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

[Michael R. Irwin]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 6/13/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
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>What makes you think that the project 'manage themselves'?  As far as
>I can tell many of the projects substantially mismanage themselves.
>Most of the wikipedias, for example, are loaded with inaccurate and
>potentially libelous material and the projects have thus far
>formulated no systematic solution to addressing such quality issues.
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Forgive my unclarity.  I assumed we were talking about how to achieve 
healthy projects and project teams that do self organize and manage 
themselves.   According to my training, experience, and literature, 
external top down management rarely achieves high efficiency or 
reliability in complex information projects.   Seems to work ok on the 
greenchain unless you irritate the senior union personel present.

>Many people work on our projects, but virtually all of them work
>exclusively on what they consider 'fun' and in this manner many things
>are accomplished. However, there are many important things which
>almost no one considers 'fun', and these things end up neglected as a
>result.   Worse we seem to have this misconception embedded in our
>culture that this sort of extreme disorder with its inherent flaws is
>a fundamental aspect of all volunteer organizations. I wonder how many
>Wikipedians have ever volenteered before, certantly not many!
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It is hard to say.   Perhaps we should request the Wikiversity research 
net to take a survey for us.  My personal experience is that after being 
abused for attempting to help out with what I know how to do and with 
which I have applicable professional experience I am only a casual 
contributor to Wikipedia in the course of personal research.  Typos, 
citations, stray facts, excellent external links, etc.

I have been eagerly awaiting Wikiversity for about three years now as it 
was an obvious synergistic project.   I would be curious as to what the 
real holdup is with it.   Are we afraid of hardware or bandwidth 
limitations?  Are a bunch of self motivated learners to potentially 
radical and threatening to the status quo?

You are welcome to ignore my posts if you find them too lengthy.

regards,
lazyquasar