Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2008/Candidates/Questions/3
The results were announced on 26 June 2008.
| 2008 board elections |
|---|
| Organization |
Eligible voters can ask questions to all candidates on this set of pages. Please read the instructions below and use the link provided to ask a question.
Instructions
We ask voters to leave no more than 4 non-duplicative, brief and rigidly-relevant questions. Questions which do not directly relate to candidacy in the Board Election will be removed at the discretion of the Committee. Please be respectful of the time that candidates must spend answering, and the time other voters must spend reading.
Please do not use the question pages to link to other pages with more questions (to ask further or non-eligable questions, contact the candidates on their talk pages or via email). You can ask your question in any language; if necessary, the election committee will try to find translators. Click here to add a question.
- Candidates
It is strongly suggested that answers to questions do not exceed approximately 1600 characters per question (not counting spaces). Please do not link to another page containing an extended answer, although relevant links used for descriptive purposes are fine. Due to the number of voters and candidates, this is necessary to keep these pages readable, informative and therefore useful for voters.
Directory
For readability, the questions page has been broken up into subpages, each containing 20 questions and the answers by the candidates.
Questions
Your candidacy
Do you consider yourself the best candidate? Why? Hillgentleman 02:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
| Ad Huikeshoven (Dedalus) |
|
|---|---|
| Alex Bakharev |
Yes, I have put myself in the first position then voting. I happen be the only candidate whose wikiphilosophy and wikidecisions I completely share. I happen to know this candidate (myself) the best and I could recommend him (duh). There are a few candidates who IMHO do not want the best for the project and see this elections as a some form of a demonstration against the WMF. It is their democratic right but I hope the voters will be smart enough to google for their offsite remarks. There are others who want to keep the status quo. I personally want strong changes in the project but do not want to breal anything working. I want us to have the great projects not the great upheavals (see q:Pyotr Stolypin). There are a few candidates who seem to be fine but whom I do not know as well as myself |
| Craig Spurrier (Cspurrier) |
Each candidate running offers something different, there is not one candidate who is best in all areas, nor will there ever be. I believe I am able to best address the issue that I think are most important. We need a candidate who is able to make the community and particularly the sister projects feel its voice is being heard, and make sure it is actually being heard. We need someone who can improve communications between the project and the board . I believe I am the best candidate to make this happen. |
| Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester) |
Yes. I have the experience in the fields that are most needed on the board: legal, financial, non-profit governance and public relations. I have been an avid spokesperson for Wikimedia in the international media. I have worked closely with the staff and board members, and will be able to work well with them on the board. I respect the role that the board is meant to play, and the limits that should be placed on it. I strongly care about the opinion and voice of the community, and will act as its representative. And, perhaps most importantly, I am proposing changes that are not pipe dreams. I'm realistic about what can and cannot happen, and is feasible for the board to do and what is not. I am not making empty promises to the electorate. I can sum it up in the following: The best candidate for the election is someone that on Day One of their term on the board already possesses the experience with large budgets, experience with the foundation's legal issues, experience speaking on behalf of the foundation, experience with being on the board of a non-profit, experience working with the members of the foundation office, and experience and familiarity with the board they will serve on and the community they will be representing. That candidate is me. |
| Gregory Kohs (Thekohser) |
There was no way of my knowing whether I would be the "best" candidate until the field of 15 was closed. I earnestly wished to see someone with offline professional credentials in publishing reference resources, to whom I most likely would have bowed in deference. But none seems to have emerged.
Steve makes a good point below about editorial policies. For those who think the Foundation and WMF Staff have been doing an excellent job building accountability and excellence in online media for these projects, then you have probably 13 or 14 better candidates than me to choose from. However, if you have serious concerns that there is a severe weakness of accountability and ethics in media at the uppermost levels of the Foundation, then I very well would be the "best" candidate (along with Steve), because we seem to be the two calling for the most pro-active content and user management changes from the Foundation level. |
| Harel Cain (Harel) |
It would be quite arrogant for me to say that I'm the best in all parameters. Life is more complex than that. I think I'm a true representative of the community, and I can bring to the board the perspective of the somewhat long-forgotten "average" editor, with an emphasis on the less-represented and less-understood smaller projects, where some of the true spirit of the origins of Wikimedia still remains because they haven't become the huge political power struggles that enwiki perhaps has. I am very committed to Wikimedia, very involved in my home project, have gained lots of experience and trust there, as well as in our local chapter (see my other answers for more details), and attended Wikimania. I do not come to the board to make a huge nihilistic revolution, or as some kind of fierce opposition, rather to represent the interests of the community. I have worked in big organizations. I can read and write in three languages, two of them those of our biggest projects. Admittedly, I do not have direct experience in running big non-profit organizations or in organizational finances. But don't we have expert seats and paid stuff for those matters? You're also welcome to read all my other answers here where I explain my views in more detail. |
| Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro) |
Again this is a very broad question, where there are many different questions subsumed. Let me answer it by breaking down the larger question into smaller, more detailed portions...
|
| Kurt M. Weber (Kmweber) |
no response yet. |
| Matthew Bisanz (MBisanz) |
I believe I offer the best combination of skills and qualities in a Board member, otherwise, I would not waste voters' time reading and my own time in writing these answers. I am experienced in non-profit finance, accounting, strategic planning, I have edited extensively on the projects and understand the wiki-philosophy. I an open to change and growth and seek to include as many viewpoints as possible in making decisions, and would seek the communities' betterment in my actions as Board member. |
| Paul Williams (Skenmy) |
I believe that I am the best candidate because of my experience with projects outside of Wikipedia. I believe that the issues affecting these projects have a strong hold on the overall development of the Foundation, and these need to be addressed as much as everything on Wikipedia. I am also willing to listen and learn from the communities - what they need/want is often better than what the Board imposes. |
| Ray Saintonge (Eclecticology) |
Absolutely! I would be wasting my time if I thought otherwise. I have broad experience, both on and off wiki. I am not afraid to try new ideas, but am cautious enough to not be reckless. I can listen. |
| Ryan Postlethwaite |
no response yet. |
| Samuel Klein (Sj) |
no response yet. |
| Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist) |
Like most candidates in most elections, I consider myself to be the best candidate. In brief, the reasons for this are as follows:
I believe that the combination of these two factors - combined with a large number of much more minor factors - makes me the best candidate. |
| Ting Chen (Wing) |
I would not say that I am THE best candidate. I have certain qualities, and I lack other qualities. I am in aware of that. What I think is important for this seat is, that the candidate should be able to represent the community. He should be doing the basic works. Only so he can know which decision is good for an editor or an administrator. I know the european culture, and I know the chinese culture. I know the german Wikipedia, the english Wikipedia and the chinese Wikipedia quite well. I think this is what qualifies me. But there are also communities that I don't know well, for example the hebrew community (of which I only know from Heral's talk last year), or the spanisch speaking community, and that's what I would like to improve. Some of the other candidates are also from the community. They are also very good candidates, and they bring other qualities. For example they know other communities better, or they have financial and accounting knowledges. I find it difficult to say someone is the best. We have all different views on things. And it is to you to say, I think he represents my view better, or I think he has the quality that can represent the community better. |
Recent scandals
In the past 18 months or so, we have seen Jimmy Wales appoint a Wikia, Inc. employee (Essjay) to the Arbitration Committee, apparently knowing he had deceived the community and the mainstream media about his academic and professional credentials. Wales later framed the appointment as having been done "at the request of and unanimous support of the ArbCom". We have seen at least two private mailing lists hosted on Wikia servers and moderated by SlimVirgin and by JzG, where Wikipedia editors were singled out for criticism and surveillance. We have seen allegations of financial expense reimbursement requests from Jimmy Wales that included a $1200 dinner for four, two bottles of wine exceeding $500, and a Moscow massage parlor visit. While these reimbursements were refused internally and quietly, the public-facing response to the media has been to frame the whistle-blower as a "disgruntled ex-employee" and that (according to Sue Gardner) "Jimmy has never done anything wrong." Finally, we saw a situation where Jimmy Wales sought to have modified the Wikipedia biography of a woman he was soon to engage physically in a Washington hotel room, and JzG was there to do the modifying. I have to assume that none of these accusations are libelous, since they have not been legally rebutted to date. I will retract any portion of this question that is proven to be untruthful.
As a Board candidate, how do you feel about these various incidents, and what would you propose to do, if anything, to prevent similar recurrences? Thekohser 15:53, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
| Ad Huikeshoven (Dedalus) |
Jimmy Wales isn't a competitor in this election, no use for throwing mud at him, and anyway I am not engaging in a below the belt mudthrowing campaign. |
|---|---|
| Alex Bakharev |
I see that WMF and Wikipedia often is a target of an unfounded and blown out of proportion media criticism. Googling on the election matters I have bumped into La Monde hatchet piece on Florence. It is absolutely incredible that a civilized society can allow a major newspaper to print such a stinking piece of crap. It is absolutely awful and shameful that we were not able to protect her. I am also disappointed with former employees of WMF and prominent Wikipedians with high respect in community who are engaged into such low attacks. They want to fork English Wikipedia. They have all the rights for it but it is it necessary to destroy what we all were trying to build?
