[Foundation-l] Bounties and expenses

Tue Jun 22 09:17:03 UTC 2004

Mark,

It's clear your objections run deep -- you seem have a standing
problem with the entire idea of a board of trustees that is, well,
trusted with the interests of the Wikimedia Foundation. This can be
seen also in your strong bias and mistrust concerning the governance
of nonprofits.  If this is so, your issues are not with the
particulars of how we are going about things, but of an entire concept
of the board.

However, this community has decided to go ahead with the board, so
that designated individuals can spend more time on issues that need
it.  This includes fundraising and building links among the different
wikis, which have both been our weak spot.  Your characterization of
these meetings as "perks" that happen "behind closed doors" is
misleading and disingenuous.  No one has suggested anything of the
sort, and Wikipedians should have every confidence that things will be
open and inclusive.

You've cited H.Cheney's comment, while conveniently leaving out
others' (including my own) positive experiences in working with
nonprofits and the benefits of face to face meetings for this type of
collaboration. The use of "social and networking events" as a
pejorative is odd considering Wikipedia is one of the largest social
software systems and collaborative projects in the world.

-Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado)

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 02:32:29 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> 
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> 
> >Face-to-face meetings are much more productive than IRC simply because
> >real human interaction has a much higher bandwidth than letters in a
> >window on a computer screen. That was obvious at the WOS in Berlin, as I
> >know that some people are still reeling from the whole experience. ;-)
> >Getting Angela to mingle with the French Wikimedia community will benefit
> >the whole project.
> >
> >
> I disagree with this---meeting with a tiny fraction of the Wikimedia
> community and making decisions at such meetings is detrimental to the
> project.  Real work and decision-making should be done online, in
> public, where everyone can participate.  If people want to socialize in
> person, that's fine, but we shouldn't be making decisions at meetings
> either behind closed doors or at which only a small fraction of
> Wikimedians are present.
> 
> And, I don't think calling such meetings "perks" is an overstatement.
> I've observed quite a few non-profit meetings, as well as meetings and
> conferences in academia, and they rarely have much real work being
> done.  They're social and networking events, and the most "real work"
> that gets done is at best finding out about something that you make a
> note of to look up and read later.  The actual real work gets done via
> email or telephone (or both) either before or after the conferences.  H.
> Cheney's recent email indicated he's had similar experiences on the
> non-profit boards he's sat on, so this seems to not simply be my
> personal experience.
> 
> -Mark
> 
> 
> 
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