[Foundation-l] The foundations of the Wikimedia Foundation (was: Wikimedia Council)

[effe iets anders]

2008/1/5, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>:
>
> I can immediately say that I should not have used the term parliament,
> because it clearly represent different things for people :-)
>
> In my country, which is a democratic state amha, the Parliament
> absolutely NOT hires and fires government. God forbid !
> The Government is headed by the president. The president is elected by
> the citizen, by direct voting system. Once the president is elected, he
> select his government. And the president can also fire and replace the
> entire government. That's his job. The Parliament has nothing to say here.
>
I should have nuanced my wordings too I guess :)

> The Parliament is also elected by citizens, by direct voting.
>
> It may happen that the majority of the Parliament is on the right side.
> Whilst the President is on the left side.
>
> I have no idea really what is the final authority in my country.
> Certainly NOT the Parliament. I would say the Cour Constitionnelle.
> Perhaps. In the USA, the Suprem Court ?
>
I think we might have a different idea of Final Authority. With me,
the Final Authority is the one that can rebuild the whole thing from
scratch without needing the cooperation of other bodies. I think that
the parliament can do this, if with a broad majority maybe, by
rewriting laws etc. But I am not enough introduced apperently to the
French constitution, so let's leave it here. The main point is not the
comparison, but the idea behind it and the relationships within the
Foundation.

> Whatever.
> I think you are hitting this point because you do not give enough
> granularity to the various roles we are considering. Right now, I do not
> consider the board a final authority in everything. Sure enough, it has
> probably the final authority in deciding whether to vote the budget of
> the organization or not. But the WMF board has no final authority to
> approve the budget of Wikimedia Deutschland. And the WMF board has no
> final authority to decide whether an article should be in that version
> or in another, unless it is threatened legally (host provider
> responsibility). It has no special authority to decide whether a bugger
> should be banned or not. It has no final authority to decide a person
> should be made sysop or not. It has no final authority when the
> community decides to have a wikimeet or to hold a wiki contest for the
> best article.
>
I do not count Wikimedia Germany as part of the Wikimedia Foundation.
It is a seperate organization, and as such it has it's own Final
Authority. The German General Assemblee. I think that the Wikimedia
Foundation does have a Final Authority over the projects, but that is
very limited. as you indicated. But if the judge would have to decide,
it would have to be the Foundation to make sure, it gets done. Either
through OFFICE actions, either by pulling the switch in Tampa. And at
the end, it is the Board of Trustees, who pulls the wires, the Board
can set out policies for the projects as well to which they have to
behave themselves. But please note the difference between the Final
Authority (which makes mainly the large decisions) and the "local"
authority. But the communities make the whole picture very
complicated, because in the end, the communities currently elect the
majority of the Board, so we could name them too as Final Authority
etc. I prefer to look here at the Wikimedia Foundation as
"organization" with it's official bodies (currently Board, Advisory
Board, ED, Staff, Committees, Officers).

> For your proposition below, I'll give it a couple of days of thinking.
>
> Ant
>

BR, Lodewijk