[Foundation-l] Hiring of Interim Executive Director and Legal Counsel

Thu Jun 15 14:34:51 UTC 2006

On 6/15/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
[snip]
> The concern is that perhaps the board is becomming too insular and not
> really paying attention to the participants on the various Wikimedia
> projects.
[snip]

Can you cite examples?

It is my belief that the board and other people deeply involved in the
foundation are currently mismanaging their time by spending far too
much of it being concerned with the potential reaction of every random
non-productive armchair expert who inevitably crops up to call foul on
any possible idea.

It's a lot easier to speculate on what we could and should do than to
actually do it... and it's a lot easier to naysay than to act.  It's
nearly impossible to find a solution to anything complex without at
least a few people writing kiloword screeds on the great evil of the
solution. We must stop allowing ourselves to be victimized by people
whose only skills are complaint and speculation and whose only assets
are time and a desire to hear themselves talk.

[snip]
> Treating the user community as the enemy is going to seriously cause
> problems in the future if it is not addressed right away.  And some
> recent comments on this mailing list have made me feel like just that.
[snip]

Where has the foundation treated the community like the enemy? Which
community? Which comments? What could have been done better?