[Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member

[James Salsman]

Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote:
>...
> if you have questions that you think we should ask: feel free to suggest them here :)

I have these ten questions:

1. What do you think a reasonable goal for the growth of the Wikimedia
Education Program over the next five years is?

2. Do you believe that the Foundation should establish an endowment?
If so, how large do you think such an endowment should be; in
particular, should the Foundation establish an endowment large enough
to subsist at present staffing levels and growth rates from current
investment grade bond interest rates without accepting additional
donations? If so, over how many years do you think it would be most
appropriate to establish such an endowment?

3. How often do you think the Foundation should propose advocacy
actions to the community? Do you believe the Foundation should survey
the opinion of the community and donors on this question?

4. Should the Foundation meet or exceed Silicon Valley competitive pay
to attract and retain the best talent while competing with firms able
to offer equity participation? Do you believe the Foundation should
survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? Why
or why not?

5. Should the Foundation establish a system of awarding employee
bonuses in amounts determined by anonymous peer evaluations? Why or
why not?

6. Some proportion of long term project editors are impoverished,
probably within a few percentage points of the impoverished proportion
of the population as a whole. How do you think the Foundation could
best assist impoverished long term volunteers? Do you think it should?
Why or why not?

7. To what extent do you believe the Foundation should reimburse
travel and content development expenses for Wikinews contributors? In
particular, if you were to propose a pilot grant program to grant
travel and expense funds directly to individual Wikinews reporters,
how many such awards would you begin with and how would you measure
their effectiveness?

8. PeerWise is a popular closed-source assessment question and answer
database (http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/) used in hundreds of
higher education institutions. Unlike textbooks, traditional courses,
MOOCs, and Moodle-style courses, PeerWise question databases can and
often are populated entirely by learners, with answers reviewed in a
style very similar to wiki content. Do you believe it would be
appropriate for the Foundation to develop an open source version of
PeerWise? Why or why not?

9. Do you believe the Foundation should employ professional fact
checkers who would not edit reader-facing content on the projects, but
who would be available to research questions pertaining to content
disputes at the request of projects' dispute resolution volunteers
(e.g. Wikipedia mediators) to prepare reports to help volunteers
resolve content disputes? Why or why not? Do you believe the
Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on
this question?

10. What is your experience with editing or otherwise supporting
Foundation projects?

Sincerely,
James Salsman