Mailing List Archive

Delirium wrote:
> I disagree with that. We have a huge body of people, and we're open to
> anybody who wants to join---there's no membership criterion except
> showing up (I'm not arguing for a "minimum 20,000 edits" or something).
> Excluding people who have deliberately chosen *not* to help us with our
> mission from being on the board seems perfectly reasonable to me.

The point is, asking someone like Larry Lessig (and he is only one
example, choose someone else you admire greatly if you have something
against him) to become an active wikipedia editor as a condition of
joining the board strikes me as silly.

He has hardly "deliberately chosen *not* to help us with our mission".
There are more ways to help us with our mission than editing Wikipedia.

--Jimbo
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The elections for arbcom will most likely be run again this year
precisely as last year.

geni wrote:
> On 9/24/06, Anthere <Anthere9@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> the en.wikipedia never run arbcom election with board involvement.
>> it run arbcom election with Jimbo involvement.
>>
>> That's different
>
> Not for the people on the receiving end it isn't.
>
> If it makes you happier I will rephrase the question:
>
> Does this mean that en.wikipedia will be allowed to run the arbcom
> elections this year without board involvement?
>
> I could do with an answer by October the first and if the answer is no
> I could do with details of what level of involvement.
>
> On a related note will special:boardvote be available?
>


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Angela wrote:
> I'm not saying the Board should monitor everything. I'm saying they
> should never be denied access to information when they need it. There
> is no justification for the current situation when Board members are
> explicity denied the right to read private wikis.

Just for the record, I disagree strongly with the idea that Board
members are explicitly denied the right to read private wikis. Any wiki
Angela, or any other board member, wants access to, they have my full
backing to just get it done.

Anyone who disagrees is not acting on authorization from me or the board
as a whole.

--Jimbo

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Hoi,
I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect people who are to play a part
in the organisation of the Wikimedia Foundation to have an obvious interest
in our projects. Expecting people to have edited on Wikipedia is a bad
example of yet again thinking the WMF is the same as Wikipedia. When you
want to have "important" or "notable" people governing our organisation and
you yourself get it wrong; indicating that there are "more ways to help us
with our mission than editing Wikipedia", I fear that they will also get it
wrong.

The Wikimedia Foundation is NOT Wikipedia. Boardmembers should have an
obvious interest in what we do. Being notable does not qualify people. If
you want someone notable, ask Kofi Anan to become a board member when his
tenure as the secretary general of the United Nations has ended. This is
what I call notable; notability as an IT person is not what I would think
qualifies a person as a board member of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Thanks,
GerardM




On 9/25/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:
>
> Delirium wrote:
> > I disagree with that. We have a huge body of people, and we're open to
> > anybody who wants to join---there's no membership criterion except
> > showing up (I'm not arguing for a "minimum 20,000 edits" or something).
> > Excluding people who have deliberately chosen *not* to help us with our
> > mission from being on the board seems perfectly reasonable to me.
>
> The point is, asking someone like Larry Lessig (and he is only one
> example, choose someone else you admire greatly if you have something
> against him) to become an active wikipedia editor as a condition of
> joining the board strikes me as silly.
>
> He has hardly "deliberately chosen *not* to help us with our mission".
> There are more ways to help us with our mission than editing Wikipedia.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
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> foundation-l@wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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On 9/25/06, Anthere <Anthere9@yahoo.com> wrote:
> But I'll be glad to hear from Jimbo and Erik whether they consider
> english wikipedia arbcom elections being a board issue.

Absolutely not.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net> wrote:
>
>> I don't think that these special prerequisites for being on the Board
>> are necessary. The treasurer should not need to do the bookkeeping
>> himself; we are big enough that we can hire someone to keep the books,
>> and prepare preliminary financial statements. The treasurer should be
>> able to understand the statements and discuss them with the rest of the
>> Board, and with an expanded Board it is certainly more likely that there
>> would be a person who can do this.
>>
>
> With all due respect, a board of a non-profit needs to know how a non-profit should be run in
> order to perform their oversight and guidance roles. At least some board members also need to know
> a fair deal about how to do professional fundraising; others need legal expertise since the
> foundation is a legal entity; yet others need to know about finances so they could not be easily
> misled by incorrect or fraudulent financial statements from staff (not that would ever happen, but
> it is possible).
>
> There are some fairly serious legal, financial and privacy issues that the board (on the whole)
> needs to have some training and experience to deal with. A group of people whose only
> qualification is that they are popular community members, is not necessarily going to have the
> needed skill-set. Of course, part of the board should consist of that, but not the whole board, or
> even a majority of it. And, where possible, all board members should be from the community (plenty
> of experts there).
>

I take the Debian model as a pretty good example of foundation
governance in free-culture projects, and they don't seem to have found
this necessary. The board of Software in the Public Interest, the
foundation that owns the Debian assets, is composed primarily of Debian
developers, including mainly former project leads or major sub-project
leads. They do retain a legal advisor to sift through matters they
aren't personally qualified to examine, but the counsel is not actually
a board member.

