[Foundation-l] The Foundation is not a wiki (was Re: RfC: Key priorities ...

[GerardM]

Hoi,
What we are talking about is not so much that people who are expert in a
field could not make a valuable contribution on the board of the Wikimedia
Foundation. When notable people are only notable but have little to do with
our projects, our organisation. When a person is "notable" he or she has to
be truly notable on an international scale in order not to find people of
equal stature that are already active within the projects.

Yes, the Wikimedia Foundation is about education, free culture but that is
not what the Wikimedia Foundation is limited to. It is also about free
content, internationalisation, delivery of content, technology. It is not
obvious at all what makes for enough "notability" to offset an obvious
interest in the Wikimedia Foundation. I also wonder what type of
organisation these people represent. An organisation like iEARN has an
important similarity with the WMF; it is about education and
internationalisation, it has a grassroots type of aproach like the WMF. You
could also consider the OLPC project; it has both an educational,
international and technological aspect, they are going to reuse Wikipedia
content. My point here is that choosing "notables" over partners may have
not been considered but it adds true values by increasing the community.

When we are to include specific people, they have to have a name recognition
that is not limited to an "in crowd", the person has to have international
recognition and the added value of the person will have to be more about
what he or she will mean in the future for our organisation and less about
what he or she has done in the past.

You mention Larry Lessig, my understanding is that he is about a single
issue. An issue that does not make him the "obvious' candidate, and given
the extend to which this issue is personified I could suggest that it is
easily politicized. I would prefer to have a representation of an
organisation over an individual as organisations add more value in the end
than single people do.

When we would like people like Kofi Anan on our board, we ask them they
would not ask us to become part of our board. I think that would be obvious.

NB fyi nothing wrong with Larry Lessig, it is just that you picked him out
as an example.

Thanks,
     Gerard

On 9/25/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
>
> In a message dated 9/25/2006 4:08:04 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> gerard.meijssen at gmail.com writes:
>
> The  Wikimedia Foundation is NOT Wikipedia. Boardmembers should have an
> obvious  interest in what we do. Being notable does not qualify people. If
> you want  someone notable, ask Kofi Anan to become a board member when his
> tenure as  the secretary general of the United Nations has ended. This is
> what I call  notable; notability as an IT person is not what I would think
> qualifies a  person as a board member of the Wikimedia  Foundation.
>
>
>
>
> No one is suggesting that notability is the sole criteria. However, we
> are  a
> project devoted to education, so bring in educators, we are a project
> devoted
> to free culture, so bring in people who are at the forefront of the free
> content  movement. And yes, we are a project devoted to reaching out to
> the
> developing  world, so bring in people with experience in that world. Larry
> Lessig
> or other  people like seem like a good idea. And if someone of the stature
> of
> Kofi  Anan asked if he could help Wikipedia by serving on its board, we
> should
> be  grateful.
>
> Danny
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