One of the reason is that we have grown big enough to be newsworthy but have not grow means of self-defense yet and so we are a soft target to any media-idiot. I would also suspect a foul play - the desire to influence the leadership of a fund having 7 billion dollars of potential assets but operated on peanuts. The third reason is that with a very small budget used to support our staff and with very challenging tasks they have we are bound to make mistakes. It is good that we seem to not repeat old mistakes so we are at least good in learning on our own mistakes though it will be better to learn on mistakes of other people. Regarding those incidents (I had to be brief and my info might not be complete):
|
| Craig Spurrier (Cspurrier) |
no response yet. |
| Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester) |
I deplore Essjay's conduct. I won't comment on Jimmy here because he cannot intervene here to defend himself. I will say, however, that I am not in favor of a community founder seat. Jimmy's position should be an appointed one (or if the board decides not to appoint him, he could run for a community elected seat). I'm also not going to comment on either the issues in Jimmy's personal life (which are personal), or allegations regarding expenses (which has been done to death before). With regard to Wikia and Wikimedia mailing lists, I disagree with Wikia mailing lists being used to conduct Wikimedia affairs in secret, but with that said, we don't have control over what Wikia does. Even if it wasn't Wikia, it could be a google group, or a yahoo group, or some private listserv anywhere else. These and other issues facing the foundation are well served by an increase in transparency. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and we could use more of it. |
| Gregory Kohs (Thekohser) |
This is an outstanding question, and I'm pleased that it was asked, because it certainly shows a clear split among Wikimedians -- even the Board candidates. There are those who think these are rare, minor problems that can be overlooked or minimized by circling the wagons. And then there are those who have deep concerns why these public relations blunders have been allowed to fester and repeat themselves.
In fact, my biggest concern is that the above-mentioned incidents only scratch the surface of what non-transparent schemes are actually brewing within the Foundation's top echelon. How many Wikimedians have any clue about Elevation Partners' strategic plan for the Foundation? How many know the real status of the relationship between Jimmy Wales and Michael Davis? Huge battles for control are yet to be fought, and 99% of the Wikimedia community has nary a clue as to their magnitude, or even who's allied on which side. Even if I don't win this election, hundreds of you will come back to this page sometime in the future (2010? 2012? I cannot say) and remark that I truly warned you, yet my message was rejected. |
| Harel Cain (Harel) |
I'm unfortunate to answer this question later than most of my colleagues here, so I do not have a lot of new things to add. Sarcasticidealist and Wing below, for example, have given very good answers. If you recognize that every organization has failures, consider the foundation's relatively short history and the unique position Jimbo has and had in it, remember that every coin has two sides and every story can be told a multitude of ways, then you realize that this is not the huge corruption scandal that you try to make it, but rather a collection of separate incidents, some more serious and some trivial. As it is not Jimbo who's up for election here, I do not see a lot of reasons to dwell into these matters, beyond stating that I have no tolerance whatsoever to corruption and think that the foundation and the board should exhibit spotless moral and financial conduct. |
| Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro) |
The only thing I would add to what Ray Saintonge put perfectly into words below, is that personally I find it gratifying, simply awesome, that the criticisms on the financial matters front that wikimedia foundation has to field, are to do with the way that financial controls of how the foundations *own* money is spent, worked _flawlessly_.
Really; wake me up, when we are in a situation where some foundation trustee or staff person is having undeclared lavish meetings with COI bodies, where those meetings expenses are picked up by those COI organizations *themselves*. Now *that* _I_ would consider an alarm bell worth getting out of bed for. |
| Kurt M. Weber (Kmweber) |
no response yet. |
| Matthew Bisanz (MBisanz) |
The majority of incidents you mention are incidents involving the en.wp community (EssJay, Durova, JzG, Marsden), while a select few, the liquor reimbursement primarily, involve the Foundation. As to the en.wp incidents, the community at that wiki has historically made Jimbo its "Founder" and given him various prerogatives. If they decided to remove those prerogatives, it would occur with no intervention from the Foundation, if they decided to transfer them to another individual, same thing, a community issue, not a Foundation issue.
I should further note that it is my understanding that the liquor reimbursement was declined internally by the Foundation. In my prior non-profit experience, I would frequently deal with individuals requesting liquor reimbursements, and had to politely remind them that organization rules and federal guidelines prohibited such reimbursement. As long as no money was acutally misused, there would be no reason to publically shame the individual by announcing they had submitted unreimbursable receipts. Now to the larger question of maintaining the Foundation's reputation. Well, when Gov. Pataki nominated me to President Bush for a seat on the Selective Service Draft Board, I had to undergo a rather thorough background check before the President appointed me. Ideally I'd say anyone being employed by the Foundation, having access to nonpublic Oversight/Checkuser data, sitting on the Board, or being an SQL access/Root access developer, should undergo a similarly rigorous background check. Lacking access to a federal database, vetting all current and future individuals in that position through a rigorous private background check provider, for past criminal and financial history would be something I would greatly support, in order to reduce the likelihood of fiduciary misconduct and the resulting public scandal. |
| Paul Williams (Skenmy) |
It is my opinion that this is simply an attack on the named individuals, and is trying to resurface these issues that were dealt with and done with. I do not wish to answer this question. If I have misjudged the question, please feel free to contact me. |
| Ray Saintonge (Eclecticology) |
Without addressing the merits or lack of merits of the specific cases mentioned, it would appear that these are very few, and it would not be appropriate to give them any more weight than they deserve. Like it or not, it's a fact of life that these issues will arise; given the size of the organization I believe that they are proportionally very few.
When we blow these incidents so completely out of proportion to the alleged offence, we do ourselves more damage than the original could ever have done on his own. Some things just need to be handled quietly and with discretion, and not by feeding the journalistic trolls that run the scandal sheets. |
| Ryan Postlethwaite |
no response yet. |
| Samuel Klein (Sj) |
no response yet. |
| Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist) |
I'll comment on each of the incidents to the extent that I consider appropriate, but first I'd like to make a couple of general points that are relevant to more than one of the incidents:
Those things said, here are some brief responses to each issue:
|
| Ting Chen (Wing) |
I don't want to comment the allegations in detail because I don't know the details. I only want to give a common reply. At first I think it is good that we are watched. To be watched means to be controled and make less errors. And that is important.
Every organisation, started from the United Nation, and down to the smallest companies, make failures. People are failable. No rule, no law, no codices can 100% prevent people make failures. I don't know if we really have such things, if not, I think we should make a codex for all foundation employees and board members. We cannot prevent people to conduct crime this way, but we can remind people don't do things they are not aware of. I want to say something about Jimbo at this point. As I have mentioned in an earlier question, I am not interested in gossips and scandals. Beside created Wikipedia, Jimbo had, especially in the first two or three years, made some very good and very wise decisions to make our project that, what it is now: He defined that the goal of our projects is to create and provide free knowledges, he created the foundation as the organisation who maintains our projects, he also defined the most principles of our projects, its openness, its neutrality. He would have be able to decide otherwise. But he didn't, and that alone is reason enough for me to respect him. Even today he take part in community discussions, he never misused his founder's or celebrity's position to be arrogant or commanding before the community. He has a very high reputation inside the community. You see it everytime on a WikiMania conference. Jimbo owned special thanks from the chinese community for his emphasis of our NPOV policy and his try, though without success, to explain our goal and our policy to chinese officials, that we are not a subversive website against them. Maybe he made some errors, who not? Maybe he lerned some lessons, others never learn. Some people like to cast stones, maybe they are without sin. |
Determining number of community-elected seats
Would you support an amendment which would indicate at least the spirit of the following text: The number of community-elected seats must be always at least equal to number of board appointed seats; and no less than one-half the total number of seats, minus one: (TS/2)-1, round down.
To illustrate: Under the current restructure, there are 10 members. 1 founder + 4 "special expertise" = 5 board-appointed seats. However, there are only 3 community-elected seats, which is less than the number of board-elected seats; and which is equal to less than one-half the board membership (regardless of whether you subtract 1). So, to meet this requirement, the number of community-elected seats would thus be increased from 3 to 5.
Is this something that you would support? - Jc37 23:45, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
| Ad Huikeshoven (Dedalus) |
I count chapter appointed seats as community seats - thus - board appointed seats and community seats will soon balance. |
|---|---|
| Alex Bakharev |
Yes, I would support such an amendment. It is sensible. |
| Craig Spurrier (Cspurrier) |
I would support an amendment like that which you suggest. I also support increasing the number of community seats beyond that. I believe the majority, if not the entire board, should be selected from the community. The community is what makes the Wikimedia Foundation projects function. If the board is not able to represent the community the foundation will eventually fail. We need to ensure that the community is properly represented, increasing the number of community seats is one very positive way of doing that.
The chapter seats are also community seats, but they only represent a small subset of the community, as such I do not believe it is fair to count them when weighing community vs appointed seat. |
| Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester) |
I would come to the generally the end through different means. I believe that the majority of the board should be community members, but this does not necessarily need to come entirely from the elected community seats. For one, there should never be fewer elected community seats than there are appointed expert seats. More elected seats than appointed is ok, but there should never be less. I also do not agree with a permanent founder seat. That seat should come from one of the appointed expert seats (as an expert in wiki governance) and not at the expense of the community's majority.
Once the role of the chapter's seats is more clearly defined, there is a strong possibility that those seats will serve the purpose of ensuring a majority community voice on the board. Or, if they turn out the other way, to be essentially puppet seats for appointed members, allowing a fluid number of community seats (so long as there are the same as or more in relation to the appointed ones) ensures that the community will still protect its majority. It is important to remember that as soon as the community loses power to be represented on the board due to a lack of ability to gain a majority of votes, it becomes virtually impossible for them to amend the bylaws to fix it. At the same time it gives the appointed majority the ability to modify the bylaws to become tyrants over the organization. For this reason, I believe the community should always be the majority control on the board. I also think that these scenarios adequately explain why we should at the very least review and consider the concept of returning to a membership based organization. If there is an official membership with the ability to exert a recall, or that can modify the structure of the board, the likelyhood of a horror scenario involving an overthrown board is greatly diminished. |
| Gregory Kohs (Thekohser) |
That "founder" seat is really what we need to be moving away from. Having said that, I would generally support this plan. Alternatively, why couldn't the community have more of a role in nominating "non-Wikimedians" who are blessed with "special expertise", such that the community even has a partial role in shaping and coaxing gifted outside people who can enter into those Board-appointed seats?
