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Milos Rancic wrote:
> If the functionality of the Board is the primary goal of its
> restructuring, here is my scratch for making everybody happy:
>
> Let's say that the Board will have 10 members (as it has).
>
> And we have some rules:
> - There should be 5 directly elected Board members.
> - Board may appoint its members, but it is not preferable.
> - Board needs, for example, 1 treasurer, 1 NGO expert, 1 lawyer, 1
> developer, 1 economist.
> - We had elections and we elected 5 Board members. I would be really
> surprised if we didn't elected at least persons who are qualified for
> being treasurer, NGO expert and developer. But, I am sure that we
> would elect at least one of the needed experts.
> - But, even if we didn't elect any of experts, Jimmy may be treasurer,
> NGO expert or economist.

And Anthere may be developer or lawyer.

Seriously Milos :-)
Have you read http://www.alleyinsider.com/sai25 ?

Cheers


Ant


> - So, we have 4 empty seats. Board should ask chapters to choose four
> needed experts for the Board.
> - If chapters find appropriate persons -- the job is done. If not --
> Board may appoint needed experts.
>
> Benefits of such approach are:
> - Community really have the majority. At least half of the members are elected.
> - Chapters will be represented according to their development level,
> which means that they will be pushed to think about their own
> development.
> - Board will use its possibility to appoint its members only in
> extraordinary circumstances: for Jimmy and for empty seats.
>
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On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 4:09 PM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > - But, even if we didn't elect any of experts, Jimmy may be treasurer,
> > NGO expert or economist.> And Anthere may be developer or lawyer.
>
> Seriously Milos :-)
> Have you read http://www.alleyinsider.com/sai25 ?

:))) I realized the unintentionally ironic part of my words when I
read your email. If I realized that earlier, I would use it
ironically, for sure :)

The sense of that part is that if the Board really doesn't have any
person to cover one position, then some of the existing members of the
Board may be acting person for that position. So, you would be able to
act as an economist (I think that an agricultural engineer learns some
economy). I really hope that things like economic development of WMF
and NGO structure development don't rely on one Board member. And that
if someone is not an expert, they may coordinates such activities
because they are enough introduced in the particular matter.

Also, the Board may make a statement before every election like: "We
need as much experts as it is possible." I am sure that it may
influence some people to vote to someone at least as their second or
third option (which is, according to the election rules, has the same
value as the first option).

Actually, the Wikimedian community is maybe the most able community to
elect an expert as their representative. If something is our
advantage, it is a huge number of clever and educated persons.

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On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 4:09 PM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Have you read http://www.alleyinsider.com/sai25 ?

If we are talking about money, the potential value of Wikimedia is far
more than $7 billions. As an organized cultural movement in the near
future its value will be at the level of one country with 10-20
millions of inhabitants.

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2008/4/29 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:

> If we are talking about money, the potential value of Wikimedia is far
> more than $7 billions. As an organized cultural movement in the near
> future its value will be at the level of one country with 10-20
> millions of inhabitants.


A lot of the problems with the perceived power of the board is that
Wikimedia is, both at once, a loosely-linked group of tens of
thousands of volunteers writing huge and popular websites full of
useful information, but also a small charity with about 10 staff and a
budget of a few million dollars to run a horribly popular website.
People see the first and expect the people in the second to have a
commensurate amount of power. When actually they're just part of the
herd of cats, tagged "chief cat herders" and still trying to work out
what constitutes a tin of tuna in this context.


- d.

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On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 5:11 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/4/29 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
>
>
> > If we are talking about money, the potential value of Wikimedia is far
> > more than $7 billions. As an organized cultural movement in the near
> > future its value will be at the level of one country with 10-20
> > millions of inhabitants.
>
>
> A lot of the problems with the perceived power of the board is that
> Wikimedia is, both at once, a loosely-linked group of tens of
> thousands of volunteers writing huge and popular websites full of
> useful information, but also a small charity with about 10 staff and a
> budget of a few million dollars to run a horribly popular website.
> People see the first and expect the people in the second to have a
> commensurate amount of power. When actually they're just part of the
> herd of cats, tagged "chief cat herders" and still trying to work out
> what constitutes a tin of tuna in this context.

This problem is also related to the positioning of the Board members.
We have an NGO and a global cultural movement. And Board members
should decide are they willing to lead NGO, global cultural movement
or both. There are know-hows for all three options. The worst choice
is the position: I want my NGO and it is very cool to have a global
cultural movement behind my NGO.

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Milos Rancic hett schreven:
> On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 4:09 PM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Have you read http://www.alleyinsider.com/sai25 ?
>>
>
> If we are talking about money, the potential value of Wikimedia is far
> more than $7 billions. As an organized cultural movement in the near
> future its value will be at the level of one country with 10-20
> millions of inhabitants.

If Wikipedia is worth 7 billions at the moment, that would mean, every
article is worth (we hit 10 million articles some time ago) some 700
dollars. Oh my god! If I idiot wouldn't have released my articles under
fucking GFDL and if I instead had sold them on the free market, I could
be a millionaire! I should stop contributing to Wikipedia at once ;-)

And translate it into the country thing: That means I could reign over
my own country with more inhabitants than the Vatican! King Marcus I. of
Buckonia! Nice dreams ;-)

Marcus Buck

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> If Wikipedia is worth 7 billions at the moment, that would mean, every
> article is worth (we hit 10 million articles some time ago) some 700
> dollars.