It doesn't seem to have become a major problem, and that organization
has made SPI very well-respected in the community---certainly nobody
thinks SPI is some corporate entity trying to hijack Debian or
anything. So I wonder why we must go a different route.

-Mark

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Hoi,
At this moment there is a controversy around Debian and Firefox. The
dogmatic stance of Debian in this is enough to for me to consider Debian not
to be that great a model. In some aspects it is like our situation with the
WMF logos in Commons ..

Definitely this whole thing makes the Debian model a disputed model.

Thanks,
Gerardm

http://ze-dinosaur.livejournal.com/12083.html

On 9/25/06, Delirium <delirium@hackish.org> wrote:
>
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > --- Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net> wrote:
> >
> >> I don't think that these special prerequisites for being on the Board
> >> are necessary. The treasurer should not need to do the bookkeeping
> >> himself; we are big enough that we can hire someone to keep the books,
> >> and prepare preliminary financial statements. The treasurer should be
> >> able to understand the statements and discuss them with the rest of the
> >> Board, and with an expanded Board it is certainly more likely that
> there
> >> would be a person who can do this.
> >>
> >
> > With all due respect, a board of a non-profit needs to know how a
> non-profit should be run in
> > order to perform their oversight and guidance roles. At least some board
> members also need to know
> > a fair deal about how to do professional fundraising; others need legal
> expertise since the
> > foundation is a legal entity; yet others need to know about finances so
> they could not be easily
> > misled by incorrect or fraudulent financial statements from staff (not
> that would ever happen, but
> > it is possible).
> >
> > There are some fairly serious legal, financial and privacy issues that
> the board (on the whole)
> > needs to have some training and experience to deal with. A group of
> people whose only
> > qualification is that they are popular community members, is not
> necessarily going to have the
> > needed skill-set. Of course, part of the board should consist of that,
> but not the whole board, or
> > even a majority of it. And, where possible, all board members should be
> from the community (plenty
> > of experts there).
> >
>
> I take the Debian model as a pretty good example of foundation
> governance in free-culture projects, and they don't seem to have found
> this necessary. The board of Software in the Public Interest, the
> foundation that owns the Debian assets, is composed primarily of Debian
> developers, including mainly former project leads or major sub-project
> leads. They do retain a legal advisor to sift through matters they
> aren't personally qualified to examine, but the counsel is not actually
> a board member.
>
> It doesn't seem to have become a major problem, and that organization
> has made SPI very well-respected in the community---certainly nobody
> thinks SPI is some corporate entity trying to hijack Debian or
> anything. So I wonder why we must go a different route.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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--- Delirium <delirium@hackish.org> wrote:
> I take the Debian model as a pretty good example of foundation
> governance in free-culture projects, and they don't seem to have found
> this necessary. The board of Software in the Public Interest, the
> foundation that owns the Debian assets, is composed primarily of Debian
> developers, including mainly former project leads or major sub-project
> leads. They do retain a legal advisor to sift through matters they
> aren't personally qualified to examine, but the counsel is not actually
> a board member.

Nor do I think we need to look outside the community for the board members we need.

-- mav

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On 9/25/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:
> The elections for arbcom will most likely be run again this year
> precisely as last year.
>

You want to use the system that people kept complaining about last
year? The one that was literaly finalised in the hours leading up to
the election under edit war conditions?

So those on en can't even consider useing special:boardvote?


The elections will not be the same whatever. To start with I'm gonna
try and get minium candidate requirements in.

Incerdentaly how are you justifying your involvement this time?

--
geni
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geni wrote:
> On 9/25/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:
>> The elections for arbcom will most likely be run again this year
>> precisely as last year.
>>
>
> You want to use the system that people kept complaining about last
> year? The one that was literaly finalised in the hours leading up to
> the election under edit war conditions?
>
> So those on en can't even consider useing special:boardvote?
>

I agree. A public ballot is a BAD IDEA.

>
> The elections will not be the same whatever. To start with I'm gonna
> try and get minium candidate requirements in.
>

Minimum suffrage requirements would be good too.

