[Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] A proposal for organisation

Thu Jun 15 12:46:46 UTC 2006

On 6/15/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Delphine Ménard wrote:

> > So we'd have the following defined roles
> >
> > *Community members (members of all Wikimedia projects)
> >
> > *Project management committees - for us, these would be people within
> > the community appointed by resolution of the board of directors of the
> > Wikimedia Foundation. Once appointed, the PMC members have a right to
> > propose to add members in their PMC. The PMC would be in charge of
> > making sure the legal aspects of each projects are taken care of and
> > observed, make sure that procedures are followed in the development of
> > the projects. These are not automatically the editors with the
> > greatest number of edits, but rather those who have shown a commitment
> > to the organisation and the day-to-day running of the projects, taking
> > care of legal issues, procedure issues etc. They'd have a
> > responsibility and an oversight role. Not an editing power as such
> > (ie. they can't impose their POV on an article). Their frame of action
> > will have to be very clearly defined, but if it is, they'd be an asset
> > to the projects.
>
>
> Correction : in the ASF, the PMC are chosen by the community itself. By
> support from the community (a bit as we agree on our sysops).
> In our case, that makes sense, because the board does not know enough
> the local community to suggest names necessarily in a wise fashion.
> It seems to me as well these PMC should pretty much be self-organised.
> However, it would probably be best that the board has a veto over those.
> Another option would be that they be appointed by board upon a
> suggestion of names given by their community.
> I would myself support "elected by community with board veto".

Right, I missed the election part, and jumped to the resolution part. My bad.

>
> The PMC have a couple of officers, such as a chair and a secretary.
> Those could either be appointed by the board or appointed by committee
> members with veto from board. But in any cases, the officers have a
> legal responsability, so should absolutely be RealPerson.
>
>
> > *Wikimedia Foundation members - those would be nominated by the board,
> > proposed to the board by anyone else who feels someone should be a
> > Foundation member. They could be issued directly from the community,
> > from the PMCs or from anywhere else.
>
> Correction again. WMF members should not be appointed by the board. They
> should be elected by the community. I would even go as far as to suggest
> that there should be NO board veto over these ones. If a problematic
> person slips in, it will not be a big deal, because of the size of that
> membership. We could expect a membership of over 100 people. They could
> indeed be issued from anywhere.

Here I do not understand if you're correcting my understanding of how
ASF works, or my application to WMF.

This part:
"How does someone get ASF Member
ASF member is a person that was nominated by current members and elected
due to merit for the evolution and progress of the foundation. Members
care for the ASF itself."

is not clear as to who elects the ASF members. My understanding is
that they were nominated by an ASF member (or through an ASF member
upon recommandation from someone external) and voted in by the
existing ASF members. Seems I am wrong.

> > *Wikimedia Foundation board of directors - are elected within the pool
> > of members of the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> Note : in the ASF, all board members are actually *from* the pool of
> members and elected by the members.
> We might wish to make it possible for "externals" to join the board as
> well. In this case, we could imagine having the membership pool electing
> for an "external" to join the board (now, the question is, could we
> imagine 100 people voting to allow, say, Stallman, to join the board ?
> Would that be reasonable ?). Or we could have board members been allowed
> to appoint up to xx external people to get on the board.

Well, my take on that, and how I understood it, is that ASF members
could come from outside, since they were voted in by the existing
members. But if it is the community that elects the ASF members, then
that is moot.
[snip]

> > As I see it, this is indeed an interesting bit. To answer Tim's
> > concerns (and I agree with Lukasz comment, btw), I believe the fact
> > that members of the Wikimedia Foundation would be appointed by the
> > board actually make it pretty "safe" for anyone who might have a
> > problem with a community elected body. For the record, I am one of
> > those. A great editor in a virtual project does not make a great board
> > member in a real-life organisation, and the predominance of one
> > language or one project does not ensure harmonious representation. The
> > model might seem restraining at first (only the board's "friends"
> > could be considered as members of the Wikimedia Foundation) but in a
> > mid-term perspective, I cannot see the board only appointing their
> > best friends/supporters, as it would not scale. And the larger the
> > body that nominates, the more diversified the people on it.
>
> This is the place where I do not understand your explanation.
> If the board appoints members, and is then elected by members... we
> might just get stuck in a loop. This is not at all what the AFS did. The
> community elect the membership. The membership elect the board.
> I think that this model could get very much in the wrong direction... if
> the membership is very limited in size (it would actually be a
> pre-election of the board).
> But if the membership is rather around 100 people (for example), then
> the risk of having a total mess in the elected body is actually pretty
> limited.