The community needs to remember a very important thing. The groundwork for the Board to start taking away influence from the community was set in motion quite some time ago when Jimmy Wales and Brad Patrick decided to reject the contributions of pro bono legal aid who were preparing paperwork to make the WMF a membership organization. Those two scrapped that initiative, for fear that "their" Foundation could be taken away from them by "outsiders". I hope that voters are savvy enough to comprehend this power play. It may be too late to restore a community-influenced Board, unless you really make a strong statement with your vote. A rotten board of directors that exclusively elects its own successors will perpetuate rotten boards. It's just that simple. |
| Harel Cain (Harel) |
Like some others here, I think of the chapter seats as representative of the community too. If anything, then this universal suffrage way of choosing community seats (where the vast majority of voters either doesn't care or doesn't know the candidates) is nothing to write home about. The chapter seats might let us have experienced chapter activists "from the field" and that's very important. The big problem remains how the chapters will select them. With that said, I agree with your basic view that "grassroots" volunteers should fill (at least) about half of the board. Appointed board members should also preferably not be just professional technocrats but people truly aligned with WMF's core vision and ideology. Also bear in mind that the board is not a representative body, in that it shouldn't necessarily correctly portray the numerical demographics of the community. |
| Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro) |
I definitely think there is room to revisit the question of the composition of the board at a later date. For me to directly address a specific proposal would be wrong (the way I see my role personally, if elected), before the community has a full say on these matters - that is where the board went awry the previous time around, was it not so?
I can say about my preference about the way of moving forward on this, that it is best if first the chapters are given ample time to figure out if they can see a way that their new franchise can be deployed in such a way as to allay concerns about community losing voice in the affairs of the board, and we see at least one suggestion by the new nominating committee led by Sue. If the product of that nominating committee falls short, I will see no problem with countermanding the whole process. Since the act of appointment still resides in the trustees, they have an imperative right of not appointing any of the nominees. And as yet, the board with us still does not fall into the category of merely theoretical authority such as the Queen of England, so that situation would not be a case of something akin to a constitutional crisis, but clearly merely one of the board exercising its correct role. In short, if I am elected, rest assured, the trustees would stand guard against the community being disenfranchised. |
| Kurt M. Weber (Kmweber) |
no response yet. |
| Matthew Bisanz (MBisanz) |
I would like to see the number of community appointed seats increased. Whether it would be to 5, or some other number, or some totally different arrangement, I am not sure. However, it would be to a percentage greater than the current 30% represented in the most recent governance restructuring. |
| Paul Williams (Skenmy) |
I am a strong supporter of a majority, if not fully, community-appointed board. It is of vital importance that the community has a say in what happens on the Board, as I have stated over and over before, however we need to be careful that the members of the Board are chosen carefully, because of their abilities, not because of their level of fame on a particular project. Some members of the current board are in place because they are good advisors, but the Board should not be where they sit. Advisory panels should be formed around a largely community-appointed and elected board. |
| Ray Saintonge (Eclecticology) |
I very much support the notion that a majority of trustees should be drawn from the community, but I would not take your detailed position as an absolute hard-line position. Whether they should all be elected is a moot point. This election will fill one such seat to the Board to go with the two that already exist. What then? What's the next step? I agree that the recent resolution on Board Structure is problematic, but I want to avoid simplistic solutions that will really only make things more difficult. |
| Ryan Postlethwaite |
no response yet. |
| Samuel Klein (Sj) |
no response yet. |
| Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist) |
For the reasons I have given in response to previous questions about the board restructuring, this is not an amendment that I would support. |
| Ting Chen (Wing) |
I have answered this question already earlier in the sections Board restructure and Biggest Error. Yes, I agree with you. I think the board should consist of members from the community and from the chapters. |
Images and censorship
Imagine, that some users from one of Wikipedias want to delete pornography photos from the Wikimedia Commons. We have only one category with hard porno and it is illegal (even criminal matter) in some countries, if children could look on these photos. This is a problem not only for parents, but for us too. Do you agree with this sentence? So, on pl wiki we have troll who like almost everyday add links to these images and talk about missing censorship (not in BAR/village pump, but on "School and university projects" pages). He has many puppets and produces new. I want to know your advices. (Admins on Commons don't want to delete it, we, wikimedians, dont't want to delete pictures of Muhammad, we have sometimes problems with PR...). Przykuta 07:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
| Ad Huikeshoven (Dedalus) |
Your question almost duplicates a prior question. However, in this case, your question is about trolls and their sockpuppets. Don't feed them. And, of course it is a project level community decision to indefinitely block trolls. |
|---|---|
| Alex Bakharev |
I think it is an important policy that Wikipedia is not censored for minors (in w:Penis article we need a picture of Penis, not a w:stamen or w:pistil). It is not a porno-site either. Adding unsuitable images (pornographic or not) is not trolling, it is vandalism and we block vandals. If an image on Commons is a particular problem on your project you can always add it to the w:MediaWiki:Bad image list (such lists are on all projects) and the image would not be shown on your articles.
I think we have a policy that non-encyclopedic images are to be deleted. WMF is not a free image host. I think explicit images that was not used on any project for awhile can be speedily deleted. Certainly images used only for vandalism should be deleted (or at least added to MediaWiki:Bad image list. What WMF could do is to organize better interactions between Commons and Project admins (e.g. adding a commons image to any MediaWiki:Bad image list should automatically trigger IFD on Commons). Maybe we could transfer all explicit images to projects. The problem with this approach is to sufficiently clear define what Explicit image means. We know what unused means, we know what unusable means, we know what used for vandalism only means, but definition of the explicit is very culture-dependent. |
| Craig Spurrier (Cspurrier) |
The Wikimedia projects should not be censored. Images should not be deleted from commons just because one project has an issue with them. We have software functions such as the Bad image list that can prevent images from being used inappropriately. Functions such as this are a much better solution to the issue as they allow projects to maintain their autonomy and do not require Commons to be censored. We have a number of tools (blocking, check user, page protection, etc) that a project can also employ to manage trolls and vandals. These tools are more effective and have much less collateral damage then deleting images on Commons. |
| Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester) |
Projects will have different opinions, even amongst languages of the same project. It doesn't mean that we use the least restrictive approach, but it doesn't mean we cater to the most restrictive rules either. What individual projects decide is up to their communities, at least up until the point that it becomes a legal or ethical issue for the foundation. History shows that we rarely ever have to come to that point. |
| Gregory Kohs (Thekohser) |
It's funny how so many people get all up in arms when "trolls" start trying to edit their encyclopedia that they've put a sign out to invite "anyone" to edit. The Board approved $182,000 for legal counsel this year. I would rather see the person(s) being paid $182,000 figure out "one category with hard porno and it is illegal (even criminal matter) in some countries" than unpaid Board members who are instead responsible for the long-term vision and strategic guidance of the organization. |
| Harel Cain (Harel) |
I'll sum it up in points:
|
| Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro) |
I specifically disagree that is a problem for the board of trustees to handle.
On a more human level, I will say that linking inappropriate things to inappropriate pages on wikiprojects, should not be allowed to happen, and projects should have fairly expansive autonomy to deal with such issues. There is not much more to be said really, that hasn't been said by the other candidates. I have to say that this is one question on which I agree with nearly every word written by every other candidate. |
| Kurt M. Weber (Kmweber) |
no response yet. |
| Matthew Bisanz (MBisanz) |
I personally disagree with deleting free content that it is not a crime to host on a US based server. However, as it is inherently an editing issue, I leave it up to the Commons community to decide what they host, within the relevant US law and GFDL requirements.
Now as to the issue of a wiki that does not wish to ever use such material, or is experiencing image-bombing of such material. This wiki could upload and protect single pixel images locally with the same name as the commons images, thus meaning when the image bombing occurred, it would result in single pixel white space being added, as the local copy would override the Commons copy. Or there is the image blacklist and whitelist, which would permit a wiki to ban certain image titles from being displayed or permit them to be displayed on only a certain set of pages. So technically, there are ways for a wiki to segregate itself from material made available to all wikis through Commons, if it so desires. Therefore, I do not see a need to make Commons subject to the requests of all Wikis. |
| Paul Williams (Skenmy) |
Wikimedia projects should not, and cannot, be censored, sue to the very nature of what they are - a sum of all human knowledge. We have tools to prevent the abuse of so-called "controversial" images, and methods to hide images if people do not wish to view them. We should not remoaves images from our repository of free, unbiased images, if one project has a problem with them. There are ways to remove the image from a local project (upload a blank image) whilst keeping it for all other projects without damaging our incredible set of resources. |
| Ray Saintonge (Eclecticology) |
Opinions about what is pornographic will vary widely, and I don't believe that Commons should accept the lowest common denominator as its operational definition. This doesn't mean that those who operate a sister project can't accept a different, more rigid standard.
Commons is there to serve the other projects, and that includes projects with a more liberal attitude. Whether an image is in fact pornographic sometimes leaves us examining the motives of the poster, and images which are added for no other purpose than to titillate are just as well deleted, but that is a judgement call best left to each project. |
| Ryan Postlethwaite |
no response yet. |
| Samuel Klein (Sj) |
no response yet. |
| Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist) |
I think a few of the other candidates, especially Alex and Ray, have this one exactly right. On the one hand, we shouldn't allow the most conservative common denominator to determine our content. On the other hand, images on all projects should be there to inform, not to titillate. If an image serves only to titillate, I can't see a place for it on any WMF project. |
| Ting Chen (Wing) |
At first the images themselves are not illegal. If they are licensed GFDL and compatible licenses I would advocate agains deleting them from commons.
What the problem is, and I am with you to say it is a serious problem, we should take care of it, that to show children such images is illegal. I think we need in MediaWiki a mean to protect such images (and also text content). The local community should have the possibility to mark a content as "Adult only". If someone hit a link to such a content (text or image), he must at first confirm that he is of legal age, before he can access the content. If it is an image embedded in the text, it should be hidden with a hint, and only if he confirmed his legal age the image would be shown. I think this is an important feature MediaWiki should have. I would suggest you to talk with the developper community directly, and if I am elected, I will push that this feature be implimented. As of vandalism. We had similar cases a few years ago on zh-wp. I can give you no other advice as what we did: Blocking, blocking and blocking. Most vandals do not have a long patience. After at least a few months they left. If we want to keep our projects open, we must take as a price that we are vulnerable to vandalism. And the best weapon we have against a vandal is we are many, he is alone. So we can afford more patience than he. |
Wikiversity
Some candidates mentioned in their responses Wikiversity - so this now goes to all candidates:
- (if your mission is to help the sister projects) can you provide some examples how you plan to help Wikiversity if you are elected?
