Wikimedia Board of Trustees/Archive1

This page was used to discuss a Wikimedia Board of Trustees before it was announced that only there would be only two positions on the board for user representatives. As most of this discussion occured before the structure of the board was known, much of it is outdated.

• See Board of Trustees for the current discussion and views about the current Board.

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The Board of Trustees has been announced. This page is to discuss the issues related to the Board of Trustees. For the board procedures, go to board manual. For the ideal board, go to The ideal Wikipedia board.

Purpose and discretion of a board

The purpose of a board is generally to provide vision, and take long term, strategic decisions. The purpose of a sysop is to take short term, tactical decisions. While I can see the benefits of having sysop representation on the Wikipedia board, I think it would be silly to have the board as simply being all sysops.

Not according to the sysops, who simply don't see the problem in utterly trusting their editorial opinions, definition of vandalism, IP block power. Amazing actually that access to this hard ban power is accepted as a qualification for membership on a nonprofit board. It should disqualify.

There are a few sysops who are more active and more respected as senior members of the community. The sysop page lists 104, which is way too many; a few of the more "important" sysops ought to be on the board. --Geoffrey 01:25 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

For "important" read "those who have never used their IP block power other than on a simple vandal". Using it should get you thrown off the board. Likewise for stating an opinion on "who is" behind any anonymous ID. When a board member is "outing", it becomes a problem for the whole organization as any person accused of anything by a board member can actually sue the nonprofit entity, even if that person was not "acting as a board member". If that person was actually the "sysop representative" on the board, the defense for this is pretty thin.

Although this might get me on the board (^_^) and I am against banning a simple, probably onetime vandal, I don't see any reason why we should do that. Banning a simple vandal by IP is a perfectly legitimate act, and there is no reason to outlaw it for board members. LittleDan 18:12, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Qualities

What qualities do we want in members of our wikipedia board?

• Sense of ethics?
• Working knowledge of politics and/or law?
• Creativity?
• Friends - social capital?
• Ideas?
• Some special understanding/experience/advice?
• Representing a particular viewpoint or group of users?

What do we not want in members of our wikipedia board?

• micromanagement? - we probably don't want a board to get involved in every petty edit conflict.

Petty? no. But it would be cool for them to be able to veto the bigger conflicts that drown out everything else on WikiEN-l...such as the capitalization one a while back? If they could arbitrarily pick an interim concensus until the decision is eventually reached , that might be useful. --Geoffrey 01:25 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

• record of indiscretion in legal matters, e.g. easy accusations in writing

Board roles

Individual board members may take more than one of these roles - this doesn't imply a size, just list what jobs the board needs to do

• Chair
• Treasurer - someone to keep track of donations or other funding, and keep track of how money is spent
• Secretary - take minutes, organise meeting times, miscellaneous board administration
• User representative - someone that users can talk to to bring up particular issues that they feel the board should discuss. Selected by some kind of vote by Wikipedia users.
• Sysop representative - similar role for sysops (who may have different concerns)
• Troll liaison - try to figure out what current disputes and systemic bias are - anti-groupthink, procedural nitpicking, systemic bias of current users and sysops, POVs not otherwise considered - would take a special personality to do this right - without this, project surely stagnates into a simple cabal
  • Also a troll seat on the board not attached to any one "person" - but this could be used by ordinary inoffensive users too, if they want to bring up any issue anonymously to the board
  • In other words - a "black hat"
• Public relations - organise press releases, give interviews, etc. Trying to find funding probably comes in here.
• Legal advice - inevitably, issues of law are going to arise - an actual lawyer would seem beneficial
• Community advice - someone with experience running other community sites
• Editorial advice - someone with experience creating an encyclopedia-like resource
• Design advice - someone that can advise on usability and keep a standard and consistant look and feel across all projects.
• Software architecture - name and guide w:Wikipedia:Software Phase IV

Dual roles

Some of these could be dual roles, where one person wears both hats. This keeps the initial board size small. For example

• user rep and sysop rep (and "black hat"?)
• chair and PR
• treasurer and secretary
• design advice and software architecture

Why just a Board?

Why just a board? Why not a board and an Advisory Council? Is Wikimedia a membership organization? Will volunteers have a voice on the board (some NPOs do not have volunteer representation specifically stated). An Advisory Council can be made of individuals who can contribute to Wikimedia without the fiduciary duties of board members. Many of the suggestions above can still be directed by the volunteers, it does not have to be a hierarchical organization controlled by the top down, the board can be their just to allow all the Wikipedia type projects to flourish through the unique, evolutionary style of decisionmaking that makes Wikimedia so special and open. Some of this stuff that is suggested sounds like Wikimedia is going to be just another corporate undertaking (like a hospital or large university press). Is that necessary? It might be better to have a small group of people who can actually meet (3-5) on an ocassional basis as the board and have a larger group of Advisors who can have open membership type meetings to discuss whatever comes up, only real basic disagreements would ever reach the board, everything else can be resolved the way it is resolved now, seems to be working pretty well, no? Alex756

I think we should explore some of these options. Several months ago I suggested a Board of Trustees. This would be a small group whose primary responsibility would be to ensure that Wikimedia remains consistent with its founding principles. Jimbo would be ideally suited as one of these trustees. It would not benefit us if his non-arm's length participation were to compromise Wikimedia's charitable status.

