
not solve the issues as the Apache Model would
regarding communication of needs, repeatedly
duplicating efforts across languages if not projects,
and need for a bottom-to-top chain of authority. 
Authority is not the right word but when people need
specific solutions they should not be coming to the
top to get it worked out, but there is no other chioce
right now.  For example the issue of guidelines for
acceptable Wikibooks.  They come to this list where
most people can't even fully understand the problem
because you have to be familair with Wikibooks to
really understand it.  How many people go and
investigate the Wikibooks site, and read deletion
archives before giving there opinion on the matter? 
And were the Wikibooks editor ever actually given
useful guidelines at the end of such discussion?  Is
any current comittee working on it for them? This
could be handled in a much better fashion if there was
Project Level organization. 

This is what I see the Project Level Officers doing
(Now all other Project Level Members are just a pool
of people who can become officers and vote on officers
and maybe start a no confidence vote to bring an early
election, they are not some sort of Parlimentary
Representatives):

*Writing and in the future reviewing blanket common
policies and providing any translations neccessary
through requests at the Foundation level.  These
policies are not adopted project-wide but are working
drafts that the language communities can either adopt
as is or modify to their liking.

*Keep an record of difficult project specific
questions that have been asked of proffesionals
(lawyers, developers, etc.) and see that they are
translated for everyone's reference.  At Wikisource
this would include a lot of Copyright information.

*Be the help desk for any such questions or problems
in the future and send difficult ones on to
proffessionals at Foundation Level.  I think they
should also be given a token amount of attention from
the Foundation for these concerns.  For example if
Wikisource officers decide Protect Section is a
priority for Wikisource they should be given some
guarantee of developer attention even though any
Wikipedia related bug has triple the votes.  Although
this should have limits of course.

*Be the point of contact for any Foundation level
comittees.  Right now people seem to go to whoever is
around IRC at the moment, which is not generally the
most knowledgable person.  

*Actively investigate language communities and keep
records of their progress and make recomendations
either to the community itself or any applicable
Chapters that deal with that language regarding growth
and promotion.  This will also help indentify any
innovations that can then be shared project-wide and
also notice any problems at an early stage.  I do not
know how this would done exactly but it is needed.

*Set quality goals for the project as a whole and
write reccomendations for best practices.  Ensure
translation of this of course.  This is something that
is being done well in many larger communities (i.e.
en.WP's list of core topics) but smaller langs need
more guidence as they have everyone busy creating
content.  Also the Officers could work on some kind of
incentives to encourage editors to work on these
quality issues.


This was really long and I didn't even talk of
Foundation level stuff.  But it is similar, the
members are a pool of people with a low bar for entry
not some kind of representatives.  Just people that
are willing to work on Foundation level stuff and can
be appointed to commitees etc.  I would imagine the
Foundation basically collects money, deals with
press/outside organizations, and  organizes
developers, lawyers, and translators.  Of course the
Board sets goals and trys to do what is most useful to
as many projects as possible, but as of now I do not
even know that they are aware what would be most
useful in many cases.  This model is basically much
more efficent and acknowledges the reality that each
project has specific concerns that are not understood
by people from other projects.

Birgitte SB

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