To answer this good enough you certainly need to know Wikiversity so you could combine above with following:
- please tell two things which work good at Wikiversity and two things which don't ? You can also refer to a Wikiversity project in your language - your feedback will surely be appreciated.
This text above was created in collaboration with D and C----Erkan Yilmaz (Wikiversity:Chat, talk) 19:54, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
| Ad Huikeshoven (Dedalus) |
|
|---|---|
| Alex Bakharev |
I have not edited Wikiversity yet but I believe it is a very important project. Potentially it might have even greater impact than Wikipedia. I am not in a position to give my "wise" advise to people who have much better experience than me but I can assure I will support the project.
Still I believe I know the main problem of Wikiversity: it is its maturity. While Wikipedia is a toddler; Wikiversity is an infant. Almost all people I know have heard about Wikipedia. The educators know it. They might recommend Wiki to use as reliable source, or forbid to use it as an unreliable source, or teach their students how to use it correctly. They may hate us for our shortcomings but they know we exist. There are almost no non-wiki people who know about Wikiversity existence. No educator or student I have heard of use it. I think all this would change dramatically after some critical mass is accumulated on the project. I think WMF should facilitate the development of Wikiversity by aggressive promotion of Wikiversity among educators. |
| Craig Spurrier (Cspurrier) |
no response yet. |
| Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester) |
Wikiversity is my favorite non-wikipedia project, although I have neglected to edit it in nearly a year (though I did write one complete class and one incomplete class for a course I designed). I have a special fondness for it, and I certainly would work to improve Wikiversity while on the board. One thing that Wikiversity does very well is that it presents information in a way that is designed to educate the reader, instead of inform the reader. These are different things. The reader doesn't simply need to know the information, he needs to know what it means, and how to apply it, where he can follow up, etc. Another thing that Wikiversity does well is that it is designed in a manner that is not overwhelming for beginners. Schools are presented up front, courses within the schools, classes within the courses, etc. It's not messy and convoluted and hard to find.
I find Wikiversity's problems to be simply growing pains. It doesn't have enough members, and some of the ones that it does have, like myself, don't edit frequently enough to really improve things. That will change, of course, over time, but Wikiversity needs our support to get more visibility, which leads to more members. As stated before, I will work, especially through our outreach, to find ways to address these problems for Wikiversity. We really ought to be pushing more and more educators to use Wikiversity, at both the grade school and university levels. We can proactively contact schools, universities, and educational nonprofits to work with us. We can spur on and support the chapters to do the same in their local areas -- this is something that I strongly believe the local chapters are perfect for. We can be more vocal about Wikiversity in our public interviews. I try to bring the subject of Wikiversity up with every reporter I can, something I'll continue to do on the board. |
| Gregory Kohs (Thekohser) |
I would do two things to try to help Wikiversity.
1. Communicate about it to the world. Even a lower-tier small college has more than 500 exchanges of information per hour within its walls, but Wikiversity seems to be getting fewer than 500 edits per day. It's quite obvious to me that hardly anybody's paying much attention to this project. One of the topics about which I'm most passionate (and indeed pursued to the C.Phil. level) is World War II. However, the "course" about this subject on Wikiversity looks like a ghost town, even 11 months after it was born. There are tens of thousands of WW2 enthusiasts out there -- so we have to ask why aren't they churning out content for this project. 2. The second point is a segue from the first. Maybe contributors (especially paid academic professionals) aren't stepping forward because the free, open-source model, if carried to the bitter end, devalues the paid contributions of people like university instructors. Is that part of the mission here? Certainly, it's not a deliberate plan to put people out of jobs, but look folks, it is a consequence of the free and open mission. Peter Suber has opined that authors of royalty-free content have everything to gain and nothing to lose by consenting to open access. He seems to do well enough for himself and his family in Maine, but what of the rest of academia who are not riding the "crest" of the free content wave? We see the decline in jobs at newspapers and at encyclopedias, in no small part due to free content online. Are we simply adding universities to the list of organizations we'll help push toward extinction? Somehow, we would need to find ways to assure that Wikiversity does not exacerbate that unfortunate side-effect. P.S. I just saw a stat that over 1,100 voters in this election so far have come from the various language Wikipedias. Only 3 voters have emerged from Wikiversity. That profoundly sends us all a message, doesn't it? |
| Harel Cain (Harel) |
no response yet. |
| Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro) |
I regret to fall into a mode which may make me sound partly like a broken record, but the biggest thing we as a board of trustees can do, is to encourage direction of resources and further encourage the resources are even used, rather than hoarded (in the fear perhaps that resource allocation will at some future date be used as a lever), in the direction of technical innovation.
What Wikiversity most needs in order to become a great success, in my opinion, are workable ways of presenting lectures, both live and canned & organizing online seminars. These will make it transcend being just an adjunct of wikibooks, and raise it to a genuine new working endeavour. But as yet, to integrate such into mediawiki, requires real technical innovation. It should be noted though, that many of the same technical features it needs most, will be pivotal in making Wikinews be a challenge to such current news outlets as CNN.com. |
| Kurt M. Weber (Kmweber) |
no response yet. |
| Matthew Bisanz (MBisanz) |
Well specifically to Wikiversity's matters, I would encourage better interwiki re-use of material. I suspect Wiktionary and Wikiquote would be excellent supplements to many Language and Literature courses, and Wikispecies would provide a firm basis for many biology courses. I would want to continue Wikiversity and would look to strategic partnerships with other physical universities to both host their material (under a free license of course), and permit them to use Wikiversity's materials.
As to areas of excellence and areas for improvement. I like that Wikiversity retains an open atmosphere with few obvious policies or bitey warnings. I also enjoy its use of graphics and background colors to bring the pages to life. I would recommend greater standardization as to what a course format looks like, how things like the MBA relate to the other courses, and other such details. Also, some general clean up work for links that point to pages at Meta, that have since been moved to Wikiversity, would improve the overall feel of the site. Great work overall though! |
| Paul Williams (Skenmy) |
Wikiversity is a fantastic project with an incredible set of resources that can only get better - and the Board needs to facilitate that. I see promotion of Wikiversity going down well in 3rd world (and even 2nd and 1st world) countries, where an education is not only desirable, but often necessary to survive. Wikiversity can provide just that, and I think the Board needs to see this and promote Wikiversity in the way it deserves. I will not insult anyone by pretending to know more about Wikiversity than I actually do, however I know that if I am elected, the communities can approach me with the issues that they see as important for their project, and I will do what I can in my capacity as a community-elected representative of all projects to help them. |
| Ray Saintonge (Eclecticology) |
Wikiversity is a very important project with far reaching consequences. (I may have been the first to use the term, four or five years ago, but I can't prove it.) I'm glad that Wikiversity is consistent with the concept of life-long learning as a cradle to grave experience. While we would all like Wikiversity to grow, I think that growth here needs to be managed and nurtured more carefully than on other projects.
It would be wrong to view Wikiversity as a mere extension of Wikibooks. It is an important mission of Wikibooks to house textbooks and other educational resources, but education is more than its resources. Education is a process. To use a grammatical analogy, it is the verb between the subject that learns and the object that is learned. To make a great contribution our educators need to understand how people learn. They need to also know how to adjust the content to age appropriate modules that take into account the more limited vocabulary of younger children. Drawing in key persons with pedagogical experience would advance the project a long way. One way that all Board members can help is by participating in key educational conferences of teachers and administrators. For administrators who often need to manage insufficient school district budgets the prospect that quality open source material available at a reasonable price could be very convincing. |
| Ryan Postlethwaite |
no response yet. |
| Samuel Klein (Sj) |
no response yet. |
| Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist) |
no response yet. |
| Ting Chen (Wing) |
I don't know Wikiversity good. I know that there is such a project but I had no contact with it until now. What I can say is what I had also said in the questions relating WikiNews and WikiSpecies. I would promote the projects when ever I can and I would give support if you think support is necessary. I also think that the projects should by themselves develop new ideas which collaboration with which institutions would be beneficial for the project. |
Non-free content
What position should the Wikimedia Foundation take on the use of non-free content? In particular, what do you think of the foundation's licensing policy and the definition of free content that the Wikimedia Foundation has adopted, which states:
In most countries however, these freedoms are not enforced but suppressed by the laws commonly named copyright laws. They consider authors as god-like creators and give them an exclusive monopoly as to how "their content" can be re-used. This monopoly impedes the flourishing of culture, and it does not even help the economic situation of authors so much as it protects the business model of the most powerful publishing companies.
Would you make any changes to the licensing resolution or adopt a revised definition? —Remember the dot 20:06, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
| Ad Huikeshoven (Dedalus) |
The Foundation should stick to open/free content, preferably under a CC-BY-SA license. |
|---|---|
| Alex Bakharev |
The question is very similar to Board_elections/2008/Candidates/Questions/2#Image_licensing. My answer is the same. The current policy is about right: Non-free content greatly increase the value of our project for the direct users. Imagine talking about the modern art without possibility to show some works, talking about companies without the possibility to show their logos, etc. On the other hand non-free content creates potential legal problems for us, non-free content complicates re-using of our content and forking, it also is not desirable for the zealots of free software development and can drive them out. The exact compromise is to be done by each individual project but WMF is to oversee that it is legal in Florida, USA and that usage of non-free images does not inhibit creation of equivalent free images.
