[Wikipedia-l] Re: Stop for a moment, please

[Michael Snow]

Ulrich Fuchs wrote:

>Wikimedia, on the other hand, would be the organization that actually *is the 
>project* (not the service). That organization needs to be
>*   democratically organized
>*   global
>*   bound now and for all future to the common goal of creating free content 
>without paying authors or officials; however we must consider that there 
>might be a need in the future to have employees, if the project get's Big 
>with a capital B.
>*   allowing a country substructure for better fundraising and representation
>*   allowing a project substructure for setting project policies and 
>representation (these are two different things, it might be a necessary to 
>speak for the *german language Wikipedia* at one time and for the *german 
>Wikimedians" at another time
>*   organized in a way that these local chapters and subproject chapters form 
>the organization bottom up and not top down.
>  
>
Currently, Wikimedia (the umbrella for the Wikipedia and other projects) 
is organized based on consensus, if you ignore the largely unused 
dictatorial powers. Consensus is not the same thing as democracy.

Wikimedia is already global. The various substructures are not fully 
developed yet, but they will be. We barely have the scaffolding of the 
superstructure itself at this point, with a not-fully-constituted Board. 
The rest will take a little time - consensus always takes time.

Wikimedia is bound to free content by the GFDL. The freedom is more 
important than the principle of democracy (which will be generally 
respected through the consensus process anyway, since so many of us 
believe in democratic government in some fashion).

I'm not sure if paying skilled authors for content is fundamentally 
objectionable, but the model suggests that it's unnecessary anyway. 
Other employees, including officials, might need to be paid for their 
services. The "Service Provider" would also be an employee in this sense.

I do agree that we need to consider how to ensure effective 
representation of different languages in the Wikimedia organization. 
Certainly the Board should not always consist only of English-speakers. 
Because of this issue, it seems that Wikimedia may eventually need to 
pay for some translation services. For now, perhaps bilingual members 
could bridge the gap.

--Michael Snow