[Foundation-l] Relocation announcement

[Anthony]

On 9/22/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The issue is that we both benefit from staying separate from an
> organization point of view, both from fiscal perspective and from a
> communication perspective
>
> Fiscal: *this* belongs to this organization, *that* belongs to that
> organization. From an auditing perspective, having to identify who
> bought the staples is a nightmare (and more seriously, on whether some
> inappropriate arrangements are occuring between two organizations).
>
I wasn't suggesting that they share the exact same office space.
Separate units and everything, of course.  Inappropriate arrangements
can occur regardless of whether you're literally next door or a few
miles away.

> Communication: we spent the entire past year trying to make it clear
> that the two organizations were unrelated. It is not to our benefit to
> be confused with Wikia.
>
Certainly not.  But I don't see how them donating office space would
cause any more of such confusion.

> >> We have gone through great efforts to fully separate from them
> >> and we now have no more financial/legal/technical relationships. Only
> >> love relationships, which is just fine.
> >>
> > Well, there still a lot of person-overlap, between the board, the
> > advisory board, employees, arb com, etc.  And there's still the whole
> > interwiki linking mess.  And now, they're gonna be in the same
> > metropolitan area (which surely will help with the whole
> > people-overlap part).
>
> Whilst there are two overlaps on the board (with all due COI
> documentation, and lack of vote in cases of conflicts), I do not know of
> any overlap within the staff (can you cite a name ?). I see not why
> Angela being on the advboard implies that there is a relationship.
> Last, whether there are people both working at Wikia and at the arbcom
> is completely irrelevant to the Foundation itself.
>
The foundation doesn't care about the arbcom?  That seems...really wrong.

> As I said earlier, the days of Michael on the board are counted. He does
> not have time for this role any more, so this will no more be an issue.
> Jimbo... though at Wikia... is hardly in SF himself. Besides, I see no
> reason why he would go to the office on a regular basis. That's not his
> role any more. In short, there is no reason for an overlap.
> And I would not be in favor of ANY overlap for the reasons above
> mentionned.
>
What do you mean by that?  You'd prefer for Jimbo to resign from one
or the other organization?  If so, yeah, that'd be a good start.
Combined with Michael's resignation and removal of Wikia from the
interwiki link table (or at least from the special nofollow
treatment), and then maybe a statement that there are no relationships
between Wikia and the WMF could be taken seriously (I don't know for
sure, but maybe).  But as of now, it's just not a serious statement.

> > At least this "relationship" would be to the benefit of the WMF.
>
> I disagree with that statement.
>
It seems you were confused as to what I was suggesting, though.  If it
was just two offices next door to each other, would it be OK?  I think
it would be, but maybe you're right that it wouldn't.