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

[Phoebe Ayers]

On 6/17/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:

> > 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.

<snip>

I like this argument for the Apache model - or something like it -
very much. Having "Project Level Officers" -- people who are both
knowledgeable about and invested in both the projects and the
Foundation -- as a level of organization in between the community in
general and the Board seems like it would not only go a long way
towards helping with communication and responsiveness (two of the
major complaints about the Foundation currently) but also mean the
people dealing with issues on a daily basis have a high level of
knowledge about the projects they work with. Having people at a
project level to liason with the Foundation committees that currently
exist would also be helpful; as Ant pointed out, the Apache Foundation
committees seem roughly equivalant to ours, so this would probably
work fine.

I also agree with Brad, that focussing -- and staying focussed -- on
Board expansion is important if it's going to get done; but discussing
what kind of organizational structures that Board will interface with
over the long term is also important.

There are various goals that a reformation of the organizational
structure of the Foundation would hopefully address -- e.g., spreading
out Foundation-level work, so it becomes less burdensome for any small
group of people; providing for a stable (fiscally and otherwise)
organization; providing a mechanism for visionary leadership (as Erik
eloquently put it); providing community representation in leadership;
providing good communication on decisions reached and in process;
providing a timely response to community and outside concerns
(lawsuits, offers of funding); etc. It would probably be helpful to
agree, if possible, on these broad goals for leadership which have
come up in these threads and others, and evaluate proposals (such as
the Apache model) in light of them.

For instance, as I said above, I think the major benefits of the
Apache model as described and Project Level Officer idea as expanded
on by Birgitte is that it would spread out [the ability to do]
foundation-level work (copyright questions, liasoning with the board),
as well as providing for greater community representation at the
Foundation level. (The original Apache model could also possibly
lessen community representation in terms of voting; it's unclear to me
who gets to vote or nominate for what). If it worked properly,
timeliness and responsiveness would also be improved since there would
be a larger pool of people to contact at the project officer level.
(Though, would the responsiveness/timeliness of the Board be improved?
hard to say).  An extra benefit to having this model of organizational
structure is that it might make it less daunting to get involved in
Foundation work. (I can't be the only person in the world who is
interested in Foundation-level stuff, and who makes an effort to
follow discussions etc., but who can't possibly make it a full-time
job -- and thus ends up not saying anything at all, because there's
simply too much traffic (issues, ideas) to follow).

> 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.

Yes.

-- phoebe (brassratgirl), catching up on email & diving in, rather long-windedly