[Foundation-l] Re : on (re)organizing wikimedia

Thu Jun 22 20:56:13 UTC 2006

<snip my desire for an alternative to a proportionally
representative Wikicouncil>

> Wikicouncil would certainly be a possible body to
> oversee overall 
> day-to-day operations.  It could function in
> addition to a governing 
> Board AND and advisory board. 
> 
> < snip governing Board > 
> 
> <snip advisory Board> 
> 
> A Wikicouncil needs to represent three broad groups:
> languages, 
> countries and overall projects.  It needs to avoid
> domination by any one 
> group or sub-group, and at the same time it needs to
> avoid becoming so 
> large as to become unwieldy.  The size of the
> Wikicouncil can be 
> open-ended but still include policies to slow the
> growth.
> 

Compare this paragraph with your openinig sentance:
"Wikicouncil would certainly be a possible body to
oversee overall day-to-day operations." 
I am sorry but I do not believe all this would be
effective.  I doubt it is possible to actually
assemble a group as described above, and I am
confident such a group could not oversee day-to-day
operations.

> Groups and sub-groups all need a large degree of
> autonomy, and a higher 
> level of governance should have its right to impose
> policies clearly 
> restricted.  The recommended governance scheme for
> sub-groups needs to 
> vary in relation to the size of the group.
> 
> For countries it would be easy to suggest one seat
> for each national 
> chapter as the initial model, but this could change
> as the chapter idea 
> becomes more developed.  Currently there is still
> only a handful of 
> chapters concentrated in countries with functional
> education systems and 
> internet access, and no account is taken of the size
> or etnic 
> diversities of countries.  I think that issues such
> as whether US 
> representation should be allocated to states or
> judicial districts or 
> whether Belgium should have separate French and
> Flemish representatives 
> will need to wait for a later stage of development.
> 
> For projects, size matters.  Number of articles is
> an easy metric to 
> work with for the sake of these comments.  A metric
> that also reflects 
> active membership and the number of megabytes of
> data in a project may 
> be more accurate if it can be developed.  I could
> allow for the fact 
> that Wiktionay finds stubs perfectly acceptable, or
> in Wikisource it 
> could cope with decisions of whether a given book is
> all on one page or 
> divided into chapters.
> 
> Basing this on the completely arbitrary metric of
> 25,000 main namespace 
> articles in a language on any project with that many
> articles would be 
> guaranteed one seat on the Wikicouncil.  Smaller
> languages within that 
> project would be able to combine their numbers to
> receive one seat for 
> each 25,000 articles.  Larger languages within a
> project on a sliding, 
> perhaps logarithmic, scale. 
> 
>

These paragraghs describe a very complicated
logistical mess.  And this is just about assigning
seats!  Think about how what the actual elections
would entail.  Every sub-group must decide on
citizenship; are dual citizens allowed; how far can
one subproject's policy in this regard veer from the
median of the rest.  Then the elections must actually
be conducted and counted, but those editiors who
normally count such things will probably be running so
who may perform the duties of striking sockpuppets
etc.  Then we must find election auditors with
appropriate language skills, or we can take it all at
face value and hope the whole first session of the
Wikicouncil isn't overrun by accusations of false
elections.  After all that, we will have a WikiCouncil
which I believe will be ineffective.  And honestly, it
will be mostly made up of people who are buearacrats
on a sub-project.  

I must ask is proportional representation really worth
the effort?  Even if the effort is half what I believe
it will be, do you really believe the results will be
surprising, that these representatives will not be
current leaders within projects?  If you do not
believe the effort is a problem in itself, how do you
feel about how much time it will take to execute these
elections?  

Is it not possible to gather a diversity of viewpoints
and leaders with any easier or more effective method? 
Do the editors really need to be "represented" or do
they just need to have a designated person (or group)
to approach with larger questions?

Please think for a moment about the origins of
proportional representation.  It was designed to make
sure everyone had a voice in a situation where
communication was a real problem.  I mean people had
to travel great distances (without airplanes!) to meet
and communicate. It is the lack of *organized* 
communication which I believe is our problem.  Not the
lack of ability.  After all we are speaking about
*wikis* here.  Every single editor (barring language)
is able to communicate directly with a Board Member if
they so chose.  The development of proportional
representation in order to give editors of a *wiki*
their "voice" in these matters is one of the largest
wastes of effort I have ever heard of.  I am sorry to
be so critical of ideas many of you have been working
a long time on, but the more details I hear of this
model the more confident I am that it would be
buearacracy for its own sake.  What we need is a
simple organization that allows the leaders from
sub-projects to collaborate with one another and with
the Foundation.  We need a "chain of accountabilty" to
ensure problems are solved or passed on up to until
they reach the board (with the research already
done!).  We do not need a goverment.  I think we could
build something workable from the base of the Apache
model.  I am sure there are also other models we could
work from instead.  However, I do not believe a
parlamentary goverment is one of them.

Birgitte SB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 