[Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: The elections are on, but I cast a blank ballot!

[Erik Moeller]

Hello Craig,

> But I do have an opinion.  The positions of all the candidates seem to be
> essentially identical, "we love Wikipedia and NPOV". 

I don't think that's accurate at all, but even if you do think that, you 
should look at the track record of our current trustees to get an idea 
what their future actions are likely to be. To wit:

 > topics of copyright

A new, semi-private mailing list, juriwiki-l, was created to discuss and 
resolve these issues as they occur, in collaboration with legal 
specialists. Angela and Anthere also use the Wikimedia e-mail ticketing 
system, OTRS, to respond to copyright inquiries. Indeed, from what I 
know, I would say that the Board is spending a great amount of time to 
deal even with the silliest complaints and threats.

There have been discussions with the FSF and Creative Commons to improve 
the GFDL, but moving this forward is not just up to the Board.

Copyright, in my opinion, is such a large issue that the community needs 
to be highly involved in forming policy. The Board has allowed this to 
happen on the Commons, on Wikinews, with the ESA licensing effort, in 
the different language communities, etc., while generally keeping a 
watchful eye on what is going on, even in languages they do not speak, 
relying on trusted individuals to relay information.

 > promotion

The Board has tried to energize promotion efforts by establishing a logo 
and trademark policy. Local promotion efforts are up to individual 
chapters where they do exist. The Board has helped with official press 
releases, a newsletter (the Wikimedia Quarto), and the Foundation 
website. It has also appointed a press officer (Elian).

Given our limited budget and our natural growth, I think it would be 
unwise to allocate a significant amount of resources to promotion at 
this point. Instead, the Board should continue to do what it has done in 
the past: encourage the community to design and distribute promotional 
materials.

 > hardware

A hardware officer advises the Board on what machines to purchase. This 
has so far worked very well. The successful cooperations with Kennisnet 
and Yahoo! and the negotiations with Google were coordinated by the 
Board, and I think it has played exactly the role it should: 
Establishing partnerships while leaving the implementation details to 
qualified individuals. Wikimedia is probably also the only major 
non-profit whose President (Jimbo) not only looks over every hardware 
order, but who also installs the machines and makes sure they are working.

There are at any given time secret, confidential discussions underway, 
some of which fail because of unacceptable demands from would-be sponsors.

 > or managing growth.

The fundraising efforts, hiring of Brion and Chad, appointment of a CTO, 
CRO and Hardware Officer, partnerships, attempts to build spare 
capacity, efforts to eliminate points of failure, and so forth, have all 
served this goal. I would indeed say that the Board has made this one of 
its key activities, and that this has been possible at all on the budget 
we're operating on (while similarly large websites employ a staff of 
hundreds) is a testament to Wikimedia's efficiency.

 >  The candidates all propose to increase community input to the
 > board, but don't say exactly how they will do this.

Both Angela and Anthere have generally tried to listen and to fully 
document what the Board is doing. The various surveys such as
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda/Open_questions
and
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser
are good examples of this. As Chief Research Officer, I also see it as 
my role to communicate technical needs from the community to the Board.

You have had a lot of time to ask the candidates questions already, and 
you can continue to do so. I think engaging in dialogue is a much more 
constructive use of your time than a blank "protest vote." I find it 
somewhat saddening that we have so few candidates this year, but it is 
also an expression of respect for the work Angela, Anthere and Jimbo 
have done -- for no pay, and indeed, often investing their own money in 
phone calls and travel. The Board is not above criticism, but given the 
exceptional job it has done so far, such criticism should be well-founded.

Best,

Erik