[Foundation-l] Opinions/suggestions for "outside" members of the board?

Mon Jun 19 21:57:26 UTC 2006

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>To continue the ongoing board development conversation....
>
>The board is considering adding some prominent person from outside the
>core Wikipedia community to the board and seeks brainstorming ideas of
>what type of person could be good, as well as mentions of names who we
>might want to approach.
>
>Larry Lessig - head of Creative Commons
>
>Mitch Kapor - head of Mozilla Foundation (Firefox), founder of EFF, and
>extremely passionate about the Wikipedia mission (and he edits
>Wikipedia, and he is absolutely fascinated by and supportive of our
>community model)
>
>Richard Stallman - needs no introduction
>
>Eben Moglen - main legal mastermind of the FSF
>
>Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!
>  
>
I think appointment to the Board of outsiders is going to be a disaster 
which discourages participation in the middle level tasks between the 
casual dropin participants and the Board.

I would be interested in what experience people think is unavailable 
from the existing participants.  If a summary of the skills and 
experience desired for specific tasks or responsibilities became 
available I suspect we could find people within the existing projects to 
run for election to the Board or for appointment to special committees.

If we need input from people who are famous for some reason we can 
invite them to address the mailing list or stand for election.

I would also be curious about how much time and effort these famous 
people have to apply to the Wikimedia Foundation Board's 
responsibilities.  Are they finished with their prior responsibilities 
or they are so excellent that they can juggle responsibilities 
effectively on several Boards?

regards,
lazyquasar