[Foundation-l] "officials"

Mon May 10 10:06:07 UTC 2004

Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
Anthere-
> I do not think that putting officially the
> responsability in the hand of *one* person
> specifically is the best option. It is not empowering
> people. Rather, people will tend to rely on the *head*
> to do things.

We also need to be careful not to let too many people speak in the name of 
the Foundation whenever they feel like it. This is after all a community 
of several thousands of members, and I think some screening needs to take 
place before we decide that person X can be an official press contact, or 
person Y can be a content partnership coordinator -- because our 
reputation may be hurt, because people may make deals which the Foundation 
does not want (and later has to undo), because people may neglect their 
position and fail to respond to inquiries (hurting our reputation), 
because people may fail to sufficiently communicate about what they are 
doing, and so forth.

I don't think our positions are that far apart, though, especially since 
you yourself mention that people would have an opportunity to object. So 
if they object, what happens then? Will the person be unable to hold the 
position they are interested in beacuse of a single objection? At this 
point the natural solution is again to have a vote. I believe that at the 
very least, any assumption of an official title needs to be prominently 
announced, with a certain timeframe to raise objections, and a defined 
process for resolving them.

I also tend to believe that such an assignment shouldn't cover very short 
periods of time, to avoid communication problems of the type "I'm not the
content coordinator, anymore, try contacting Paul." - "Sorry, I resigned 
last week, try contacting Amy." etc. If one only wants to assume an 
official title for a *single* transaction, it is better to contact 
whomever is currently holding that title.

I have no problem with multiple people filling a certain role, in fact I 
support it, but the number of people should be limited. For example we 
could say "one press officer for every country, or for every 40 million 
inhabitants of a country", so the US would end up with 6 press officers, 
Germany with 2, etc.

Regards,

Erik
_______________________________________________

Thank you Erik and Mav for the feedback.

Erik raises fair comments. Yes, screening should be done. Yes, reasonable duty time is necessary. Yes, proportionality of representation seems correct.

A couple of comments

I think we should be very careful not to change drastically the business model upon which Wikipedia is built. Currently, what makes it work is

* that it is open and fair. Ie, anyone is free to participate, and help in any area he feels like helping. Currently, if we are now known,  it is also because any editor may at any time contact a newspaper for example, and make an article on Wikipedia. Evidently, some articles are not so good, some are buggy. But most are helpful nevertheless. Anyone is empowered PR activities. They won’t be fired in case of a mistake.  They learn to improve each time. We do not have to wait for an official PR to decide for us what we should do. This results, perhaps, in a bit anarchic PR activities, but not so bad all things considered :-)

* it is not (too much) bureaucratic. Anyone can do PR activities without having to require an authorization from anyone.

Let us be careful not to change this too much. Voluntary PR works because users have freedom to do so. If authorization becomes required, or worse, if spontaneous activity is not welcome any more, than PR activity will drop tremendously.

I would like that we separate those holding somehow the role of a coordinator or a legal position (such as treasurer) from other roles which may perhaps not “officially” speak “in the name” of the Foundation, but are trusted by the Foundation to conduct a collection of activities.

The Foundation needs official positions, but what I was suggesting was not so much 
PR Coordinators
France : Yann
Germany : Erik Moëller
US : Maverick
etc… 

Than 
PR activities

French language
Coordinator : Yann
Delegates (or whatever name is fit) : Anthere, Semnoz, Ryo

German language
Coordinators : Erik Moëller, Elian
Delegates : Fantasy, Fire

English language
Coordinator : Maverick
Delegates : Fuzheado, Jtdirl, Eclecticology etc…

The first group (coordinator) has to be officially approved (or appointed) by the Foundation, while the second group is more a collection of people trusted to send press releases, and approved (or not opposed) by their respective project.
Even if these people should try to coordinate with their coordinator(s), they are trusted to do PR activities.

Now, no big deal about PR things. But transpose this to looking for funding.

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