One of the perennial sources of conflicts around the non-free content is the non-free publicity images of living people. The foundation presses the projects to delete such images as they inhibit creation of free content. On the other hand only very brave or very stupid people would agree to release their photos if derivatives are allowed (I did it because I am both stupid and brave). So we delete legal but non-free content and receive nothing or controversial content instead. In my opinion the ban of Non-Derivative free images potentially puts us in legal and ethical jeopardy. We should find a way to accept non-derivative free images of living people. This would significantly reduce the need for the non-free images. |
| Craig Spurrier (Cspurrier) |
no response yet. |
| Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester) |
Free works are always better than the equivalent non-free work. To that end, we should always support free content and the opening up of more free content. With that being said, that does not mean that there is no place for non-free content within our projects. The projects have EDP's that are individually determined (within the bounds of what is acceptable as a ceiling, per our legal department). Within each project, some will require more free content, some will require more non-free content. A blanket statement will help nobody. What works for Commons does not work for Spanish Wikipedia or Polish Wikisource. So, adopting changes to the licensing policy, at least with regards to free vs. nonfree content, is not something I see happening without extensive review and legal input. |
| Gregory Kohs (Thekohser) |
Is the Board ever going to grow up and start associating itself with laws and policies that aren't prone to "consensus" alterations in the future? Why did the Board align itself with the FreedomDefined.org site, whose FAQ states:
Who wrote this? Who administers the site? Yeah, how are you? This is yet another example of the faceless, anonymous, unaccountable immaturity that pervades too much of the "free content" movement. I have tired of it almost to the point of nausea. Is not anyone else offended by it? Well, my WHOIS search seemed to point to the fact that this guy is leading the Wikimedia Foundation's policy on free and non-free content. Is everybody okay with that? He's almost certainly bearing a genius IQ, but why all of the obnoxious footsie-under-the-table crap in terms of permanence of the definition and accountability of its authors and protectors? People should wonder when nobody wants to take credit for something. Once again, while I would defer to the $182,000 legal team on the Wikimedia Foundation payroll, I understand that explicit use rationales are not required by law, but it is always good ethical practice to give credit where credit is due. It's a rather simple concept. |
| Harel Cain (Harel) |
no response yet. |
| Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro) |
I translated the document you quote from into the Finnish language, on the Freedom Defined site. It was far from an easy task, since the document suffers from many ambiguities, logical confusion and clear cultural bias. That said, I very broadly support the underlying intent, and believe if the people behind it were receptive to adjusting it to a more rational and culturally neutral basis, it could certainly develop into a very formidable intellectual and ideological achievement of our century.
For the purposes of the Wikimedia Foundation, the shortcomings of the document, which I consider to be philosophical rather than practical, are insignificant. I don't share the outlook, but the document advocates no action we should not embrace. |
| Kurt M. Weber (Kmweber) |
no response yet. |
| Matthew Bisanz (MBisanz) |
Hmm, I like the current definition of Free Content, with the unfortunate invective recognized as that, invective. I think the Foundation policy could be updated a bit to define things like "machine readable", etc, but is generally sufficient for our uses. Obviously free images are preferred to non-free images, but for some topics, it is actually impossible to get a free version, such as a corporate logo or certain historic images. |
| Paul Williams (Skenmy) |
I do not have a solution to this problem. The worst thing we can do is to change the policy, only to realise that we changed it erroneously. |
| Ray Saintonge (Eclecticology) |
If you're going to quote the definition at least quote the correct definition rather than an argumentative paragraph that comes later in the same document.
Whatever one might think of this definition, this subject is difficult enough without playing games about what the definition is. While I personally believe that we need an avenue to allow for the publication of nearly free works with the intent of making them free, I am fully aware that we would be walking through a legal minefield. Even what may be perfectly free under U.S. law may be subject to additional restrictions under European moral rights provisions or database protections, or the lack of protections in many countries for parody. Thus, saying with certainty that any given work is free is next to impossible. Any policy can be improved, but don't expect any radical deviations soon. |
| Ryan Postlethwaite |
no response yet. |
| Samuel Klein (Sj) |
no response yet. |
| Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist) |
First of all, I think our current definition of "free content" serves us well insofar as it's used to determine which licenses are sufficiently free for our purposes. I've addressed elsewhere the possibility of treating "free" as a less binary concept (such that there may be cases in which, even though a completely free image is preferred, a CC non-commercial license may be acceptable while a copyrighted and unlicensed image may not be). I do want to briefly expand on my views of free content. I like free content, as I presume do we all. As a consumer, I like free content because i. you don't usually have to pay for it, and ii. all else being equal, is better to have a product that you can reproduce and propagate than it is to have one that you can't. But I think we need to stay far away from the notion that it is somehow "evil" for the creator of a work to wish to restrict its use in such a way that he/she can profit from it. As a contributor, I don't mind licensing my contributions freely because I'm essentially a hobbyist generator of content. If I was a professional (writer/photographer/programmer), I would be much more leery of so-licensing my work, and I think quite understandably. In addition to the free material I use (Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Wikipedia), I also use quite a bit of non-free material, especially in the books I read. I often pay for this material knowing that a portion of the price is for the right to access the content, and I don't begrudge paying this at all. Indeed, I realize that a good deal of this content would never have been created were it not for the profit motive of the creator. In fact, even something like OpenOffice.org likely owes a great many of its features to the work done by the developers of Microsoft Office.
Free content is a wonderful thing, and the Foundation should continue its work in generating and disseminating it. But let's not pretend that all content can be free, or that it would be desirable for it to be so. |
| Ting Chen (Wing) |
I don't think that we need to change our licencing policy. The text you cited is too radical for me. The fact is, we create free content and the foundation promote using free content. I don't see the WikiMedia-projects as revolutionairs that want to overthrough the dictatorship of copyright. We create free content, in accordance to the law. Nonetheless we change the world through our work. |
Competitor or independent to other media?
Thank you for being passionate enough to WikiMedia's projects to be a candidate. I wanted to ask about your views on WMF's projects in relation to other creations in the world, primarily those with a commercial element. For example, do you regard Wikinews as a serious competitor to the mainstream news, do you regard Wiktionary a serious competitor to other dictionaries, do you regard Wikipedia as a competitor to the Britannica (or even Wales' other co-creation, Wikia), and so forth? If so, why? If not, how so? And for either answer, how does this affect your view on what role in the world WMF projects should hold in contrast to these other media outlets? Guroadrunner 03:29, 7 June 2008 (UTC) (Guroadrunner on en.wikipedia)
| Ad Huikeshoven (Dedalus) |
Yes, the projects are very competitive, though success is varying per project. The Wikimedia projects have their own strengths and can build their future on their own strengths. The projects will strive as long as individuals are prepared to spent time and energy contributing content and many more individual people visit the projects to find valuable information. As a non-profit, the Foundation will continue to move independently from for-profit businesses. |
|---|---|
| Alex Bakharev |
I think WMF projects are in many ways unique and much broader than their commercial analogs but they obviously take (or will take in the near future) a significant proportion of potential customers from some commercial service. Lets consider Wikipedia ( a major language edition together with commons). It is still a toddler in its development but we already see it is competing with many commercial servises:
...
Are we destroying somebody's business? Not sure: while me take away many customers from traditional services our editors are using those services en-mass (except LovePlanet, perhaps) searching for new material for wiki. I am not sure what the real balance the commercial services have, but for the humanity in whole we bring significant improvement. It seems like most other WMF projects are not even toddlers - they are newborn babies, but then they will grow up the impact will be similar. |
| Craig Spurrier (Cspurrier) |
no response yet. |
| Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester) |
I view all similar projects as both competitor and potential ally. For instance, while some candidates feel that Britannica is unable to keep up with Wikipedia, that may not always be the case. It's foolish to dismiss other projects as "not competition" just because they are not competition now. A long time ago, a little project called Wikipedia could not have hoped to keep up with Britannica, and look how things have changed. That being said, while we must consistently find ways to stay on top of our competitors, we should also look to view them as potential allies. For instance, if we can find ways to leverage the strengths of our competitors to improve our own project, we benefit. A case in point is Veropedia. By definition, Veropedia is a competitor to Wikipedia. However, in doing so, it improves the quality of articles on Wikipedia. Therefore, it is beneficial to us for Veropedia to exist; it may be beneficial to us to ally with them in some way. It is not beneficial to us, however, to ignore its existence and dismiss it as not a competitor, lest we grow complacent and one day awaken to a lost market share. Now, I know I answered your question in reverse, by addressing how other products compare to us. Let me now address how we compare to other products. Wikinews, if well supported, will eventually be able to compete on a level far greater than what it is right now. It may not ever beat CNN. It may eventually replace CNN. By ignoring the smaller projects, we will never know whether they can stand on their own as potential competitors to commercial projects in their sphere. |
| Gregory Kohs (Thekohser) |
While ruminating on an answer, I conducted an experiment where I clicked "Random article" on the English Wikipedia, then determined whether that same topic was available on the subscriber-based edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. I had set out hoping to find 10 articles that "matched", but given that it took 84 clicks of random Wikipedia articles to find just 6 that were available on Britannica, I halted my efforts at six!
So, let's consider the consequences of that, and I'll try to opine a bit more on this later. UPDATE: Considering that the link immediately above has been clicked only 3 or 4 times in the past few days, I wonder whether much of the Wikimedia community is even continuing to read these candidate responses. Nothing wrong with that... as I feel that we've rather blathered on quite enough already in the scores of questions above. In sum, I strongly sense that the Wikimedia Foundation projects have the potential to decimate commercial competitors, which has an adverse effect on diversity and choice in the marketplace of information. That is why I so strongly feel that the WMF owes the world its very best, most talented efforts to strive toward ethics, accuracy, and excellence in online media. In a way, Wikipedia is the Wal-Mart of the encyclopedia world. Is everyone comfortable with a Wal-Mart level of ethics and excellence? |
| Harel Cain (Harel) |
no response yet. |
| Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro) |
On the encyclopaedia front we have never had any competition. What we were was something qualitatively and quantitatively new, a quantum leap into a whole new energy level (yes, I know that is a tired metaphor ;) into applying the old Oxford English Dictionary model of gathering snippets of knowledge, into a completely new technological infrastructure, way more radical than moving type.
