[Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia Brasil + WMF

[Christophe Henner]

Hi,  sorry for top posting.

A quick historical note, really early on some chapters had a WMF representative with a lot of power. We moved from that next to a lawyer recommandation as it created legal links between WMF and chapters hence increasing the legal risks for all the organizations and the safety/sustainability of the whole movement.

If the issue is communication between WMF and chapters there used to be a position at the foundation dedicated to this very purpose, the chapter coordinator. Perhaps it is time to revive this position.

Christophe
Envoye depuis mon Blackberry

-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia-inc.com>
Sender: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:37:42 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List<foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia Brasil + WMF

On 8/28/11 1:00 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> I think that developing such a legal entity should be a high priority
> for Brazilian Wikipedians to ensure that Wiki activities in Brazil are
> controlled by Brazilians. At the same time I don't think there is any
> value to having a WMF appointee on your board; such a person would find
> it difficult to function under circumstances of perpetual conflict of
> interest.  No other chapter has such a clause.

I had never thought of this before, but now that it has been mentioned, 
I just wanted to disagree, quite respectfully because Ray is awesome of 
course, and say that I think it is a very interesting idea to have a WMF 
appointee on the boards of chapters.

There should be very few cases where there is a "conflict of interest" 
since chapters and the Foundation are deeply tied together always (and 
that's a good thing).  I think having a Foundation representative on the 
board of chapters does present some possibly insurmountable logistical 
issues (who will they be?) but I actually think such an arrangement 
might be incredibly valuable for improving communication and 
*decreasing* perceived conflicts of interest.

--Jimbo


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