It doesn't work like that. See [[synergy]]. An encyclopaedia is worth
more than the sum of its articles.

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On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 9:50 PM, Marcus Buck <me@marcusbuck.org> wrote:
> If Wikipedia is worth 7 billions at the moment, that would mean, every
> article is worth (we hit 10 million articles some time ago) some 700
> dollars. Oh my god! If I idiot wouldn't have released my articles under
> fucking GFDL and if I instead had sold them on the free market, I could
> be a millionaire! I should stop contributing to Wikipedia at once ;-)
>
> And translate it into the country thing: That means I could reign over
> my own country with more inhabitants than the Vatican! King Marcus I. of
> Buckonia! Nice dreams ;-)

Thomas told you about a synergy. The other issue is related to the
significance of Wikimedian projects: they are maybe the most important
foundation of this generation of humans to the future generations. And
this is only in the sense of knowledge, without counting any other
aspect of Wikimedia (which are maybe at the same level of
significance).

If things will continue to go *ordinary*, which means that the Board
and the rest of the community don't make big mistakes, which, also,
means that we should do right things from time to time (for example,
organizing community inside of the chapters is one of such right
things), it will mean:

- Through time, more and more people will be willing to give big
donations to the Wikimedia (not only to WMF, but to the chapters and
similar organizations in the future). This is a very important issue
for those (formal) organizations: If someone decides to donate now a
big house to WM Serbia, I am almost sure that WM Serbia wouldn't be
able to accept it (and it seems that the same applies for WM UK);
while WM DE will be able to accept such gift. However, I am sure that
even WMF and all chapters together wouldn't be able to accept such
gift if the house is, let's say, in Brazil, while if it is in Spain we
would need a lot of efforts to take the gift.

- In this moment I am able to go to Zagreb and feel like I am at home
only because I am a Wikimedian. This may be applied for a lot of
Wikimedians at different meridians.

- In a decade or two we will have almost the same number of offices in
different countries as UN has. A visible benefit of having such number
of offices for ordinary Wikimedians is that they will be able to meet
people with whom they share the same values all over the world. But,
more important benefit will be a strong network (in this moment we
have a not so strong network [of contributors]) of people dedicated to
free knowledge based on scientific values (and, unlike existing
scientific networks, our network is not partialized to branches).
Synergy (again) of this network may generate the most important global
cultural movement in the history. (And this is not because other ideas
in the history were not great, but because we have a much better tool
for communication, the Interent, now.)

- And back to the money. If we are talking about long term
consequences (50-100 years), it is not possible to count the value in
money. However, influence of such movement will be not based just at
the fact of owning Wikipedia, but much more based on a number and
quality of people involved in the movement. And in a decade or two it
will be comparable with a country with 10-20 millions of inhabitants.
If everything goes *ordinary*.

- There is one more extremely important issue. There is no other
similar phenomenon in the world. Without Wikimedia we wouldn't have
any grass-roots movement which aims to gather people for their common
interest, not only related to free knowledge. This fact brings to all
of us extremely high responsibility.

(And, btw, from time to time I am really feeling a little bit
frustrated because I have an impression (maybe wrong?) that a lot of
Wikimedians don't see those facts and very predictable future trends,
very obvious to me.)

I realize that it is hard to the Board members to deal with such level
of responsibility when they need to think would they have enough of
money for tickets for Board meeting or so. But, I am sure that the
most of other people who are participating in foundation-l discussions
or just reading our emails -- are ready to help. Transparent work is
sometimes very hard, but this is the only possible way for building
mutual understanding, which is more than necessary if we are willing
to take the responsibility which we achieved by our work.

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David Gerard wrote:
> 2008/4/29 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
>
>> If we are talking about money, the potential value of Wikimedia is far
>> more than $7 billions. As an organized cultural movement in the near
>> future its value will be at the level of one country with 10-20
>> millions of inhabitants.
>
>
> A lot of the problems with the perceived power of the board is that
> Wikimedia is, both at once, a loosely-linked group of tens of
> thousands of volunteers writing huge and popular websites full of
> useful information, but also a small charity with about 10 staff and a
> budget of a few million dollars to run a horribly popular website.
> People see the first and expect the people in the second to have a
> commensurate amount of power. When actually they're just part of the
> herd of cats, tagged "chief cat herders" and still trying to work out
> what constitutes a tin of tuna in this context.
>

that's a good one :-)

Ant


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On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 3:50 PM, Marcus Buck <me@marcusbuck.org> wrote:
> If Wikipedia is worth 7 billions at the moment, that would mean, every
> article is worth (we hit 10 million articles some time ago) some 700
> dollars. Oh my god! If I idiot wouldn't have released my articles under
> fucking GFDL and if I instead had sold them on the free market, I could
> be a millionaire! I should stop contributing to Wikipedia at once ;-)
>
The articles are worth very little, even if they weren't under the
GFDL. The domain name is worth a lot, though not, in my opinion, $7
billion. The $7 billion figure assumes ads could be implemented
without any costs and without traffic going down. I say ads, traffic,
no expenses - pick two. Facebook picked 1 and 2. Wikipedia picked 2
and 3. My websites picked 1 and 3.

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