Regrettably, I find that most of what has been said so far betrays the fact that most of the participants haven't got a clue about what they are discussing. Although a Board will undoubtedly have the power to establish banning policy, this is not the time or place to attempt to pre-micromanage those outcomes. it is also premature to accept nominations for directors before the by-laws have at least provisionally been adopted.

IMHO we need an ad hoc committee of people interested in such things as by-laws to prepare a rough first draft of such a document. Obviously, such a committee could not decide anything. It could only report, but giving some kind of structure to this discussion would be very helpful. Eclecticology 22:45, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Board size

Wikipedia really doesn't need much admin - how does five people sound? --Martin

I agree. Some of these seem unnecessary. Why should we have a troll representative? Design advice seems unnecessary, individual projects will (and do) choose their own look and feel.

Recipe for chaos and conflict - simply codify existing power relationships with no outreach or attempt to fix longstanding issues, let all projects self-design so there is no cognitive complexity gain for sticking within the "family"

As for secretary, it is very easy on most IRC clients to save an archive of the chat, and we don't need a whole person to organize meeting times, just have the chair do it.

That's an option: we can have one person doing multiple roles. I listed some options above.

I really don't see why we need "community advice", as wikipedia is unique and unlike other community sites.

It is *either* an encyclopedia *or* a "community", but it can't be both

That's just hubris - Wikipedia has a community of folks, and the resulting problems are basically that of any similar online community. The community is, and should always be, a means not an end - but it's still there. We're not as unique as some suppose.

In this case, I think the chair should be PR, because the press wants to contact the person in charge. That leaves Chair, Treasurer, User rep, Sysop rep, Legal advice, and PR, which I think would make good board jobs. An additional open advisiory council would also help. It is obvious that Jimbo should be chair and that Alex should be legal, but who should the rest be? I'll put nominations below, but I'll sign my name here w:User:LittleDan:

• Chair
  1. LDan nominates Jimbo

• Treasurer
  1. Maveric149 (if nobody else wants to do it; I was Student Body Treasurer and Student Store General Manager of my high school)

• User representative
  1. User:Larry Sanger

• Sysop representative
  1. Trolls nominate Mirwin
  2. User:Brion VIBBER

• Legal advice
  1. LDan nominates Alex756
  2. also, consider en:user:NetEsq - but we want volunteers, maybe?

Note: Jimbo wrote on the mailing list that he would be choosing everything about the board unilaterally and there's nothing we can do about it. LittleDan 18:12, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

details... ;-)

Brion certainly should be listed here, but not as a sysop representative. Rather as a developper representative. Brion does not use his sysop powers really.

I also think there should be representatives here of the different projects or subprojects. If only users/sysop of the english speaking wikipedia are on the board, the particularities of all the different projects, international wikipedias, wiktionary, etc... are likely not to be taken into account by the board, just because of a lack of information or feedback. Is this the advisory board ? I dunno. But, there is need for a source of information somehow. Anthere

All those extra things can be separate committees which are managed by the board. { MB | マイカル } 20:04, 17 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Discussion

While admittedly I am fairly new to this project, I offer these observations having dealt with such governance issues before in various other lives.

• Long-enduring organizations have a board that serves two purposes.

1. . Fundraising.
2. . Governance.

• The governance function of a long-enduring organization is:

1. . Decide who will be in charge, the limits of their authority, and how they will be compensated.
2. . Periodically review the activities of those who are in charge.
3. . Remove those who are in charge when necessary.

That's it.

The board of a foundation or nonprofit should have a most exceedingly longterm outlook, and might be made up of perhaps five or seven or nine members serving terms as long a six years.

Given the egalitarian nature of the project, one might expect such a board to nominate an executive committee that would actually make the day-to-day descisions on, for example, press releases, and banning users, and adjudication of the various and sundry petty disputes that arise within the community.

The benefit of distinguishing between the board and the executive committee is that the board can then be made up of widely respected members of the broader Internet community who would be unwilling to invest the time to attend to day to day matters. Then, eager but less well known people could be chosen for daily operations.

Kat 20:19 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hm. I think that is a good idea. Although Jimbo will definitely be on the board, me thinks. --mav

It is a good idea, with the executive committee plucked from busy folks without much time but a lot of experience setting or challenging standards - the ideal Wikipedia board lists exactly these people, but they are not, and should not, be considered part of some Internet non-community focused on technology, but representatives of those likely to be affected by an encyclopedia project. The "ideal" list is actually far too shy of people who would really distribute a version 1.0 to places and people (like destitute schools and libraries in developing nations where people are hungry to learn English, community radio stations, etc.) that would really be most affected by, and welcoming of, the CD version.

Board vs. Steering Comittee(s)?

The first paragraph currently says:

The purpose of a board is generally to provide vision, and take long term, strategic decisions.

Surely this is the purpose of a Steering Comittee, and the Board should be about the actual running of the Wikipedia (e.g. organisation of tech support, funding, primary press relations, &c.), with the SC reporting to the Board...?

Or perhaps there should be an SC for each individual Wikimedia project (Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Nupedia, Wikiquote, Wikiperhaps for the WikiMedia sofware, and so on)? Then the Board could constitute new projects by forming a new SC...

Jdforrester 19:59, 17 Sep 2003 (UTC)