And this is where we seem to disagree. The board might choose to keep
people out as long as possible, but it is neither in their interest,
nor in the interest of the organisation. If people are voted into the
membership by the existing members, there has to come a time where the
body that votes the members in is big enough to ensure diversity. Of
course, if the board and the first members stop at 10 people, then the
model doesn't work. My take is that membership of 10 people is rather
stupid, and that 100 sounds like a better approach, whether it is set
as a goal to reach in a certain time frame, whether the number is set
etc. would still need to be determined.

>
> Note that a suggestion I would do is to include amongst groups of
> voters, meta and chapters. This would largely tip the balance in favor
> of those who are *actually* working for Foundation issues.

You forget that many meta users and chapter members are *also* editors
in a project or another. This could lead to people either voting
twice, or having to choose sides (the project or the chapter? meta or
wikipedia?)
>
> We might get to something like
> * Wikipedia can elect up to 30 members overall to become members
> * Wikibooks can elect up to 20 ...
> * Wikiquote can elect up to 1 ... (just kidding)
> * Meta can elect up to 20 members
> * All chapters members can elect up to 20 members
>
> etc...
>
> It may be that people are supported in two places. So what ? Who cares
> if there is no strictly fixed number ?
>
> There is another point...
> You said "a good project editor does not necessarily make a good
> Foundation member".
> Yup... so what about "forcing" people to make a *choice* ?
> Either PMC member... or Foundation member ?
> The same skills are not required...

Yes, that is indeed a must-be requirement. You have to chose your battles.

>
> (as a reminder, all PMC must have 2 Foundation member on them. These 2
> guys may volunteer or be appointed by board or appointed by MWF members.
> But only these 2 may be both on WMF membership AND a PMC).
>
>
> > The way the PMC are set up also gives the board an oversight. However,
> > it would be stupid from the board to appoint on the PMCs people who
> > have absolutely no community support, because it would make the PMC
> > members' job way harder. So in our case, the appointement of PMCs
> > could be coupled with polls within communities as to who should be on
> > the PMCs. Note that as I understand it, PMCs members have a real life
> > responsibility, which would call for a disclosure of their real life
> > identity. I would argue that PMC members are not necessarily stewards
> > or bureaucrats, which would still be elected as "trusted" community
> > members", but rather people who have made clear what their skills and
> > agendas are as to the responsibility they are offered in being part of
> > a PMC.
>
> Nod. The PMC members could be elected by project, with a veto from WMF.
> Or a pool be elected by project, and the final members appointed by WMF
> (roughly, the english arbcom system).
> I would not suggest that all should give their real life identity as it
> would exclude too many people. We might require that only from the chair
> and co.

I personally don't like the veto system. It is uncomfortable both for
the board *and* the people involved. Pool to choose from is much
better.

> The *most* important point would be to very very clearly define their
> scope of action. They would have no particular rights as editors over
> the other editors for example, nor would they have the right to
> run/manage the local projects as "editor in chief".

This is where any model fails, coming to think of it. If the PMC's are
elected by the community and have some kind of oversight granted by
legal means, where does the "legal" part of their task stops and the
"community mandate" starts? If those PMC's are held by community
recognition, it is my belief that they will, at some point, have to
make a choice.

The big problem with Wikimedia as I see it, is that we are trying to
apply something that works to build an encyclopedia (utter democracy,
collaborative community decisions) to a world with different rules
(legal, financial, etc.), and most of all, rules which can't really be
changed with a community decision the way we change spelling or
bibliography rules.

The same way copy/pasting the ASF model, or the Greenpeace model, ot
the US Federal model, you name it, doesn't work, copy/pasting the
Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects model to the organisation doesn't work
either.

So well, I'll have to think about this more.

Delphine
-- 
~notafish