[Foundation-l] [Announcement] update in board of trustees membership

[Nathan Awrich]

In the interests of not letting this thread die:

I'd suggest that Wikimedia look at similar (as close as possible)
foundations in the United States, and possibly elsewhere as well, for
ideas on how to move forward. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel
when you have a design that works - Wikimedia adopted a fairly
conventional structure for its board, and it should continue to rely
on governance concepts that have been proven. Organizations like
Mozilla, EPIC, EFF, the ACLU and others might be targets not only for
adapting their governance style but also for attracting outside
members of the Wikimedia Board of Trustees. Additionally, you could
investigate recruiting Board members from academic and encyclopedic
organizations with similar missions.

A sensible structure has to be one that values expertise and maintains
the centrality of the Wikimedia community, as well as represents the
interests of chapters outside en.wiki. I think you could achieve this
simply by expanding the board and assigning decision making authority
to different committees - i.e. audit, governance, executive,
financial. I think this is a fairly standard Board design, and I'd be
interested to see proposals from Mike Godwin on this topic (assuming
he has experience in the field of non-profit management aside from
Wikimedia).

Nathan

On Dec 17, 2007 10:54 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 17/12/2007, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
>
> > How is that Wikipedia movie going, by the way?
>
>
> http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page_%28movie%29
>
>
> - d.
>
>
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