[Foundation-l] Case Study: Fan History’s Proposal For Being Acquired by the WMF

[Tomasz Ganicz]

2009/12/20 Laura Hale <laura at fanhistory.com>:
> This was posted to the Strategy wiki but I don't think I ever mentioned it
> on list.  The case study itself can be found at
> http://www.fanhistory.com/FHproposal.pdf .  The blog entry about the case
> study can be found at http://blog.fanhistory.com/?p=1103 .
>

I think the study shows the old problems, which mainly comes from
Wikimedia/Wikipedia history.

Meta wiki was first created as a place for meta-cross-project
discussions including strategy planning as well. Then there was an
assumption (IMHO false) that there is some sort of
meta-cross-language-cross-projects-community which is allowed to make
vital decisions by the system of consensus process mixed with voting
system.It was soon found silly and many decisions were moved to
Wikimedia committees that theoretically were created just as
"advisory bodies" for Wikimedia Board of Trustees, but in fact the
advice given by the committees was usually accepted by the Board. Than
- when the process of increase of power and size of Foundation's
office started many vital decisions were transferred to the office
from the Board of Trustees, which only is expected to lead the general
Wikimedia Foundation direction and do not interfere with everyday
single issue decision making process. Therefore we have now a kind of
power structure which looks like a square. On one corner (the most
powerful a the moment IMHO) - we have an Office with paid staff, on
the other we have a Board of Trustees, on the third there are a set of
existing committees, and on the fourth there is use to be
meta-cross-language-cross-projects-community and no one knows who
really have a decision power in this or another issue, so if
potentially difficult decision is about to be made all corners of the
square are just playing some sort of table tennis just hitting a ball
with rackets back and forth to each other on a table untill the ball
is broken or end up forgotten in the net or on the floor :-)


-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html