[Foundation-l] VC - alternative resolution

[Milos Rancic]

On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>  The short answer is you are. The longer answer is that things are about
>  priorities. For me language and localisation is a priority. For you the
>  introduction of scientists is a priority. For others it is responding to
>  mail. Both you and me do what we can and we might be able to do more
>  effectively. The operative word is DO. We DO what we can.

While I understand what are you talking about, I need to say that it
is not my responsibility because it is not my priority :) While I have
some priorities in my Wikimedian activities (making a higher level of
automation and development of communities around the projects), I am
doing a lot of things which I may do because of my position somewhere.
So, if I did something which is out of the scope of my priorities, I
expect to find someone who is willing to take it (even as a scratch of
the project). However, there is no such place, except to write it on
the list or on the wiki and leave it as is.

>  When you think SUL has been implemented, you are largely right and largely
>  wrong because it has only been implemented for admins. For me it is a
>  godsend. I have been active on several new projects since and it has saved
>  me a lot of time. For others it has not been implemented and one of the
>  reasons is that there is no group of people willing or able to get involved
>  into the enormous amount of admin that will be the result. If anything there
>  is a need for people to DO things. When a council will take responisibility
>  and coordinate the needs for such activities, it will be a good thing. When
>  the council tells others what to do it will be an unmitigated disaster.

I think that you didn't take enough care about the my position which
is very clear: VC members should be *delegates* of communities' will
and persons who are working on a particular issues inside of the
working groups. According to my concept, they shouldn't be able to
decide anything related to the global policies. Contributors from the
projects should do that.

>  When you observe that nobody is responsible, you are right up to a point.
>  The board is primarily involved in overseeing the WMF ORGANISATION. It has
>  always done a minimal job interfering in the projects. If a council is to do
>  what needs doing for the projects, absolutely, great idea, when will you
>  start. When the council coordinates the needs of the projects with the
>  organisation, with the board it will be good. The fun thing is, it does not
>  need any of the formal powers and capacitites of the board to do that. It
>  only needs to DO this thing in a credible way.

I said a number of times that I am not participating in this issue
because of legal issues, but because of community issues. I understand
and support need for transparency, but I don't think that we urgently
need a body which would supervise the Board, but the body which would
take care about community issues.

>  To answer your last question. YES all WMF projects have something more in
>  common. They are all to make information / knowledge available to all the
>  people of the world.

Then, I would ask you what do the Wikimedian projects have more in
common than a particular one compared to a random free knowledge
institution (of course, out of purely technical issues like interwiki
links and servers are)?