[WikiEN-l] NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 2:34 PM, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
> The only people in the WMF projects I regularly participate in who are
> formally recognized as leaders are the WMF trustees.  I would love to see
> them being more public in sharing their opinions, their observations and
> their experiences; they have the opportunity to see things from a very
> different and much broader perspective than those of us at ground level. I
> am sure that HaeB would be happy to find a place on Signpost for a monthy
> "Discussion with a Trustee" that could then be flipped over to Translatewiki
> or wherever to share with multiple other projects.

Not a bad idea, I'll mention it to the rest of the Board.

Note that I think sometimes board members hesitate to speak up on
various topics because of the danger of one's personal opinion being
taken as an Official Board Position or Official Foundation Policy.
(Even when one knows better this is an easy distinction to blur).
Opinions are as diverse and numerous among the board as they are among
any group of thoughtful and experienced Wikimedians, but when the
board has an official position on something of course we speak as a
body.

As for Marc's question about project governance, Fred has it right;
projects are run by their communities. The Wikimedia Foundation, which
provides infrastructure support to those projects, is run by Sue and
her team, with ultimate responsibility for the Foundation (legal and
fiduciary) in the hands of the WMF Board of Trustees. The board
concerns itself with Foundation-level and global questions, not with
project-level issues. However, of course there are global questions
that affect all of the projects. In practice the board only makes
official statements about a limited number of things; you can see the
resolutions that the board has issued here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions.

best,
phoebe (trustee 2010-2012)