[Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

Fri May 26 16:00:54 UTC 2006

Angela wrote:
> On 5/26/06, Robin Shannon <robin.shannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> I think we need to
>> engage anyone who is willing to be engaged in a debate about where we
>> should be heading and how we should go about it.
>>     
>
> How? Previous public Wikimedia meetings have led nowhere and done
> nothing other than highlight how few people in the communities are
> interested in _doing_ anything - as opposed to debating on mailing
> lists.
>   
Since most of us don't have sufficient funds to travel to public 
meetings, nor sufficiently flexible schedules to sit around on IRC, it 
should be no surprise that we're much more willing to debate on mailing 
lists, which are the most inclusive.  If there were a public meeting in 
Atlanta, I would certainly attend, but to my knowledge there hasn't been 
one.

As for what needs doing, many of us are doing the one thing that IMO 
needs most urgently to be done, and without which nothing else is 
particularly useful---improving the encyclopedia.  I agree there are 
other things that should get done, most notably some sort of 
infrastructure for a "Wikipedia Review" or "Sifter" or "Wikipedia 1.0" 
project (or whatever name it ends up going by).  I don't personally have 
the expertise or free time to do that, and it seems nobody else has been 
forthcoming either, so if hiring someone to do it is the best way to get 
it done, that seems like a reasonable use of funds.

>> I just think that the future direction of wikimedia
>> is up to the community not the board or its officers, staff or
>> whoever.
>>     
>
> Nice idea... how about you suggest how that might happen? There are
> currently two community representatives on the Board, though it's
> increasingly obvious that the community are not using either Anthere
> or myself to get anything to happen. Anything that does happen comes
> through private mailing lists and an increasing number of internal
> processes that even Board members don't always have access to.
>   

I've personally been pretty happy with the community representation on 
the board; IMO you and Anthere usually align with the interests of the 
majority of the community.

The latter part seems a bit disturbing---is it even *legal* for the 
Wikimedia Foundation to have processes that its Board doesn't have 
access to?

-Mark