Britannica was doomed from day one. It never was competition, since it was ever a sitting target, nay, not a target even, but a milepost. Once we got past it, we never looked back. None of the stay behinds like citizendium or veropedia will ever catch us, because we are a *moving target*. Anything they innovate, we can incorporate more intelligently. The other projects we have are a more complex situation. I'll take just one as an example, because it offers such a great contrast. Wikinews really has its work cut out for it. The pre-existing news product out there was well developed, vibrant, and fiercely competitive, nimble etc. at the grassroots, reporters shoe on the pavement level. The only ossification visible was in the infrastructure and way of defining itself in terms of editorial criteria. Those are not nearly insurmountable to reform, so as to take the challenge by wikinews squarely on and defend the old media angle quite effectively, while incorporating any minor thing wikinews looks to be doing right. There will really be an interesting and dare I say *equal* competition between the old and the new media there. And there genuinely are no guarantees that our vibrancy and youth and new way of looking at things will overcome the wily experience of fending off competition and opposition the old media has in abundance, skirmishing between each other, and the three other estates. |
| Kurt M. Weber (Kmweber) |
no response yet. |
| Matthew Bisanz (MBisanz) |
If in 2001 you had asked Britannica if Wikipedia was a threat to its business, I'm almost certain its response would've been to laugh you out of the room. But, low, and behold, today Wikipedia is number 8 on google search, and Britannica is barely in the picture. Granted Wikipedia, through its leap in ease of use over Britannica, had an advantage, it still was a new idea. Wikinews has a larger leap to make. Cnn.com, MSNBC.com, even the Drudgereport, all provide a much wider range of competitors to Wikinews. Wiktionary also has a range of tech-savvy competitors like dictionary.com and OED. So I think it will take more time and resources to ultimately grow these projects. That said, I think these projects can grow into equal-sized competitors in their respective fields, and support the WMF in continuing to fund and advertise them. Hopefully, someday, WN will become a source for CNN, much like the AP and Reuters are today. We have many more potential contributors, in many more parts of the world than either of those organizations do, so it is merely an issue of motivating them to contribute to the projects. |
| Paul Williams (Skenmy) |
It is important to note that if the communities do not see them as a competitor - then why not? We have the resources, we have the capability, we can make every project a worthy competitor in its field. And each community needs to decide how best to do this, because this is not something the Board is going to ever be able to change, but we can facilitate and help the communities with whatever they need to achieve the very real goal of being a major competitor in whatever field is relevant. |
| Ray Saintonge (Eclecticology) |
You can't ignore the Darwinism of the competitive market. I don't regard Wikipedia as a competitor to Britannica, because Britannica is unable to keep up. I have not had enough close contact with Wikinews to predict its level of competitiveness. For Wiktionary may I be bold enough to take personal credit for the single policy that will make it a serious competitor: it is a dictionary for all words in all languages. I don't think that all of our projects are destined for long life, but those that are will give their counterparts a good run. Hopefully they won't be so big as to be monopolistic; that position would open up a whole new set of problems.
Commercial projects that have an advantage when they start may not be able to sustain that advantage. That's very hard for them to sustain when we have the edge of no salaries to pay. Our role in contrast with our competition should probably be to become the leaders and trend setters. |
| Ryan Postlethwaite |
no response yet. |
| Samuel Klein (Sj) |
no response yet. |
| Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist) |
Insofar as the WMF's projects are trying to fill the same broad niches (can niches be broad?) as commercial projects, there is definitely an element of competition. I think the only WMF project that is doing well enough in this competition to threaten its more commercial competitors is Wikipedia, and this isn't entirely a good thing. Wikipedia can't replace conventional encyclopaedias, and if the latter fall by the wayside by reason of our success the world of knowledge will have suffered a significant loss. I think the WMF has to emphasize in its PR efforts that, as far as it's concerned, there will always be a place for professionally-produced and fact-checked encyclopaedias alongside Wikipedia. Hobbyists should only ever supplement, and never supplant, professionals.
The same is broadly true of non-Wikipedia projects: I'd hate to see the OED go down because of Wiktionary's popularity, or the Associated Press go down because of Wikinews, or textbook publishers go down because of Wikibooks. However, those are sufficiently unlikely that they're really not a concern at this point. |
| Ting Chen (Wing) |
I don't consider our projects as competitors to other media. What are we competing against them? Do we want more profit, market share? No we don't. Britanica was already in trouble long before Wikipedia came into being. We are not competing with Britanica, nor are we competing with newspapers or magazines or textbook publishers with our WikiNews or WikiBook. What makes the classical media so uneasy in the last years, was the new technology. But we didn't invent the new technology. Even if there are no WikiMedia-projects, the classical publichers will still see themselves facing big trouble. What they should do, is to find a way to use the new technology for them, not against them. I even don't think we are competing against them in content. If they are clever, they can discover in the WikiMedia-projects resources they can use, for free, for their own benefit, as for example the magazine Spiegel in German in now doing. |
Have the viewpoints of other candidates impressed you?
Nevermind who is the best candidate overall. Have there been specific views on a narrow or broad question that the other candidates have expressed either in their candidate statements or in their answers to the questions on these pages, which have impressed you, modified your approach in some way, completely changed your outlook on an issue, or have expressed a valid point of view which you nevertheless do not subscribe to, but you would wish to acknowledge publically? -- Cimon Avaro 20:38, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
| Ad Huikeshoven (Dedalus) |
Great question Cimon. You yourself being a candidate, what is your answer? Impress me, modify my approach, change my outlook, express a valid point to which i don't subscribe to, which you wishes to be acknowledged by me publically. |
|---|---|
| Alex Bakharev |
Most of the questions are actually of perennial nature there it is difficult to say something new. Some of the answers had interesting insights, some ideas appear to be wrong. Most deserve long answers that are outside the format of 1600 byte replies. I am ready to discuss some proposals but I cannot comment on all the 200+ answers. |
| Craig Spurrier (Cspurrier) |
no response yet. |
| Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester) |
I share viewpoints with several other of the candidates on different topics. I don't think there is a particular answer that jumps out at me. If I find one, I'll surely modify this answer to reflect it. |
| Gregory Kohs (Thekohser) |
I have been most impressed (not in a good way) with the response from Alex above, which contained the following lines:
This line of reasoning could not be further from my own. |
| Harel Cain (Harel) |
no response yet. |
| Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro) |
no response yet. |
| Kurt M. Weber (Kmweber) |
no response yet. |
| Matthew Bisanz (MBisanz) |
No, nothing that really surprised me in the question answers. Most were reasoned and well thought out, representing the trend towards the mean of community views. Some I agree with, and I ranked those candidates highly as a result, some trend in ways I disagree with, and I ranked those individuals lower. More of a sense issue than a scientific process, but one that I think is a valid means. |
| Paul Williams (Skenmy) |
Yes. |
| Ray Saintonge (Eclecticology) |
Since the ballot requires us to rank our choices, I set up a spreadsheet for myself showing the other candidates, and scoring each of their responses on a 1 to 5 scale and totalling the results. Failure to answer a question meant no score to total for that question; saying anything, however disagreeable, would be enough to earn a 1. With one of my opponents, with whom I had a public disagreement on the mailing list just before the elections started, it turned out that the question relevant to that dispute was the only one where I gave him a low mark, and his 168 score is currently the highest.
I already believed in the importance of the sister projects and smaller language communities, and have perhaps been casual in saying that those who participate in those projects and communities bear the primary responsibility for their development. Maybe this is because, having experienced the drama of en:wp, I sometimes feel a little more at ease in the quieter backwaters where the lack of publicity diminishes the attraction for vandals and other problem individuals. I'm sure this will make me more attentive to the needs of these other projects, and finding ways to grow these projects without endangering their autonomy. I have always strongly believed in the autonomy of each project, and in keeping intervention by the Board at an absolute minimum. It still bothers me when some candidates say, "This issue is for the projects to solve," as though to absolve the Board of any responsibility. A Board member, especially one from the community, must still show an understanding and concern for what is happening in the projects, even when it is not his role to intervene. A Board member who hides in the protection of a bank cashier's cage is likely missing an important part of the experience. |
| Ryan Postlethwaite |
no response yet. |
| Samuel Klein (Sj) |
no response yet. |
| Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist) |
no response yet. |
| Ting Chen (Wing) |
Yes sure. I read every answer carefully, after I have put my answer in. Especially the detailed answers are often very insightful. Some I agree with, some I don't. And from some answers I can learn. Some of the candidates have already worked with the foundation, and their answers open a window for me into the inside of the foundation mechanism. Other candidates have more experience and knowledge in financial and legal issues. From their answers I can learn or acknowledge my shortcoming. |
How do you perceived yourself as a mainboard member
How do you perceived yourself as a mainboard member?. Che090572 05:19, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
| Ad Huikeshoven (Dedalus) |
I perceive myself as a capable board member, long term wikimedian and community member. |
|---|---|
| Alex Bakharev |
I am not sure I completely understand your question. Can you clarify it?
