[Foundation-l] How not to manage opensource project

[Ray Saintonge]

Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

>Anthere wrote:
>  
>
>>As far as I (as a board member) is concerned, I consider the Foundation 
>>to be there to "support" the projects. Absolutely not to govern them.
>>By support, I mean "provide infrastructure", "provide legal frame", help 
>>set up collaborations to collect/create content, help distribution of 
>>the content created. Not govern. Not manage.
>>    
>>
>What you mention here are of course the most important tasks of the 
>foundation. However, my position is a bit different to yours. IMO the 
>foundation has also the duty to step in as an emergency government in 
>case the self government of a projects doesn't work. But this should 
>always be a temporary measure and restricted to single actions.
>
>I'm thinking here for example of cases like the quran quote in the site 
>notice of the urdu wikipedia. If the community in a wiki acts against 
>the core principles of Wikimedia, for example violates the neutrality, 
>it needs someone external to set it right. Of course this is something 
>which could also be done by the international community except that this 
>is not a body with any authority but a bunch of loosely connected 
>individuals with diverse opinions.
>
The core principles are paramount.  There are times when the Board 
should intervene, and a clear policy needs to be established to show 
when the Board will intervene and when not.  A discussion on how NPOV 
will apply to a specific project does not imply that the project intends 
to violate the principle.

>>Some editors try to push us in "governing the project", and I can not 
>>blame them. When decisions are tough to take collectively, it is quite 
>>easy to ask a small group of people to take the responsability of making 
>>a decision.
>>But imho, pretty often, this should not be the job of the Foundation.
>>    
>>
>And in rare cases, it should be - or the foundation decides to delegate 
>these cases to a "Wiki Emergency response team" (WERT ;-) which takes 
>care of cases like
>* HELP, all sysops of our Wikipedia are quitting and there is a big 
>fight over the ban of an editor!!!
>
Dealing with emergencies will always be a requirement and hopefully the 
"WERT" would be able to review and report back to those who need the 
help.  They could then try to resolve the problems based on those 
recommendations.  The kind of stagnation that would require Board direct 
intervention should be pre-defined.  For the most part the projects need 
to take responsibility for their own respective shows, and the Board 
needs to restrain the urge to intervene when the project should be 
solving its own problems.

>* We want to know more about our readers - let's just record every page 
>view on an external logfile via the global javascript...
>
This is more in the nature of technical assistance.  The Board should 
still be able to provide that if people are available to do that, and if 
providing that help does not cause undue stress on the hardware.

Ec