[Foundation-l] Outsiders on the Board? (was Re: Poll for Wikistandards)

Sun Jan 29 20:30:25 UTC 2006

Hello, Danny!

> Actually, as Wikipedia grows it requires help in oversight no less than it  
> does in operations. A large organization entails legal and  financial 
> responsibilities. If we are sued, for whatever reason, we cannot  simply throw another 
> server at the person suing us. 

I agree entirely. And as our legal problems grow, it is equally 
essential that we make an important distinction. It is the distinction 
between law and ethics. It is entirely possible to act utterly immorally 
without violating any law; and in fact, many of the most immoral acts in 
history have been protected by unethical laws.

Furthermore, laws governing the Internet in particular are not static 
structures; they are ever-changing both in civil and common law 
jurisdictions due to the power of interpretation and precedent, and an 
organization with substantial financial assets is more than capable to 
influence legal decisions to its advantage (and, eventually, even the 
process used to create laws).

Wikimedia, as an organization, must therefore cherish, preserve and 
maximize its core principle of openness. In this process, lawyers are 
servants to the community and not the other way around. Lawyers must 
never dictate how the organization is run. The Board, elected and 
thereby empowered by the community, and the committees, open and 
representative, must instead consult the lawyers to seek ways to further 
our mission.

This is a quite important statement, as the interpretation of law is 
something that is treated by many with a sort of grudging respect few 
other professions enjoy, and it is easy for lawyers to eloquently make a 
case, since that it is their job. That lets them quickly gain influence. 
Lawyers, also, will be inclined to be extremely cautious and overly 
protective in their legitimate desire to minimize harm. An organization 
run by lawyers would naturally evolve into a closed, corporate, 
inflexible structure full of rigid procedures that impede the work of 
both paid employees and volunteers.

Such an organization will be entirely incapable of dealing with the very 
real challenges we have set ourselves. We have set these challenges the 
moment we have decided to accept projects like Wikibooks: free textbooks 
for every person on the planet. Wiktionary: all words, all meanings, all 
languages. Wikisource and Commons: free media of all types. Wikinews: 
free news presented from a neutral point of view. And so forth.

If we are serious about these goals - and some of the others we may set 
ourselves, including a subset of Jimmy's "10 things that need to be 
free" <http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2005/08/jimbos_problems_1.html> - 
then we cannot allow ourselves to turn into the non-profit equivalent of 
AOL. Those who live by the sword, perish by it. If we compete like a 
corporation, we will lose like a corporation, we will be replaced by a 
corporation.

In our 5 years of existence, we have not even managed to achieve that 
one goal we have been talking about from the beginning: stable versions. 
Wikipedia 1.0. Let's not even begin to talk about "every single human 
being on the planet". This is not because we have been too open, but 
because we have been too closed, and highly atypical in our 
organizational model even by standards of the typical non-profit. No 
matter, mistakes happen. The only unforgivable mistake is not to learn 
from the last one.

Yes, there are legal questions to be answered. But they are questions, 
not answers, and they are not as difficult as you may think they are to 
deal with. When I proposed Wikinews on this very list, I still remember 
the feedback I got. "The legal problems we're going to have with this 
will make this a nightmare! We can not shoulder this responsibility!"

It was these words of warning which inspired me then to come up with a 
very complex review process that was used initially on the English 
Wikinews to ensure that we did not publish libelous claims. And it was 
after Jimmy's intervention that I decided to get rid of this process, 
which turned out to be disastrously inefficient, especially without 
special tools. Have we had any major legal problems with Wikinews since 
then? Nothing we couldn't handle, in spite of about 15,000 articles 
published so far.

And let us not forget Wikipedia itself. We all remember the major media 
campaigns of the last year. Scrambling for answers, some quick and 
questionable countermeasures were taken. But let's be honest. If we had 
consulted a team of lawyers before starting Wikipedia to tell us whether 
this could become a libel issue, we would have never gotten past 10,000 
articles. Maybe we would still be at Nupedia's 30. Let's be careful not 
to break our processes from the top, but instead, let's try to improve 
them from the bottom.

So, let me repeat. The goals come first. The legal problems are solved 
to achieve these goals. And legal advice must, always, be taken with a 
great deal of skepticism, and if possible, solicitation of alternative 
answers. Yes, sometimes it may even be a good idea to utterly ignore it 
and take whatever risk is gloomily predicted. When talking to a lawyer, 
it is often good to know beforehand what you _want_ to do, or they will 
only tell you what you _cannot_ do. The fairly unhelpful legal study 
commissioned by the German chapter is an example of that.

The English Wikipedia alone currently has more than 850,000 registered 
users. Among them: students, physicists, architects, photographers, 
musicians, nuclear engineers, businesspersons, historians, computer 
scientists (loads of them), comedians, midwives, soldiers, judges, 
ethologists -- I could go on, but you could just check [[List of 
occupations]] yourself and pick some randomly. This eclectic mix of 
people is an asset that we _must_ utilize if we are to come even close 
to achieving our goals.

Our goal, then, is to build a global network of human beings to 
revolutionize knowledge on all levels of society, through businesses and 
institutions and individuals, establishing cooperations and partnerships 
numbering in the thousands, receiving financial support from 
foundations, institutions, businesses, governments and individuals of 
several million dollars every year to further our mission.

And this is only possible if we empower individuals.

Now, there are perfectly reasonable ways to institute measures of 
control, such as consensus processes and voting and multiple 
organizational layers, before potentially legally problematic endeavors 
are undertaken. As long as we avoid bottlenecks caused by single 
individuals being equipped with extraordinary decision-making power, we 
should be fine.

To, out of fear, not build and develop a culture of openness in our 
organizational processes, would be disastrously wrong and kill Wikimedia 
before it has even started. Instead of following old models, Wikimedia 
should _set_ a model of what an open organization could be. In fact, 
ideally, I would like to see us publish an "Open Organization Manual" on 
Wikibooks or elsewhere, collecting our experiences and recommending 
workflows for non-profit organizations that have worked for us.

Funnily enough, it is one of our partner companies, Directmedia 
Publishing, that is experimenting with publishing as much information as 
they can about their company and their upcoming products and strategies 
openly on a wiki - wiki.directmedia.de - and that has been fantastically 
successful at working with both volunteers and employed professionals. 
They are, after all, the makers of the German Wikipedia DVD, whereas we 
still do not have an English one or seem to be much closer to this goal 
than one year ago.

I doubt that Directmedia is as open as it could be, but when our 
for-profit partner companies are getting the better of us when it comes 
to openness and participation, we should start seriously reconsidering 
the ways we do things.

And let us not forget, finally, that a lack of openness can bring out 
the very worst in people: the lust for power, control, and money. Pure, 
unadulterated greed. As an organization that gets its money from small 
donations by people all over the world, we have a non-negotiable 
responsibility to make sure that our donated money is spent wisely and 
efficiently, and transparency is the best to prevent corruption and 
unnecessary centralization. As an organization, we have to answer to the 
people who pay our hardware and employees' salaries. When someone asks 
one of us: "What do you do with this money?" Our answer should never be: 
"None of your business!"

I therefore will state here, again, my hope that the forthcoming 
organizational changes will be debated in an open manner, and that they 
will empower the greatest number of individuals possible to turn 
Wikimedia into the incredible success that Wikipedia has been so far.

Sincerely,

Erik