[Foundation-l] Where we are headed

Tue Jun 13 22:14:08 UTC 2006

On 6/13/06, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Michael R. Irwin schrieb:
> > Little to none of it is published in an organized meaningful manner for
> > the simple fundamental reason that we have a stacked Board and what
> > matters is what Jimbo decides.  In organizations where meaningul
> > delegation is the rule the data gets produced because everybody needs
> > it!  Nobody needs it at the Wikimedia Foundation because only Jimbo's
> > opinion or stated position has any final standing on anything.  So it
> > does not get routinely produced and posted publicly.
>
> Sorry, this is nonsense. The data is not produced because we rely almost
> entirely on volunteers and reporting is not an especially fascinating or
> rewarding activity.
>
FWIW, I personally have never claimed that Wikimedia lacks
transparency due to intentional deceipt.  Personally I think it's
probably more due to incompetence.

> > When those volunteers get interested in a topic and go looking for the
> > information and cannot find it without querying a wide range of poorly
> > organized sources the organization does indeed look "opaque".
>
> I agree but this is hardly the board's fault. Did I hear you
> volunteering for the task of cleaning up Meta?
>
Providing information to the public is one of the main
responsibilities of the board (if not to do directly, then to get
someone else to do it).  If it's not being done properly, it is the
board's fault.

As for volunteering for the task of cleaning up Meta, that would rely
on having the information in the first place.  And meta isn't really
what needs the most cleanup, the foundation wiki is.

Let me get specific.  The latest finance report is from 2005.  Same
thing with the latest budget report.  Even if I had access to the
foundation wiki, which I don't, I couldn't resolve this, because I
don't have access to Wikimedia's financial data.

Now that I look at it, it says at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_budget/2006/Q1 that the
information was "Moved to the foundation's internal wiki for
finalization".  "00:58, 11 January 2006 Daniel Mayer deleted
"Wikimedia budget/2006/Q1" (moving to internal wiki for finalization)"
 Is it there and I just can't find it?  Looking at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Daniel_Mayer,
it doesn't seem to be.

Maybe you could be more specific about what types of informaton
cleanup someone currently out of the loop can do.

Anthony