[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment

[Fae]

I enjoyed Ting's perception, he always seems to have a viewpoint
reliably in the center of the Wikimedia movement.

I previously pushed for a commitment to perpetuity, including a 100
year plan for basic backup. The operational side of our movement
failed to either understand why this is important, or properly to
respond to a relatively simple proposal for a better strategy.

Should an endowment run the risk of establishing a century spanning
immovable bureaucracy, then our shared open knowledge vision, must be
far greater than the English Wikipedia, bigger than Wikipedia, span
wider than any Wikimedia project. These projects have a natural
lifespan of less than a decade, not generations.

Until the movement is ready to lay out a serious vision and strategy
that covers the next 100 years, we are not ready to justify asking
donors for hundreds of millions of dollars to stick in a WMF managed
investment account. This alone would create a potential for
reputational risk so great, it could wipe out the Wikimedia brand, and
our stake in the open knowledge movement, permanently.

Thanks,
Fae
-- 
faewik at gmail.com
Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae