[Foundation-l] Would you consider being on the Board?

[Brion Vibber]

Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> What can the board and management (whatever its structure) *do* that will be better?
>>  
>>
> There were some other posts that had some interesting ideas so I will be 
> concise and off the cuff.
> 
> The Board and Management could acknowledge that the Projects manage 
> themselves according to approved procedures and core values and focus on 
> delivering a robust, adequate infrastructure.  If a problem is 
> identified  the Board or manager  should  have a project point of 
> contact .... say a project mailing list ????   where they can go to  
> request appropriate attention.
> 
> By placing the burden on the Board, management, and/or employees to come 
> convince consensus driven, roughly democratic groups of interested 
> volunteers there is a problem to be resolved our project leadership, 
> local expertise, and community structures would regain some relevance.
> 
> The Board could respond in a timely manner to project proposals and 
> other activities requested from the communities of volunteers.    The 
> easiest way to kill any initiative in any organization is to simply keep 
> iteratively requesting unjustifed rework.   Wikiversity is basically 
> defunct via this technique.
> 
> Any decent secretary or executive assistant could set up a suspense 
> prioritized action queue and coordinate emails between the Board members 
> so that any given activity that was accepted for action by the Board 
> goes back out with a decision within a reasonable period of time.   Say 
> a month.  This assumes that communications procedures are nailed down 
> and followed by the Board Members.

This all sounds great.

>> What are examples of things a hypothetically ideal management would do *right*
>> that the present management is not?
>>  
>>
> Eliminate uncertainty by making decisions in accordance with due 
> process.   Notice this requires some due process to be defined.   
> Wikiversity has been blindsided repeatedly after it tackled new 
> requirements levied by the Board.  Nobody likes to play rigged games 
> where others can change the rules arbitrarily.

Sounds great too.

>> I suspect this would be a much more productive discussion than constantly
>> claiming the board is "stacked" -- which of course it is, intentionally and
>> openly so. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that; this isn't a
>> democracy, it's a business (even if a non-profit one) and the board's job is not
>> to represent the users, it's to ensure that the company implements its goals (as
>> stated in the bylaws).
>>
> I disagree.   It is predominantly a participatory informal 
> "democracy/committee" process in the projects and the volunteers in many 
> cases are voting with their feet and manhours.

I disagree with your disagreement here. ;)

The *projects* are participatory informal "democracy/committee" process, but The
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is not.

It sounds to me like one of the chief issues is identifying the boundary between
management of the projects and management of the company. Would you agree with
this? If not, how would you describe the issue?

> What would be a redefinition of our concepts of customers and 
> suppliers.   The projects are the Wikimedia Foundation's customers who 
> create the information the Foundation wishes to be delivered worldwide 
> to other customers/users.   Yet the projects are treated as property 
> which can be controlled by Board.  

Bingo.

> The Foundation needs to manage the infrastructure and let the projects 
> manage themselves.

Bingo.

> Unstacking the Board would immediately solve many problems at the 
> strategic organizational level.  It would restore credibility to the 
> Board with some factions while reassuring the projects that there was 
> truly an entity that could restrain Jimbo from running amok on Wikibooks.

How is Jimbo's historical and ongoing status as default big cheese for all
projects related to the composition of the board? (This is not a rhetorical
question.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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