[Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

Wed May 31 03:13:39 UTC 2006

On 5/31/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia are indeed two different
> concepts, and the relative roles of professionals and amateurs will
> indeed be different in these two organizations.  In many respects we
> need to start building a firewall between the two.  This would leave the
> WMF responsible for the maintenance of the infrastructural assets, while
> Wikipedia and its sisterprojects could be free to pursue their
> innovative strategies without the need to be guided by a paranoia that
> any small legal oversight could bring the entire empire crashing.  There
> are certainly profitable enterprises out there who would welcome that
> development with great glee.  There needs to be an arm's length
> relationship between the two, and I don't see much being said to address
> that.

Ray, the issue has been discussed here and there, but you clarify it
very well. Many of the heated discussions on the future of WMF have
been because of the unclear line between what the Foundation should
do, and what Wikipedians do.

The WP:OFFICE policy is a real problem in that respect. This is not to
diminish what Danny or others have been doing. They should be
commended for bridging the 'real world' phone calls and concerns with
the Wikipedia virtual community. And hiring someone to feed phone call
complaints/comments into OTRS (and stop at that) is a good step.

I'll paste in here what I sent to some of the board members last
month, since it's relevant:

"I fear that Wikipedia claiming it is a "forum" and a "common carrier"
worked before, but starts to break down when WP:OFFICE is used. That
is, with "OFFICE" oversight that has final authority, the Foundation
then takes on a liability as the ultimate editing function. This could
have dramatic implications, since the stance of WMF with the
Seigenthaler case was, "find that libelous anon, since we are not not
liable." With WP:OFFICE, the case could be made the WMF is liable for
this same case in the future."

The short version: once the WMF as an organization takes a role in the
culling and selection of editorial content, it is "on the hook." A
"firewall" separation as Ray pointed out is not only good
communitywise, but legally too.

> Ec

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)