[Foundation-l] Volunteer Council - A shot for a resolution

Robert Horning robert_horning at netzero.net
Mon Mar 17 03:11:01 UTC 2008


Thomas Dalton wrote:
> On 16/03/2008, Geoffrey Plourde <geo.plrd at yahoo.com> wrote:
>   
>> The Board is accountable. If they really screwed up, you know what would happen? Somebody would lead an exodus of most of the editors and start a new Foundation. An army without soldiers can not fight.
>>     
>
> That only applies in really extreme cases. If they only mildly screw
> up, there isn't all that much we can do about it beyond wait for the
> next elections and hope the new members can change things a little.
>
>   

Something of this order of magnitude did happen... at least with the 
Spanish Wikipedia community.  It is now just a historical note, but even 
a major fork of the community... especially something that transcended 
multiple projects/languages would be a huge deal.  I've been involved in 
one of those calls in the past, where I did my level headed best to try 
and keep the community together, but it wasn't easy nor did it win me 
any friends.

I don't know what would lead such a massive exodus, but to presume it 
will never happen regardless of what the board will do is short 
sighted.  I will concur, however, that it would have to be a pretty 
major screwup with no apparent resolution through "official" channels.  
This is also the ultimate weapon that the "community" holds over the 
foundation.

Ultimately, the WMF doesn't "own" the content on the Wikimedia servers, 
and that is the real issue here.

-- Robert Horning



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