| My candidate statement
|
- Critical
- for the Wikimedia Foundation in the immediate future will be to bridge the divide between the board and the communities in the various projects. To this end I will endeavour to be accessible to the maximum of my ability and linguistic skills, via IRC channels (where I almost constantly hang out) and E-mail (cimon_avaro@yahoo.co.uk), and also begin to be active on the significant mailing-lists. Besides recieving comments and responding to same, I will actively consult on my own initiative people one on one who I see are doing good work in the projects and appear to have the mission of the foundation to their heart.
- My involvement
- With wikimedia has been mainly on the english Wikipedia where I count as my lasting contribution the inception of the Do not bite the newcomers guideline and the Cleanup project (for which I had valuable assistance both from Stevertigo and Angela). The articles I have written and edited do not belong to me, and will not for long retain many of the edits and additions I made, but those two would not have begun (at least so early in the projects evolution) if I had not taken initiative.
- In Board of Trustee Elections
- I have been a candidate both times trusteeships were up for election so far. First time my contribution to the election was an attempt to keep the discussions cordial and by gentle persuasion try to minimize back-biting between the candidates, and elevate the debate over the future direction of the newly instated Foundation. The second time I felt it useful for the continued health of the Foundations governing structure to offer the incumbents a genuine challenge from credible candidates, in full knowledge that they had the trust of the community. This time as the second position is genuinely open, I will do my utmost to be elected, while fervently hoping that all good candidates decide to run, and make this a genuine debate over the future direction we decide to take for this noble undertaking for the benefit of all mankind, our planet, and beyond.
- Longer term
- I see the future of Wikimedian projects shall arc over decades and even centuries, and it will well suit us to keep that in mind; all the petty squables naturally smoothing over time into footnotes in all of the projects passage towards scrutiny under the inspecting eye of eternity. In the following decades Wikimedia will assume an even more dominant position on the Internet, and the way we lead, will influence the whole of the WWW, and so far our influence has been an unequivocably benign one; "making the Internet not suck". To this end we must of necessity intermesh with the various groups who share and guard the same principles as we do; including such as EFF, FSF, Software Freedom Law Center, and Creative Commons.
- The Role of the Foundation
- First and foremost is to "do no evil". The foundations main function should be a custodial one, marshalling the resources and assets that either for legal reasons or reasons of efficiency are best entrusted to its direction and use. These include the trademarks of the foundation as a whole and the projects in their part, and such emblems that make the body and work recognizable in the outside world, guarding them from abuse, fragmentation and dilution. Whether the foundation should futher licence these for local or regional body/bodies is a question which is best approached on a case by case basis, slowly and deliberatively, with a great sensitivity to variances in local practises and cultural/legal frameworks, without presupposing a "one size fits all" model for such transactions.
- For efficiency sake the many committees of community members and outside talent should be very broadly overseen by the board, to ensure that such conform with and further our mission efficiently and usefully. Particularly because of this function of the board, it is vital that the elected and appointed members of the Board be trustworthy, and be seen to be trustworthy in upholding our mission of gathering and disseminating human knowledge freely to all.
|
