[Foundation-l] Hiring of Interim Executive Director and Legal Counsel

[Delphine Ménard]

On 6/15/06, Erik Zachte <erikzachte at infodisiac.com> wrote:
> > On 6/14/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 6/13/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > I agree completely.  I resist very strongly any separation of
> foundation
> > > > and community.
> > >
> > > How about a different point of view? Separated in concept, but united
> > > in practice. I am aware it sounds very inclining to a certain cultural
> > > background, but still daresay this idea itself can be applied to many
> > > cases, specially we need to cooperate with each other.
> > >
> > > Separation itself is nothing wrong. Separation without communication
> > > nor collaboration is bad, or useless at best, assuredly.
> > >
> > > If there is no separation, we require never two words or concepts: in
> > > practice the community isn't involved into a certain matter which the
> > > foundation cares for, and vice versa, I assume. If that sounds too
> > > metaphisical or awkward, we might need another terminology, like
> > distinction, instead of separation.
> >
> > Delphine:
> > Thank you for that. This is exactly what I think we should tend towards.
>
> 'Separated in concept, united in practice'.
> It would have been a great subtitle for an Alexander Dumas novel. ;)
> Aphaia or Delphine can one of you explain what this means?

To make a long story short, as I see it (and as I have made clear in
an earlier post) the Foundation should *not* be ruled byt he
community, no more than the community should be ruled by the
Foundation. Separation as Aphaia put it and to which I agreed means
that those from the community who wish to participate in the
organisation are more than welcome, but that the community does not
have the high hand on things it cannot be held responsible for. I said
it earlier and I'll say it again, a great editor in any of the
Wikimedia projects does *not* make a great board member/commity
member/CEO/accountant, you name it. And the trend as I see it today is
that people in the community judge by what they can see. And if the
community is not involved in Foundation day-to-day business, they only
see how many edits a person has. Not what their real skills are.

Delphine

PS. Erik, if you could *please* stop breaking the threads, it would be
much appreciated.

-- 
~notafish