subject:"Re\: \[Foundation\-l\] Expert board members \- a suggestion"

Hello,

 Given the fact that no candidate for the board seems to have
 campaigned prominently for this issue in this year's elec-
 tion and it does not even seem to have been mentioned in the
 two before, I do not see why the board should have decided
 otherwise.

You poor souls, always willing to see just black.
Board has raised the topic of dumps multiple times, and I personally  
as a board member, not as a volunteer, discussed this issue with  
people responsible in the staff, still, I see promoting dumps  
technology as somewhat way too low level for board candidacy platform.

Anyway, back then it didn't need board member campaigning - whole  
board knew it is important task, it needed executive level decision,  
that we need someone dedicated to this task, and once such discussion  
was made, dumps started rolling. I don't remember anyone in the board  
who wouldn't treat this as a priority issue.
There wasn't anyone in tech team who wouldn't think it is an important  
issue. There wasn't anyone in organization who'd think it wasn't an  
important issue. And yes, it was matter of overall priorities  
execution, which got resolved somehow, right?

Thomas wrote:
 The tech team prioritised other things over the dumps, had
 the community had the final say they may have done otherwise

Or not done anything \o/

You seem to fail to understand, that for years tech team was also a  
volunteer body - though of course, eventually more and more people got  
on the paycheck.
Well, even after getting the paycheck, extreme-skill people are  
motivated way more when they believe in what they are doing, and just  
having the community have a final say won't help with it.
Frankly, the major input about the dumps that the tech team got from  
the community was you suck where are our dumps kind of input - with  
lots of whining and no rationalization :-) Well, thats the impression  
probably caused by few people on few people :)

Cheers,
Domas

P.S. And community doesn't want direct technology expertise at the  
board level anyway, mwaha ;-)


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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 3:48 AM, Domas Mituzas midom.li...@gmail.comwrote:

 Anyway, back then it didn't need board member campaigning - whole
 board knew it is important task, it needed executive level decision,
 that we need someone dedicated to this task, and once such discussion
 was made, dumps started rolling.


Right...where can I go to download the full history English Wikipedia dump?

Still doesn't work.  And yes, it needs an executive level decision, and it
needs a kick in the ass from the board to get the executive level to make
that decision.

How many millions of dollars were left unspent by the tech team a couple
years ago?

And yes, it was matter of overall priorities
 execution, which got resolved somehow, right?


It's not resolved.  And even if it got resolved today, that'd still be three
years too late.


 You seem to fail to understand, that for years tech team was also a
 volunteer body - though of course, eventually more and more people got
 on the paycheck.


And whose fault is that?  The fault of the CTO, which is in turn the fault
of the board.


 Frankly, the major input about the dumps that the tech team got from
 the community was you suck where are our dumps kind of input - with
 lots of whining and no rationalization :-)


No rationalization?  I can't say I understand what you're asking for.  The
dumps will be fixed when *one person* is put in charge of fixing them, and
when that person has at least several hours a week to dedicate to the task.
 The dumps aren't like encyclopedia articles.  You can't have a bunch of
people adding little things here and there and expect a working product, and
it's unrealistic to expect someone to take charge of this sort of thing for
free, especially in the current economy.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-09-15 Thread Thomas Dalton

2009/9/15 Domas Mituzas midom.li...@gmail.com:
 Thomas wrote:
 The tech team prioritised other things over the dumps, had
 the community had the final say they may have done otherwise

 Or not done anything \o/

I said as much. I wasn't trying to suggest a definite solution, I was
just responding to the claim that there was nothing to fix.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-09-15 Thread Tim Landscheidt

Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:

 The tech team prioritised other things over the dumps, had
 the community had the final say they may have done otherwise

 Or not done anything \o/

 I said as much. I wasn't trying to suggest a definite solution, I was
 just responding to the claim that there was nothing to fix.

JFTR: I did not claim in any way that there was nothing to
fix. I asked what - in your opinion - was to be fixed and
how a different form of organization - in your opinion -
would affect that process positively.

