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

Wed Jun 14 05:15:33 UTC 2006

Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 6/14/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>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.
>>    
>>
>
>Are you saying that the election of Anthere and Angela was not
>legitimate ("active handles or sock puppets")? 
>
I declined to vote for them for two reasons:
1.  There was and currently is no precise method to count a legitimate 
one person one vote election.   If others choose to participate and view 
this as legitimate "democratic" elections, that is their business.
2.  The entire Wikimedia structure was setup unilaterally and stacked.   
What point in voting for the guaranteed losing faction should any 
controversial issue arise?   Consider me a concientious objector.  I 
simply abstained and attempt occasionally to influence policy, methods, 
or ideas in circulation via available communications channels.

>I would beg to differ
>on that point. While I sympathize with Tim Starling's point that
>membership would be a reasonable method to guarantee the
>organization's long term independence, I think the elections that took
>place were unquestionably fair and open, and reasonable measures were
>taken to deal with manipulation.
>  
>
Interesting.   I guess I should review the technical measures utilized 
if they are published somewhere.  I might learn something.  I was under 
the impression that with a little forethought there were some gaping 
holes in our ability to associate a specific person uniquely with a 
specific handle.

>Again, I would also like to remind you that wikipedia.org is
>wikipedia.ORG today. We take this for granted today, but it was by no
>means a guaranteed outcome, especially for a project created by an Ayn
>Rand objectivist. ;-) I would even go so far to say that Wikipedia
>could be _very_ successful (not as successful as it is, but still)
>while being proprietary. And it could have made Jimmy _lots_ of money.
>Instead he put a lot of his own money into Nupedia and Wikipedia, and
>is unlikely to get much, if any, of it back. As often as I may
>disagree with him, it is absurd to assume greed as a factor in his
>principal actions. If Jimmy wanted to be "filthy rich" (rather than
>independently wealthy), he would already _be_ filthy rich, and
>Wikipedia would be Wikipedia.COM.
>  
>
I think you are dreaming.  The dot.com changed to dot.org after some 
serious business planning got started by a few members of the 
"community" at large and with some steady pressure from other long time 
valued contributors.   A potential threat emerged to Jimbo's iron fisted 
control via paying the bills for the bandwidth and servers and he moved 
quickly to quash it via unilateral organization of the non profit and 
design of the charter for retained long term god-king status, or if 
assume good faith this was merely coincidental timing.   

If wikipedia.com had not previously embraced the FDL and then made some 
committments regarding advertisement free long term free access it might 
very well gone the way of Nupedia.   Jimbo kept his options open as long 
as possible and then moved like a good entrepreneur to succeed and 
salvage what value he could.  The fame, honorariums, and name 
recognition might yet make him a fortune or at least a high salary or 
return via Wikia, speaking engagements, or executive level consulting 
but probably not until he "over delivers" on some fairly lofty 
advertised goals.

Perhaps he has already "over delivered" adequately.  Perhaps not.  There 
seem to be a lot of people on this list making valid points regarding 
the maintenance or improvement of the overall quality of the aggregate 
data you folks currently have in Wikipedia.   It appears to be steadily 
improving to me, but I do not do any systematic sampling.  Most of the 
stuff I am interested in for research background is fairly concrete data 
and well frequented.

>That is not to say that there aren't conflicts of interest. Certainly
>Jimmy wants to make Wikia succeed, and it is important for the
>organization to be set up and run in such a way that people associated
>with Wikia (Michael, Angela and Jimmy) can (yes, _can_) recuse
>themselves when there is an obvious COI. The fact that 3 out of 5
>Board members are associated with a for-profit that stands to benefit
>from certain actions of the non-profit they lead does of course lend a
>lot of weight to arguments for a larger and more diverse Board, and
>more community involvement in the executive body. But these arguments
>should be made under the full assumption of good faith of everyone
>involved.
>  
>
We assume good faith by policy but start to decide on an individual or 
community basis that people are trolls or undesirable after a certain time.

 It is ludicrous to set up a board that in the longterm needs to recuse 
up to four fifths of its membership regarding much of its 
responsibility.   You are welcome to assume good faith as long as you 
like.   This is an amateurish setup that should never have been 
established when dealing with publicly donated funds.  It should be 
fixed as soon as feasible with some style and grace.  The current board 
could establish some appropriate useful policy for future board members 
regarding conflicts of interest and independence whether elected or 
appointed and then the people with conflicts should ease themselves off 
the board at completion of their terms or divest their conflicting 
investments.   Everybody gets their ticket punched so they can put on 
their resume they were Founding Board Members or Trustees of the 
prestigious Wikimedia Foundation and the conflicts go away in the next 
round of elections or appointments.  It may not be much for their hard 
work on our behalf but at least it some recognition for their efforts.

So in answer to the original question.   No.  I would not consider being 
on this Board until the incoming legal experts have time to revise some 
things appropriately.   Besides the largest project I ever managed was 
only valued at about $14 million dollars and I only had to design and 
staff two departments of 12 to 14 IT professionals each for the software 
development and transition of data processing systems into operations.   
Clearly any expertise or mere knowledge I might have is invalidated by 
the shift from super minis to pc blade servers.  Different chipsets and 
protocols to yack at the people doing the real work about.  Obsolete.  
8)  Perhaps I could claim experience with "volunteers" since they were 
all government or contractor personnel and had to be managed with 
appropriate delicacy and incentives.   Alas all my more recent 
experience is with direct paid suborbinates of my own company.   Nothing 
voluntary there.  Although everyone was required to track their own time 
and fill out their own time sheet on their own.   None of that time 
clock or me having to be there to count their actual time every day on 
my toes bullshit.  Although, flextime was tricky in hunting season.  
Getting them in on critical or emergency tasks in hunting season might 
be considered applicable experience with "volunteers".

Besides, we need lawyers, accountants and business managers.   
Organizational people.   Payroll and position descriptions.   Benefit 
package negotiators.  Cash flow projections and budgets.   Fund raising 
celebs.  Yeah! Fun stuff.  The computers and software development seem 
to working out ok.  The Board can send simply send an email to Brion, 
you, or one of the other development gurus should any non organizational 
issues ever arise .... or perhaps one of the excellent developers would 
like his ticket punched so he can raise his consulting fees in a  year 
or year?   

Should be an interesting election or appointment season for us 
interested bystanders.

regards,
lazyquasar