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

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 6/14/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> >Again, I would also like to remind you that wikipedia.org is
> >wikipedia.ORG today. We take this for granted today, but it was by no
> >means a guaranteed outcome, especially for a project created by an Ayn
> >Rand objectivist. ;-) I would even go so far to say that Wikipedia
> >could be _very_ successful (not as successful as it is, but still)
> >while being proprietary. And it could have made Jimmy _lots_ of money.
> >Instead he put a lot of his own money into Nupedia and Wikipedia, and
> >is unlikely to get much, if any, of it back. As often as I may
> >disagree with him, it is absurd to assume greed as a factor in his
> >principal actions. If Jimmy wanted to be "filthy rich" (rather than
> >independently wealthy), he would already _be_ filthy rich, and
> >Wikipedia would be Wikipedia.COM.
> >
> >
> I think you are dreaming.  The dot.com changed to dot.org after some
> serious business planning got started by a few members of the
> "community" at large and with some steady pressure from other long time
> valued contributors.   A potential threat emerged to Jimbo's iron fisted
> control via paying the bills for the bandwidth and servers and he moved
> quickly to quash it via unilateral organization of the non profit and
> design of the charter for retained long term god-king status, or if
> assume good faith this was merely coincidental timing.
>
A scan of the wikipedia-l list shows that the idea for turning
Wikipedia into a non-profit was in the works for a very long time,
almost from day one, though it was initially alluded to more as if it
were going to be a private foundation rather than a public charity.

I remember thinking that I'd believe it when I saw it.  Then I saw it,
and now I believe it.  From all the evidence I've seen Jimbo doesn't
seem to be greedy when it comes to money.  Of course I've heard him
say before that he isn't doing it out of altruism, so I do wonder what
his real motive is.

> If wikipedia.com had not previously embraced the FDL and then made some
> committments regarding advertisement free long term free access it might
> very well gone the way of Nupedia.   Jimbo kept his options open as long
> as possible and then moved like a good entrepreneur to succeed and
> salvage what value he could.  The fame, honorariums, and name
> recognition might yet make him a fortune or at least a high salary or
> return via Wikia, speaking engagements, or executive level consulting
> but probably not until he "over delivers" on some fairly lofty
> advertised goals.
>
It's certainly possible.  In fact, I think Jimbo could fairly easily
turn his fame into money, if that's what he desires.  To quote Citizen
Kane, "it's no trick to make a lot of money... if what you want to do
is make a lot of money."  I think that goes doubly so for someone in
the position of Wales.

> Perhaps he has already "over delivered" adequately.  Perhaps not.  There
> seem to be a lot of people on this list making valid points regarding
> the maintenance or improvement of the overall quality of the aggregate
> data you folks currently have in Wikipedia.   It appears to be steadily
> improving to me, but I do not do any systematic sampling.  Most of the
> stuff I am interested in for research background is fairly concrete data
> and well frequented.
>
> >That is not to say that there aren't conflicts of interest. Certainly
> >Jimmy wants to make Wikia succeed, and it is important for the
> >organization to be set up and run in such a way that people associated
> >with Wikia (Michael, Angela and Jimmy) can (yes, _can_) recuse
> >themselves when there is an obvious COI. The fact that 3 out of 5
> >Board members are associated with a for-profit that stands to benefit
> >from certain actions of the non-profit they lead does of course lend a
> >lot of weight to arguments for a larger and more diverse Board, and
> >more community involvement in the executive body. But these arguments
> >should be made under the full assumption of good faith of everyone
> >involved.
> >
> >
> We assume good faith by policy but start to decide on an individual or
> community basis that people are trolls or undesirable after a certain time.
>
>  It is ludicrous to set up a board that in the longterm needs to recuse
> up to four fifths of its membership regarding much of its
> responsibility.   You are welcome to assume good faith as long as you
> like.   This is an amateurish setup that should never have been
> established when dealing with publicly donated funds.  It should be
> fixed as soon as feasible with some style and grace.  The current board
> could establish some appropriate useful policy for future board members
> regarding conflicts of interest and independence whether elected or
> appointed and then the people with conflicts should ease themselves off
> the board at completion of their terms or divest their conflicting
> investments.   Everybody gets their ticket punched so they can put on
> their resume they were Founding Board Members or Trustees of the
> prestigious Wikimedia Foundation and the conflicts go away in the next
> round of elections or appointments.  It may not be much for their hard
> work on our behalf but at least it some recognition for their efforts.
>
I certainly agree that the situation looks bad, and really it seems
inevitable that if there haven't been actual problems that there will
be ones in the future.  Then again, Wikia and Wikimedia have both
moved toward decentralizing day-to-day decisionmaking, by hiring a
CEO.  Hopefully this means the potential number of conflicts of
interest will go down.

I'd like to see Wikimedia become much more open.  This involves having
more board members, and more diverse board members, but it also
involves having a definite membership with a real voice in the whole
process.  Currently it's still up in the air whether or not Wikimedia
even has any members that aren't on the board.

Things have been gradually getting better, though.  The original
"stacked" board seems to be capable of independent thought after all,
and there's talk (which seems to be legitimate) about expanding it
even further.  A CEO has been selected to decentralize the day-to-day
operations.  The finances are being audited by an outside third party,
which hopefully will catch any grey-area or outright illegal use of
funds.  And the foundation is slowly moving out of the first stage of
denial with regard to the fact that it has no legal members.

Anthony