> Incerdentaly how are you justifying your involvement this time?
>

He doesn't have to. He's Jimbo and we accept that he is wise enough to
Do The Right Thing.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

On 9/25/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:
>
> Angela wrote:
> > I'm not saying the Board should monitor everything. I'm saying they
> > should never be denied access to information when they need it. There
> > is no justification for the current situation when Board members are
> > explicity denied the right to read private wikis.
>
> Just for the record, I disagree strongly with the idea that Board
> members are explicitly denied the right to read private wikis. Any wiki
> Angela, or any other board member, wants access to, they have my full
> backing to just get it done.


i have another, more general, question, as to the ''who has access to
what'':

who is responsible for keeping track of the registration of the status of
all these privileges: the community? chapters? the board? the office?

in case of the community: then access lists in general should be published
on the metawiki of all more or less ''private platforms'' that can be
accessed on our servers: of private wikis, otrs including queues, mailing
lists, mailing list passwords, masterpasswords etcetera (what did i
forget?), including dates of the passwords given and changed, and access
''granted since'', ''revoked on''. afaik such pages exist but are possibly
neither up to date nor complete.

in case this is not left to the community, this info could also be collected
somewhere more private: if not in public, then nevertheless preferrably in a
publically known secure and trusted place, such as the office, or more
decentralized like in the offices of chapters perhaps?

with our growth continuing, this may very well prove to be a wise thing to
not postpone now, from an administrative point of view.

best,
oscar
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On 9/26/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax@gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree. A public ballot is a BAD IDEA.
>

I'm not sure one way or the other. I just want to have the option on
the table (more I want to know if I will have it on the table or not.


> Minimum suffrage requirements would be good too.

They exitisted last time (which was what the near edit war was about)


--
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geni wrote:
> On a related note will special:boardvote be available?

The source code is available in our SVN repository along with other extensions.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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Hello,
Back online. (Mainly due to 'Mania 2007; I promised KJ to give a help
once. Would you sent me your expectations of potential guest/keynote
speakers, KJ?)

Thank you for your kind words and apologies for my rant. Following
advices, I'll take a break - after we've done post-mortem. For several
reasons I would like to keep a distance from the Wikimedia project for
a while. My availability will decrease but I'll be around there, not
completely leave.

Well, as for Boardvote, I expect developers are aware of, however for
the record I would like to stress that anyone who are granted
boardvote right can access to the detailed data of the global
Election. I think a local election is the board/foundation issue hence
rather offtopic on this list, and don't mind if a certain project uses
Boardvote extention (I know another certain Wikipedia which some
people would have liked to use this for local sysop votes ... ),
however, I stress that they can be given the access * only * after the
results of this Election flashed. No local votetaker are allowed per
se to access the private data of over 2300 editors around the world.

On 9/26/06, Brion Vibber <brion@pobox.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > On a related note will special:boardvote be available?
>
> The source code is available in our SVN repository along with other extensions.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
> _______________________________________________
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>


--
Kizu Naoko
Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
* vox populi, vox dei *
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Oops. I realized I really need a vacation.

On 9/26/06, Aphaia <aphaia@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think a local election is the board/foundation issue hence
< I think a local election is never the board/foundation issue

*never*
Hopefully no one was misled.

--
Kizu Naoko
Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
* Man ist eben so gut Zeitbuerger, als man Staatsbuerger ist; *
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On 25/09/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:

> The elections for arbcom will most likely be run again this year
> precisely as last year.


eegh. That's really horrible.


- d.
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On 9/26/06, Aphaia <aphaia@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, as for Boardvote, I expect developers are aware of, however for
> the record I would like to stress that anyone who are granted
> boardvote right can access to the detailed data of the global
> Election. I think a local election is never the board/foundation issue
> rather offtopic on this list,

Jimbo aparently wants us to use a rather unpopular voteing system. The
board are the people who are most likely to be able to prevent him
from inforceing that.

> and don't mind if a certain project uses
> Boardvote extention (I know another certain Wikipedia which some
> people would have liked to use this for local sysop votes ... ),
> however, I stress that they can be given the access * only * after the
> results of this Election flashed.

Elections will probably start on December the 4th with acess needed
from the second.

--
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On 9/25/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:
> The elections for arbcom will most likely be run again this year
> precisely as last year.
>

So has the general lack of support or your suggestion persuaded you
that your involvement is no longer required or am I going to be trying
to recruit candidates for the system that apparently everyone thought
sucked last time. An answer before October the 1st would be useful.


--
geni
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