[Foundation-l] What the board is responsible of (was Re: Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions)

[Marcus Buck]

Florence Devouard hett schreven:
> To be fair, I am *extremely* disturbed by the above statement.
>
> Since when is the board DEFINING the scope and basic rules of the 
> projects ?
>
> As a reminder, the WMF was created two years after Wikipedia. The scope, 
> the basic rules did not need WMF to be crafted. Over the following 
> years, the scope and even the basic rules have evolved, usually for the 
> better. The WMF certainly pushed on some issues, but largely, the rules 
> and scope have been defined by the community.
>
> And this is the way it should be.
>
> You are shifting the role of the WMF in a direction that I find greatly 
> impleasant.
>
> The original reason for creation of WMF was that we needed an owner for 
> our servers, we needed a way to pay the bills. We needed a way to 
> collect money. WMF was here to support the project and to support the 
> community dealing with the project. It was here to safegard our core values.

Thanks for that comment. It gives me hope that there are sane people out 
there ;-) We need people like you back in the board. I too am disturbed 
by the attitude that board and foundation "rule" over the projects. As I 
have expressed previously:
> In my opinion it's not the task of board or foundation to push the 
> community in any direction. It's the other way round, the community 
> forms board and foundation. The task of board and foundation is to 
> operate the servers, to develop the software needed to operate our 
> projects, and to stop members of the community or of the outside world 
> from doing things harmful to the community, e.g. by violating the law. 
> But they should not decide on the actual content, that's the task of 
> the community. 
It's a common misunderstanding/misrepresentation that "governments" rule 
over the "citizens". That was the case in absolutist and feudal systems 
where the power of the rulers came from "I make the rules, cause I can". 
In a democracy the government is just an executive branch of the overall 
society that takes measures to improve the society's welfare.

The Foundation is just the executive branch of the Wikimedia community. 
It's sole purpose is to serve the community by doing tasks that cannot 
possibly evolve from community self-organization.

Marcus Buck
User:Slomox