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

Tue Jun 13 22:44:15 UTC 2006

Brion Vibber wrote:

>Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>  
>
>>Brion Vibber wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>What can the board and management (whatever its structure) *do* that will be better?
>>>
>>>      
>>>
snip some background

>>I disagree.   It is predominantly a participatory informal 
>>"democracy/committee" process in the projects and the volunteers in many 
>>cases are voting with their feet and manhours.
>>    
>>
>
>I disagree with your disagreement here. ;)
>
>The *projects* are participatory informal "democracy/committee" process, but The
>Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is not.
>  
>
Then they should consider budgeting for an adequate payroll, raise 
adequate funds,  begin defining work processes, and hiring and training 
staff.    Volunteers are not going to do anything  for long with which 
they do not have some kind of input, buyin or warm fuzzy that they are 
appreciated.   Budget for plaques, list the achievements somewhere, 
coach the paid staff to really appreciate any and all errors as a golden 
opportunity to help train the volunteer staff while getting away from 
their normal duties ... paid recess!  Many options have been previously 
devised, some time googling or yacking aimlessly on the community 
mailing lists or wikis should discover something somewhere.

>It sounds to me like one of the chief issues is identifying the boundary between
>management of the projects and management of the company. Would you agree with
>this? If not, how would you describe the issue?
>
>  
>
Yes, exactly!  Some others have made this point very effectively on this 
thread as well.

snip further agreements

>How is Jimbo's historical and ongoing status as default big cheese for all
>projects related to the composition of the board? (This is not a rhetorical
>question.)
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>  
>
Huh?  You were there!  Writing or debugging too much code to pay 
attention to the politics?

I summarized it a few minutes ago over on textbook-l.  It is a low 
volume list, anyone interested in my crude, grumpy, outline of history 
can find it there.

Concisely, he screwed up bigtime.

He should have trusted the community of volunteers and stood for 
election, he would been a shoe in by a landslide ..... he was still 
picking up most of the cash expenses and everyone recognized he truly 
was one of two key founders leading the community in 
establishing/evolving a successful project approach.   His timing was 
good when he unilaterally established the non-profit.   Everyone could 
pretty well tell the wikipedia.org was on the verge of large success.  
Who wants to abandon an impending gigantic success over a petty point of 
organizational common sense?

Instead he announced he would stack the Board to protect the project 
from the feared arrival of the unwashed masses (can not lock them out 
after all .... most of them know some stuff we want them to give us to 
publish freely) and proceeded to put two handpicked trustees/employees 
along with himself and designated two slots to be elected by count of 
active handles or sock puppets.

I realize that we are supposed to assume good faith and all that but 
subsequent conflicts of interest really beg the question when combined 
with the lack of community participation and planning in setting up the 
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.   There were people on the list with legal, 
business, engineering, education, etc. education and experience that 
could have helped avoid many of the problems that you folks now face, 
which were designed into the organization at the onset and allowed to 
fester.

high regards,
lazyquasar