[Foundation-l] Would you consider being on the Board?

Fri Jun 9 21:23:27 UTC 2006

On 6/9/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com> wrote:
> On Fri, June 9, 2006 17:57, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > The thing is, the vast majority of those tens of thousands of
> > participants don't really care about the foundation.  They just want
> > to work on a free encyclopedia/free news reporting service/free image
> > repository/whatever.
> > It'd be interesting if nothing else to see just what percentage of
> > Wikipedians have any desire at all of being Wikimedians.
>
> except that the real thing is, you can't separate the two. Wikipedia (and
> Wikibooks, Wiktionary, etc) all exist not by the grace of god, but by the
> grace of Wikimedia (Foundation).

Sure, someone has to collect the donations and pay for the servers.
I'm not saying the Foundation doesn't play an important role in
Wikipedia et. al.  But the fact that the Foundation plays an important
role in Wikipedia doesn't mean all Wikipedians have to concern
themselves with it.

> If someone wants to play rough with a
> Wikipedia entry they don't go after the individual editors and try and
> trace all the IP addresses, but look to the legal body responsible for
> that entry, WMF. As such, whether they are aware they "care about the
> foundation" or not, we need to educate them better that they need to.
>
> It's a bit like people who don't vote as they say it isn't relevant to
> them. WMF is relevant to *every* editor and reader of every project.
>
> Alison Wheeler

Actually, I don't agree with that at all.  The Red Cross doesn't
require you to vote for their board of directors or even care about
the mission of the Red Cross in order to give blood.  Why should
Wikipedians be required to get involved with Wikimedia in order to
contribute text?

Anthony