I see myself as a representative of the editorial community (rather than a representative of the board within the community. I will use my Wiki and real life experience trying to promote development that is beneficial for the community, preventing the decisions that might be negative and drawing the attention of the community when a discussion is due. I am reasonably loyal to our project and would not stir the troubles so to get some scoring points or publicity. Still if I believe I have to oppose some board decision I would not hesitate to oppose and to promote my views to the community. I believe I have some integrity and that it is difficult to buy or scary me but I am open to the arguments of all the sides and can change my mind if the arguments of my opponents side are valid. I think I good in finding compromises and mediating disputes. I do not intend to micromanage WMF staff or, god forbids, projects, but I consider WMF board to be the highest authority for the WMF work that is to intervene if the intervention is needed. I have to work for the living but I promise to attend all the WMF meetings and do all the required work as a matter of course. |
| Craig Spurrier (Cspurrier) |
no response yet. |
| Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester) |
(answering what I think the question to be, since it's not clear) I see myself as being a very effective board member. Part of being able to be successful on the board is being able to institute the changes that you want, or an acceptable compromise, against potential objections from dissenting board members. A trustee must be able to get along with his fellow board members. This does not mean he will agree with them, but he must be friendly with them. The trustee must know clearly what the role of the board is and how non-profits work, something I have experience in as a board member at other organizations. The trustee must know how to properly represent himself to the public and conduct good media relations. This is another thing I have great experience with due to the many interviews for the foundation with major media networks that I have already conducted. The trustee must know how to be fiscally responsible and know how to manage a large budget against competing interests, something that I again have experience with. The trustee needs to know and respect his constituency. For the seat we all are running for, that constituency is the community. We need to be upstanding members of the community; we need to proactive in contacting members of the community to ask their opinions; we need to be open and receptive to their ideas, and we need to be aware and respectful of their dissenting ideas. Without the community there is no Wikimedia. A good trustee understands and remembers that. |
| Gregory Kohs (Thekohser) |
Please re-word your question.
Mainboard: See MOTHERBOARD. The main board of a computer, usually containing the circuitry for the central processing unit, keyboard, and monitor and often having slots for accepting additional circuitry. |
| Harel Cain (Harel) |
I believe this question is quite similar to this question and this one. Please see there. If there are specific aspects of being a board member that you want me to relate to, please specify. Harel 06:17, 8 June 2008 (UTC) |
| Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro) |
Like the others, I will answer what I think you are asking; that is how I would fit in as a member of the board of trustees.
I think I know Kat Walsh pretty well as a person, and have never had so much as a heated word with her, quite the contrary, I have every respect for her, including her ability to speak her mind. I have great respect for Michael Snows ability as a communicator, and his dedication to neutrality, as evinced in his work for the Signpost. While our paths have rarely converged in affairs of a wikimedian nature, I think he wouldn't disagree that we could work well together. Jan-Bart de Vreede and Stu West are members of the board I know least about as persons, but their expertise is clear and uncontroversially highly valuable for the board. I would certainly listen attentively to anything they had to say on the matters they are experts on. I cannot comment at all about Frieda Brioschi, other than to say that we definitely need some form of connection to experience from the chapters, and how they operate, and what their legitimate interests are. How would I work with Jimbo Wales? That is an interesting question. I have had some contact with him during the half a decade I have been a wikimedian, including once memorably waking him up around six o' clock his local time, to alert him to the (single!) wikipedia server being down, by phoning his personal phone number. Is there some source of friction between us that might surface? Well, the closest one from my side would likely be how in an interview, where he was asked about how the en:WP:BITE policy was drafted, Jimbo claimed to have actually personally instituted it. But I would be really petty to hold that against him, since in every real sense, it was his example that underlies it, and I merely as an accident of history, happened to draft the outlook he put into daily living practise into the dead medium of a policy page. It would be completely premature for me to express what role I would in practise assume in the board, but clearly everything I did, would have two sides of a coin present. The oversight of the organisational structure and the stewardship of our means and assets. And on the other side, the representation of the interests of the community, for whose benefit ultimately, the other side of the coin is there, and would be answerable, through me as a trustee. |
| Kurt M. Weber (Kmweber) |
no response yet. |
| Matthew Bisanz (MBisanz) |
I see myself as being a representative of the community. That means presenting and supporting community petitions and proposals, communicating with the communities regarding the Board's activities, and helping the communities improve their content through shared services support. I would expect that community members would come to me with ideas that I could take to the Board and argue on behalf of. Additionally, I would hope they would bring proposals for making the MediaWiki software better to use, making WikiMania's more relevant, and other ideas on the shared services aspect of the Foundation. Also, I would intend on regularly communicating with the communities specific changes the Board has implemented or intends to implement. |
| Paul Williams (Skenmy) |
I have already answered this question here and here - if there is something else you would like clarified, please get in contact! |
| Ray Saintonge (Eclecticology) |
The first responsibility of a Board member is to consider all resolutions brought before the Board fairly and objectively. As an elected Board member I would have an additional responsibility of reporting to the constituency that elected me, and making sure that the clear views of the community are presented when the relevant issues are considered. If I find the community divided I need to make that fact clear as well.
Depending on how the board collectively decides to allocate tasks among its members, I understand that I may sometimes need to represent the Board in either public or private functions where my representation should be strictly consistent with Board thinking. If I am in serious disagreement with a clear majority of the Board on a specific issue, another Board member is bound to be able to better represent the Board on that issue than one who can only insincerely parrot that policy. |
| Ryan Postlethwaite |
no response yet. |
| Samuel Klein (Sj) |
no response yet. |
| Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist) |
I'm afraid that I also don't understand this question; could you rephrase it? If English is not your first language, perhaps you could post it in a language in which you are more comfortable? |
| Ting Chen (Wing) |
I will keep contact with the community and I will make decisions always in the interest of the community. I will keep our goal to make the foundation and the board work more transparent. When ever possible I will try to promote our smaller projects and to win collaborations with other none profit institutions. I know that I cannot represent every single member of our community and I know that there are things I don't know. That's the reason why I would always decide carefully and would work hard, try to overcome my shortages. |
What would you do to encourage WOMEN to run for the board; there are no women candidates!
What would you do to encourage WOMEN to run for the board; there are no women candidates! 65.183.137.179 22:24, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
| Ad Huikeshoven (Dedalus) |
On both nl.wiki and en.wiki I've added several entries on feminists last month - please check my contributions! Current system is self-nomination. In some cultures, for example Japan, Taiwan, self-nomination is very rare, and probably the reason there are no Japanese or Taiwanese candidates. Anyone who can edit a Wiki, can complete her own nomination as a candidate by filling out a template on this Wiki. |
|---|---|
| Alex Bakharev |
I am not sure it is fair to paint WMF as completely man-dominated organization. We have such strong female leaders as w:Sue Gardner, w:Florence Devouard, Kat Walsh, and w:Angela Beesley.
One of the obstacles that might prevent women from seeking the board positions is the intensive amount of traveling involved. It might be very difficult for women with young children especially if they are single. One of the ways to counter it is to make reimbursement of child care expenses to be a part of our traveling policy (I know it was an issue before). The other way maybe to cut in-person meetings. With all the advances in the teleconferencing software surely we can cut on the amount of in person board meetings. It might make board positions more attractive for women. It would also save some traveling expenses. If we can have three in person board meetings less it would allow us to hire one more paid staff. It might be worth it. |
| Craig Spurrier (Cspurrier) |
I have no idea why we have no women running this time around. We have had several successful female candidates in the past. Unless we start to find this to be a trend, the lack of female candidates in this election is probably just a odd coincidence rather then something to be concerned about. |
| Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester) |
I encourage strong candidates to run for the board. I don't care what gender they are. Perhaps this question would be better directed at female Wikimedians who chose not to run, or at our two female board members, or the two past female boardmembers, or our female executive director, or our largely female office staff. If the intent of this question is to insinuate that the WMF is a male dominated organization, it does a poor job. |
| Gregory Kohs (Thekohser) |
I have been accused on a prominent female Wikipedian's blog of being an inadequate father because I'm spending too much time running for the WMF Board. Perhaps this is not a good time for me to answer this particular question.
Duly noting the other responses here, I did not know that women have in the past been so successful with community-voted Board campaigns. Still, I wonder when we'll see the first person of color on the Board -- as much of a concern (if not more) than the gender issue. |
| Harel Cain (Harel) |
no response yet. |
| Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro) |
Ironically, the best way to increase the number of women coming forward to be a candidate in trusteeship elections in the future, may be to attempt to insure that the next female candidates _lose_. At present, prospective female candidates are facing a chilling fact that statistically speaking, postulating from past performance, if a woman steps forward, there is a precisely 100 % chance of them becoming a Wikimedia Foundation Trustee. Kat Walsh, who failed to win trusteeship through election, was nevertheless later appointed to that position.
I am only half kidding. Nevertheless, along with many others answering this question, I find it a genuinely low priority cause of alarm. |
| Kurt M. Weber (Kmweber) |
no response yet. |
| Matthew Bisanz (MBisanz) |
I'm not sure why there were no women running this time. I am disappointed at the lack of gender diversity, as well as the lack of candidates hailing from outside N. America and Europe regions. I support the efforts of things like the WikiChix mailing list and WikiWomen meetings at larger conferences, as well as the standard non-discrimination policies, but short of forcing female editors to run, I really don't see how the board can encourage more women to nominate themselves. I would though support efforts such as the greater use of teleconferencing, if it were determined that in-person meetings decreased the number of female participants. |
| Paul Williams (Skenmy) |
no response yet. |
| Ray Saintonge (Eclecticology) |
Let me take this opportunity to venture into political incorrectness. If our anonymous questioner is male I find the question insincere and paternalistic. If you are female why are you asking this question of 15 guys, each of whom would have a potential conflict of interest with you? The way women candidates have been cleaning up in past elections, at least this time a guy has a chance. (You aren't doing so well among the appointed Trustees.)
If women run for office they do stand as good a chance of being elected as any man, but the voters can't vote for a person who is not on the ballot. Men have a tendency to act first, and ask questions later, but I find that women, by asking first, discover such a wide range of doubts and excuses as to put risk beyond reach. If you are a mother of young children with a partner tell (don't ask) him that there will be times when he will need to be alone with the kids. It will do him and the kids a lot of good, as well as you. I certainly profited by having spent a lot of time with my son when he was growing up. If you have the passion for leadership follow it. |
| Ryan Postlethwaite |
no response yet. |
| Samuel Klein (Sj) |
no response yet. |
| Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist) |
First of all, the WMF projects seem to be numerically male-dominated. I suspect that this is for reasons that are beyond our control, but I would very much like to hear others' thoughts, especially women's, on this topic (and I also think it would make a great Wikimania discussion topic, if it hasn't already been one). But because of this, you can always expect that electoral fields will be male-dominated, which indeed they always have been.
