[Foundation-l] Relocation announcement
Florence Devouard
Anthere9 at yahoo.com
Sat Sep 22 19:02:57 UTC 2007
Anthony wrote:
> On 9/22/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Anthony wrote:
>>> Wikia is in the San Francisco area. Any chance they'd be willing to
>>> donate some office space to Wikipedia?
>> Even if they had, we should not accept it (and I doubt they would
>> propose).
>
> Why wouldn't they propose? Wikia wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for
> the success of Wikipedia [sic]. A donation of some office space is
> the least they could do.
They could do it, and never fail to support us during Wikimania. Angela
also very nicely proposed to support the fundraising effort with banners
and announcement on Wikia sites. That is not the issue. They have the
good will. There are friendly terms between us. But Wikia is Wikia. And
WMF is WMF. Period.
The issue is that we both benefit from staying separate from an
organization point of view, both from fiscal perspective and from a
communication perspective
Fiscal: *this* belongs to this organization, *that* belongs to that
organization. From an auditing perspective, having to identify who
bought the staples is a nightmare (and more seriously, on whether some
inappropriate arrangements are occuring between two organizations).
Communication: we spent the entire past year trying to make it clear
that the two organizations were unrelated. It is not to our benefit to
be confused with Wikia.
It is not easy to raise funds when Wikia just got 1000 millions of
dollars from Amabon.com.
It is not easy to explain to the press that the search engine has
nothing to do with us.
Jimbo went to great lengths to explain the difference between the two.
People dealing with the press spent HOURS on these topics to get
articles to be corrected.
The message is now beginning to be understood. There is no way we should
do anything that would bring confusion again.
>> We have gone through great efforts to fully separate from them
>> and we now have no more financial/legal/technical relationships. Only
>> love relationships, which is just fine.
>>
> Well, there still a lot of person-overlap, between the board, the
> advisory board, employees, arb com, etc. And there's still the whole
> interwiki linking mess. And now, they're gonna be in the same
> metropolitan area (which surely will help with the whole
> people-overlap part).
Whilst there are two overlaps on the board (with all due COI
documentation, and lack of vote in cases of conflicts), I do not know of
any overlap within the staff (can you cite a name ?). I see not why
Angela being on the advboard implies that there is a relationship.
Last, whether there are people both working at Wikia and at the arbcom
is completely irrelevant to the Foundation itself.
As I said earlier, the days of Michael on the board are counted. He does
not have time for this role any more, so this will no more be an issue.
Jimbo... though at Wikia... is hardly in SF himself. Besides, I see no
reason why he would go to the office on a regular basis. That's not his
role any more. In short, there is no reason for an overlap.
And I would not be in favor of ANY overlap for the reasons above
mentionned.
> At least this "relationship" would be to the benefit of the WMF.
I disagree with that statement.
ant
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