[Foundation-l] Bounties and expenses

Thu Jun 24 07:20:55 UTC 2004

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 17:15:25 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> --- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > No, the board emphatically should not handle any of those things you
> > listed.  These are decisions to be made by the Wikimedia community, not
> > a committee.  Top-down committee decisions are not the wiki way of doing
> > things.
> 
> The 'committees' you talk about will be almost entirely composed of non-board
> members. But the board provides the legal and financial backbone. Somebody has
> to sign the checks and somebody has to be held responsible for making sure
> progress is being made on projects. That is where the board comes in.

To amplify this - don't forget the bulk of Wikipedia is being
supported by Jimbo/Bomis resources given for free.  This cannot last
in the long term. Colocation, bandwidth, electricity, hardware and
labor are all donated by them because of their kindness, but this is
not sustainable or robust.  We need to plan right now while Wikipedia
is in a state of financial and social healh.  This is exactly the time
to have designees think about how to achieve this.  It is not
abandoning wiki principles by imbuing individuals with the
responsibility of overseeing this process. The bills have to be paid
to keep the project going.

These were all issues that were brought up during the face-to-face
Wikimeetup in London, and something several of the Wikipedians
discussed over dinner.  The conversations were never to hijack the
decision-making as the "cabal" of individuals who happened to be
there.  The question of "What would the community think about this?"
was ever-present.

That's what the Trustees vote was for - to designate those individuals
with this responsibility.  The vision statements, candidate positions
and discussion during the election indicate most people feel it was
more than simply to satisfy the letter of the law.

-Andrew