[Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees

Thu Jan 26 22:45:49 UTC 2006

While I'm extremely flattered at the suggestion, I must advise the board to not consider me for a
post as CEO. I'm not qualified and don't have the relevant experience to run the size and scope of
an organization that we want the foundation to be. We need somebody with an MBA and years of
non-profit experience. While it would be nice to have a Wikimedian fill this role, I don't think
that is a critical thing for the board to consider. 

Daniel Mayer

--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

> Dear Angela, dear list,
> 
> thank you for publishing this, and thanks to the Board and everyone else 
> involved for taking these steps, which I hope will help to decentralize 
> the organization and empower and encourage users to participate in 
> everyday work such as the establishment of partnerships, the 
> coordination of fundraising campaigns, the management of press releases, 
> the handling of libel cases, and so on. I'd like to get involved a bit 
> to help this process along as much as possible.
> 
> As you requested, in this response I focus specifically on the Executive 
> Committee. I am sending a separate message with some general concerns.
> 
> The situation in the past has been that the Board was the single 
> executive body of the Wikimedia Foundation. This was obviously not 
> scalable. There are, essentially, two competing problems:
> * the Board is too small to deal with the amount of decisions that need 
> to be made.
> * the Board is too large and distributed to immediately make a decision 
> when one is needed.
> 
> This relates to the problem Angela has pointed out of two competing 
> goals of a small and a large committee. As Jake has explained, the 
> solution is probably a compromise.
> 
> It is my understanding that our mid term goal is to have a full-time CEO 
> in addition to the Board. This CEO position is highly relevant, as the 
> CEO will have to make many of the immediate short term decisions. I 
> would strongly recommend not to pick a complete outsider for this 
> position. While non-profit experience is obviously helpful in running an 
> organization like Wikimedia, Wikimedia is a very unusual beast and a 
> highly participatory community.
> 
> The CEO needs to be a person who understands the community, the goals, 
> the technology, and the organization. They also need to be particularly 
> good at electronic communications, which is our main means of getting 
> things done. I'd much rather see someone like Daniel Mayer or James 
> Forrester in this position - both individuals with great organizational 
> talent - than someone who has never edited a wiki.
> 
> I would support the current Board or a subset thereof serving in an 
> interim role as a multiple personality CEO while this position is being 
> defined and a suitable candidate is sought. However, I strongly believe 
> there need to be more people on the Executive Committee.
> 
> We have subunits in the organization (chapters) which could provide some 
> of the members of the EC: each head of a chapter would automatically be 
> a member of the EC. In addition, we have the existing officers like the 
> CTO, CFO and CRO, who should serve on the committee.
> 
> Now, if we stick to all these people, we still have a few problems:
> - They are all quite busy in their existing roles.
> - Some of these positions are appointed, others were elected to a 
> specific chapter. I think we should try to avoid a situation where the 
> executive body is stagnant and seen as bureaucratically distant from the 
> community, like the European Commission.
> - In all likelihood, these people, through their existing roles, will be 
> forced to focus on our largest project, Wikipedia.
> 
> Therefore, I suggest that in addition, we have an annual or biannual 
> open election of about 10 members, one or two for each Wikimedia 
> project. These could be elected by their project communities, or by the 
> entire Wikimedia community - I have no strong opinion on that.
> 
> The members of the EC would meet at least weekly (but also be present 
> much of the time on a designated IRC channel). Realistically, in a 
> volunteer organization, you'd probably find that of the relatively large 
> committee, only a subset of maybe 10 people really show up and 
> participate regularly. So you'd need to state that decisions can be made 
> by such a subset.
> 
> Any decision that can be postponed until the next meeting would be made 
> in consensus or through a vote by the members present then and there 
> (with the CEO having the power to override a split vote). In addition, 
> the CEO would be required to consult with the Executive Committee 
> whenever possible (in practice, through the aforementioned IRC channel).
> 
> The Board would primarily exercise strategic oversight: ensure the 
> openness of the organization, prioritize long term goals, evaluate the 
> work of the officers, and so on. The President (Jimmy) would also be the 
> main person identified with the organization at large to the outside 
> world, i.e. the guy who gets the Nobel Prize in the end ;-).
> 
> Whether there needs to be a "Wikicouncil" as has been suggested before 
> (similar to the Central Committee Jake mentioned) is a separate 
> question. Personally, I do not see the need at present, since we also 
> have the other committees which hopefully will be open enough to enable 
> wide participation. A very large representative body does not really 
> strike me as appropriate for an organization like ours - if you can have 
> a large group of people, you might as well make it completely open and 
> participatory.
> 
> I see one key role of the Executive Committee and the CEO as the 
> authorization of outside contacts and partnership proposals. Anything 
> that doesn't fall within a defined and agreed upon strategy needs to be 
> authorized a priori or a posteriori.
> 
> Ideally, in the next few years, I think we should gradually work towards 
> making these executive positions full-time positions (some paid for 
> through the chapters), as they will have to do quite a lot of work when 
> it comes to the organization and oversight of the committees, and we 
> need to be able to rely on them being available during meetings. Of 
> course, this will not be nearly possible without a very substantial 
> increase in our budget (i.e. multiple millions), so we could continue as 
> we do now, starting with the most necessary official positions.
> 
> These are my thoughts for now and I'm very interested in what others 
> have to say. Most importantly, I hope that all non-confidential 
> discussion about these issues will take place in open forums and on open 
> pages from now on.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Erik
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