[Foundation-l] Re: board manual and where information about the WMF should really be

Wed Dec 7 23:09:41 UTC 2005

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> 
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> There has been a bit of discussion recently about Non Profit 
>> Foundations and their organisation. Michael Davis has been discussing 
>> a lot in the past few days with a lawyer we are working with, and 
>> amongst various conclusions, it was recommanded that we try to 
>> anticipate the best we could our growth curve and to get a strong 
>> legal framework in place asap. Which seems to involve good functioning 
>> structure... and sticking a bit more to traditional board governance 
>> procedures, with some evolution in the way we handle agendas, minutes, 
>> bylaws, resolution, board manual, insurance and so on. 
> 
> 
> It's hard to know when an exponential growth curve will level off.  Thus 
> far we all stand in amazement at the growth.  Generally this is a step 
> in the right direction.
> 
>> We are currently working on all this very much. Each according to its 
>> own ability.
>> Some of this can only be done by board members proper, other tasks can 
>> also be supported by officers, and some can involve anyone who is 
>> serious and supportive.
>>
>> Amongst the tasks I will try to take care of in the next few weeks (or 
>> months...) is documentation, such as typically board manual. Michael 
>> has provided us with some documentation (such as 
>> http://www.boardsource.org/FullAnswer.asp?ID=98) and I gathered some 
>> more as well. Most of what is typically required on a board manual, we 
>> already have, but it is dispersed on at least 3 different wikis and 
>> poorly organised. This is unfortunate. 
> 
> 
> I would suggest beginning with a Table of Contents or site map for the 
> Manual.  This would be helpful in monitoring the development of this 
> project.
> 
>> Board governance is not something new and there is no reason for us to 
>> reinvent the wheel. When I looked at some of these pages, I recognised 
>> areas where we have indeed tried to reinvent the wheel... other areas 
>> we have never explored at all, areas where we found our own balance 
>> and areas which are still a mess :-)
>>
>> I invite you to join and help the way you can if you have such a 
>> desire. Either help to organise the structure of the future document 
>> (and more generally Foundation website), help to gather what already 
>> exist, help write what does *not* exist, help fix poor english, help 
>> translate (much later) some of the pages.
>>
>> If you are interested, please, let's talk about this on meta or by 
>> irc. I presume this will be very boring for most editors here, so it 
>> will probably rarely be mentionned on the list, but if you wish to 
>> help, please jump in any time. 
> 
> 
> I object to your saying that such a task would be boring. ;-)    Where 
> on meta?
> 
> Ec

hello,

Considering the amount of ink spilled on topics such as new languages, 
or new page creation by anons, or the deletion of a joke book...

Ach, chatting (sorry, trolling ?) has never been boring :-)

I'll start working on this next week probably. And yes, first on meta. 
I'll post a link.

Ant