[Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

Wed May 31 12:43:24 UTC 2006

On 5/30/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> >--- Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>On 5/29/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>What you seem to forget is that Wikipedia's strength rests with its
> >>>amateurs.  While there may be evident need for some amount of
> >>>administrative staff it is as important to avoid pretensions of being a
> >>>professional organization.  If you look at staff as an investment you
> >>>are assuming an economic model that runs contrary to Wikipedia's free
> >>>nature.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>But you can also make the case that getting professionals to do the
> >>work that needs to be done (legal, finance, fundraising, etc.)
> >>offloads those tasks so that the "strength of the amateurs" can be
> >>more productively tapped and scaled up to keep Wikipedia evolving in
> >>what it does best.
> >>
> >>
> >Exactly. The amateur model just does not scale well *at all* for the Wikimedia Foundation
> >(Wikipedia and the other wikis are a different matter). I, for example, am an amateur when it
> >comes to finance. My day job and education have nothing to do with it. And yet I'm the CFO. Which
> >may have been fine when Wikipedia was a top 500 website and had a small budget, but not now.
> >
> >I'm a quick learner and always have been able to handle widely varied responsibilities that
> >require different skill sets (thus my ability, with the help of the Wikimedia treasurer who does
> >have the relevant experience and training, to perform in my role), but there simply is a limit to
> >what I can do; both from a time perspective (I can only devote an hour or two - at most - a day to
> >this) AND, perhaps more importantly, from an experience/education perspective.
> >
> >That is why I've had a standing letter of resignation that will go into effect once the foundation
> >finally gets around to hiring a properly qualified finance director.
> >
> >The foundation is not a wiki. It needs to grow up.
> >
> I don't dispute the need for the Foundation to have some level of paid
> staff.  I also feel some concern about the way you have been hung out to
> dry in the CFO job.  While you have no doubt worked at the position to
> the best of your ability, Wikipedians having a little more familiarity
> with such matters probably could see the potential difficulties, and
> avoided volunteering for the task.  I really don't think that the Board
> has ever been on top of this portfolio.
>
> 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.
>
> Ec
>
I totally agree with this statement.  The Wikimedia Foundation and
Wikipedia are and should continue to be kept very separate.  Besides
the points you have raised I think this bolsters the legal position
that the foundation is an ISP, and not a content provider.  The
servers are owned by the Foundation.  But the content is owned by
everyone.

As for Daniel Mayer being CFO, I think a large portion of what he does
(at least, what I've seen him do) could easily (and rather
inexpensively) be outsourced.  Sure, someone internal needs to decide
on a budget to submit to the board for approval, but that shouldn't be
an enormous time-waster.  I've seen it done effectively many times by
volunteer committees with absolutely no finance or business
background.  Someone internal also needs to record transactions, but
the CFO shouldn't be the one doing this anyway.  Last time I heard
this was something the treasurer was doing.  If the work is really
overwhelming it might make sense to hire a bookkeeper, but most
non-profits don't require this.  Wikipedia's budget is big, but it's
not enormous.  There are plenty of community organizations with
roughly the same size budget that get by fine without a CFO -
homeowners associations, special taxing districts, volunteer fire
departments, activities organizations, etc.

Am I missing some legal requirement to have a CFO in a non-profit
organization?  Sarbanes-Oxley, as it applies to non-profits, seems to
suggest that any "financial expert" be a member of the board.  If
there's no legal requirement for a CFO, I'd say drop the CFO and put
Daniel Mayer on the board.  He can lead a budget committee on a
regular basis from there.  Then look into outsourcing as much of his
old job as possible.  Wikimedia's board is obviously way too small.

Anthony