(Interestingly, though, women who run do very well: of the eight positions that have been filled by election, women - four different women - have filled six of them. In fact, Erik Möller is the only male ever to be elected by the community.) So the question is, are women running in proportion to their prominence in the community? Obviously in this election the answer is no, but I don't know the overall answer. If they are running in proportion to their prominence, then we should congratulate ourselves on this, and then worry about how to increase women's prominence in the community (on the assumption that they would continue to run in proportion to their prominence as this prominence approached fifty percent). If they're not, we need to determine why not. The only idea I have is the same as Alex's (I came up with it independently of him, though, I swear!). Women still bear a disproportionate share of the responsibility of child-rearing in most societies, so anything we can do to make board participation a more parent-friendly experience should be endorsed. |
| Ting Chen (Wing) |
I don't know why this time there are no women candidating. In the past every run we have women candidating, and they had quite good chance. In total I would encourage more women for our project. If there are more women in the community, there will probably also be more candidates. |
Important subject
1. Which subject would you make most changes for if elected to the commite? What changes? Is there any thing you think is most important to do if elected? What subjects are you most interested in (specific projects, economy, WYSIWYG editing, etc)? Leo Johannes 18:22, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
| Ad Huikeshoven (Dedalus) |
Your first question implies individual Board members would have the authority to make changes to anything. Individual Board members may pay specific attention to specific subjects, however, the Board as a whole decides. Specific subjects I will pay attention to are maintaining openness and transparency of the Foundation, long term financial sustainability of the Foundation, focusing on Foundation issues and delegating project level issues to project level communities to prevent Foundation/Board interference with project level issues, encouraging project level communities to draft their project success story they want to tell, tell and tell to everybody and would like to see the Board tell as well, facilitating migration to CC-BY-SA, and collecting resources to implement WYSIWIG. On the strategic side in my vision there will be over a hundred chapters, covering as many countries, in five years time. |
|---|---|
| Alex Bakharev |
I think there are many challenges that WMF has:
Eech of this task is IMHO critically important. Each is a mammoth task. I do not promise to singlehandedly solve any of them but I promise to support every board movement that makes a step toward solution and stingingly oppose every step in the opposite direction. |
| Craig Spurrier (Cspurrier) |
no response yet. |
| Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester) |
First of all, my priority will be "What has the board already discussed, or is already discussing?" There is no point in wasting energy on topics that have already been discussed to death, unless there is something new to bring to the table; one new board member is not likely to change that. Therefore, unless the board has already come to internal decisions on the topic, these are my priorities:
If there is anything else that the community believes that I should be making a priority of on the board, I invite them to contact me, either on my en.wp user talk page, my meta user talk page, or via email and let me know their thoughts.. |
| Gregory Kohs (Thekohser) |
The most important subject that I'll want to address from the Board is a top-down mandate to begin immediate scientific trials of simple modifications that would improve the excellence and accuracy of the content on these projects -- while simultaneously making editing and maintenance more tolerable for all serious Wikimedians.
Hint: Experiment #1 would be semi-protection of a sample of biographies of living persons with a post-evaluation after 90 days. Imagine the reduction in drive-by defamatory vandalism if anonymous IPs were removed from the mix. If "the community" prefers beating itself against the wall, fighting IP vandals day and night, don't vote for me. |
| Harel Cain (Harel) |
no response yet. |
| Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro) |
no response yet. |
| Kurt M. Weber (Kmweber) |
no response yet. |
| Matthew Bisanz (MBisanz) |
My two main goals would be a to:
|
| Paul Williams (Skenmy) |
no response yet. |
| Ray Saintonge (Eclecticology) |
It's hard to be too specific about this, and it's important not to take hard views that really need to be solved by the projects, the chapters or even Wikicouncil. I think that it's important to be more forthcoming about what's going on at the Board to avoid the appearance of being a cabal. I think it's important to be pro-active to protect the copyrights of WMF and its members, just as much as we look out for the rights of others. I would like to work on eliminating the barriers faced by potential editors who are not as software savvy as many of our leaders. I have also come to see the need to make sure that the sister projects are recognized as equal in importance to Wikipedia. |
| Ryan Postlethwaite |
no response yet. |
| Samuel Klein (Sj) |
no response yet. |
| Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist) |
The two subjects that I'm most interested in are long-range financial planning - which may include the establishment of an endowment as advocated by several other candidates, although I'm skeptical that any such endowment should come from a dedicated donation stream - and the creation of policy committees at the WMF's largest projects. While I don't feel this latter move ought to be in the purview of the Board, the fact is that it needs to happen, and the Board is the only entity capable of making it happen. Think of it as an "Ignore all rules" as applied to the separation between Board and projects, I guess.
Besides these moves, of course, ongoing oversight is always the primary function of a Board, though there aren't really a lot of campaign promises that a guy can make in that department. |
| Ting Chen (Wing) |
I think I have stated my main concern in my candidacy. And as these are the further improvement and development of the MediaWiki software to meet the modern technologies and an enhanced userbility. To encourage and develop collaborations with other non-profit institutions, if possible, to enhance the quality of our projects. To promote our smaller projects and call more people to work on them. Last but not least to develop a way to further improve the communication between the projects. |
Promotions and recruitment
I keep reading statements about promoting Wikimedia, and reaching schools and colleges, as well as recruiting good editors. Fine, How do you see that practically happen?. Nasib Bitar 04:44, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
| Ad Huikeshoven (Dedalus) |
no response yet. |
|---|---|
| Alex Bakharev |
Well, I see it as a three-fold task: we have to educate people how to use our products, we have to promote our goals and we have to promote our editors. This is a big thing but I have to be brief. See also my answer to Board_elections/2008/Candidates/Questions/2#Quality_and_recruitment.
There is enormous interest of the society to our products. A few examples: the next year High Schools on w:New South Wales state in w:Australia will have wikipedia editing course as an elective in their curriculum[1]. It is an ideal course of the Wikiversity. Do we have one? Does WMF checked the curriculum they use? Do we push the dpeartments of education and schoolboards for similar courses in other places? Do we prepare textbooks for them (a good wikibook project). I am not sure a full semester wikiediting course is needed for many students but I would advocate a 1..2 hour Wiki-using for workshop for most students of high schools and universities. Are their teachers qualify for those tasks. Can we recommend qualified wiki-educators to teach wiki to educators. Do we have teaching material available somewhere onwiki? Can we ensure that any significant professional and educational conference there more than one active wikipedian present has wikiwriting workshop or wikipedia booth? Do we have materials for such a workshop onwiki? Maybe we should organize a conference Wikipedia in Education? The second direction is promotion of our goals. There are many wikipedians who worked in media business. Can they educate people about our goals? Can they report how our work is promoting public good, helps underdeveloped nations, poor and disadvantaged? Wikipedians are voters, can we make promotion of free information, limiting terms of the copyright law, support for WMF to be a political issue. There is Disney and others advocating extending their copyright for the Mikey Mouse forever, there are publishers lobbying for extension of copyright on the classical paintings to the reproductions, there are Goverments putting copyright restrictions on the taxpayers-funded historical photos. Can we somehow counter those trends. Can we lobby govermental support for GFDL and Creative Commons? The third direction is promoting wikipedians. We must educate people how wonderful our editors are, how many bright and respectful people are among us. The society should now we are not a bunch of jerks hiding under weird pseudonyms. We must still support anonymity for people who needs it but we should help people to get out of the closet and show their wiki-achievements. They worth it. |
| Craig Spurrier (Cspurrier) |
no response yet. |
| Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester) |
no response yet. |
| Gregory Kohs (Thekohser) |
no response yet. |
| Harel Cain (Harel) |
no response yet. |
| Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro) |
no response yet. |
| Kurt M. Weber (Kmweber) |
no response yet. |
| Matthew Bisanz (MBisanz) |
no response yet. |
| Paul Williams (Skenmy) |
no response yet. |
| Ray Saintonge (Eclecticology) |
no response yet. |
| Ryan Postlethwaite |
no response yet. |
| Samuel Klein (Sj) |
no response yet. |
| Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist) |
no response yet. |
| Ting Chen (Wing) |
no response yet. |
Promoting Wikipedia II
How can Wikipedians approach organizations representing Wikipidia, when in most cases they them selves are registered as anonymous users? Nasib Bitar 08:32, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
| Ad Huikeshoven (Dedalus) |
no response yet. |
|---|---|
| Alex Bakharev |
Nasib, I am not sure I fully understand your question. There are many ways to contact WMF: via mail, E-mail, fax, phone. You can ask for help from your local chapter or a WMF staff or OTRS or a member of the WMF board. In most cases WMF does not need to certify your Wikipedia nickname: if you have a brilliant idea or want to help promote our project you have only have to tell them that you are an experienced Wikipedian. If there is a need for WMF to verify that a particular account belongs to you than you can just send an E-mail using the Wikimail feature of the software or just make a requested edit to your userpage, etc. WMF staff, board members and OTRS volunteers are trusted members of the community, they would not out you. I think we should encourage people to edit under their real names but there it is not required for the interactions with WMF. |
| Craig Spurrier (Cspurrier) |
no response yet. |
| Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester) |
no response yet. |
| Gregory Kohs (Thekohser) |
no response yet. |
| Harel Cain (Harel) |
no response yet. |
| Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro) |
no response yet. |
| Kurt M. Weber (Kmweber) |
no response yet. |
| Matthew Bisanz (MBisanz) |
no response yet. |
| Paul Williams (Skenmy) |
no response yet. |
| Ray Saintonge (Eclecticology) |
no response yet. |
| Ryan Postlethwaite |
no response yet. |
| Samuel Klein (Sj) |
no response yet. |
| Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist) |
no response yet. |
| Ting Chen (Wing) |
no response yet. |