Tim


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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-09-15 Thread Thomas Dalton

2009/9/15 Tim Landscheidt t...@tim-landscheidt.de:
 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:

 The tech team prioritised other things over the dumps, had
 the community had the final say they may have done otherwise

 Or not done anything \o/

 I said as much. I wasn't trying to suggest a definite solution, I was
 just responding to the claim that there was nothing to fix.

 JFTR: I did not claim in any way that there was nothing to
 fix. I asked what - in your opinion - was to be fixed and
 how a different form of organization - in your opinion -
 would affect that process positively.

Apologies for misrepresenting you. My point stands, though - I wasn't
trying to suggest a definite solution.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

Hi!

 Right...where can I go to download the full history English  
 Wikipedia dump?

It is being done!

 Still doesn't work.  And yes, it needs an executive level decision,  
 and it
 needs a kick in the ass from the board to get the executive level to  
 make
 that decision.

That work is being done at the moment, I'd think that it is being  
handled properly. On the other hand, I'm no longer in position of  
judging that from above, and can enjoy fully not caring ;-)

 How many millions of dollars were left unspent by the tech team a  
 couple
 years ago?

How many?

 It's not resolved.  And even if it got resolved today, that'd still  
 be three
 years too late.

We're how many years late with WYSIWYG? :)

 And whose fault is that?  The fault of the CTO, which is in turn the  
 fault
 of the board.

Why are you looking for faults? CTO had to operate under constraints  
set by financial management, financial management was done based on  
conservative non-profit operation model.

 No rationalization?  I can't say I understand what you're asking  
 for.  The
 dumps will be fixed when *one person* is put in charge of fixing  
 them, and
 when that person has at least several hours a week to dedicate to  
 the task.

Is that something I don't know? Thats exactly what I was telling to  
anyone interested. Thanks for repeating what I said :)

 The dumps aren't like encyclopedia articles.

Thats lots and lots of encyclopedia articles!

 You can't have a bunch of
 people adding little things here and there and expect a working  
 product, and
 it's unrealistic to expect someone to take charge of this sort of  
 thing for
 free, especially in the current economy.

You seem to have entirely failing understanding of motivation  
technology volunteers can have.
We have amazing project work done on search by Robert, toolserver  
operation by River, do note, how much work on CDN infrastructure that  
was done by Mark, or simply all the work done before by Brion and Tim.

Whole our technology infrastructure is built by people who have insane  
amount of project-derived motivation. You seem not to notice it. Pity.

On the other hand, it isn't someone to take charge ... for free, it  
is just some work that motivates too much, and Tomasz does great job  
at it, even though he doesn't entirely forfeit his social life to have  
this move faster :)

Domas

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion


  Still doesn't work.  And yes, it needs an executive level decision,
  and it
  needs a kick in the ass from the board to get the executive level to
  make
  that decision.

 That work is being done at the moment, I'd think that it is being
 handled properly. On the other hand, I'm no longer in position of
 judging that from above, and can enjoy fully not caring ;-)


I'll believe it when I see it.  AFAICT, the dumps still don't work, and you
still haven't hired a new CTO.


  How many millions of dollars were left unspent by the tech team a
  couple
  years ago?

 How many?


1.7

Why are you looking for faults?


The first step in fixing a problem is identifying the faults.


 CTO had to operate under constraints
 set by financial management, financial management was done based on
 conservative non-profit operation model.


The CTO came up with a budget.  He submitted that budget.  That budget was
accepted.  Then the money which was budgeted went unspent, while glaring
problems which required spending remained.


  You can't have a bunch of
  people adding little things here and there and expect a working
  product, and
  it's unrealistic to expect someone to take charge of this sort of
  thing for
  free, especially in the current economy.

 You seem to have entirely failing understanding of motivation
 technology volunteers can have.


It's not a matter of motivation, it's a matter of reality.  If you're going
to limit your selection to people who are independently wealthy, you're not
going to get as many qualified individuals for the task.  If there are
people willing and able to fix the dumps for free, and you can find them and
give them the tools they need to do it, fine.  But that didn't happen, and
*in this particular case*, it's probably unrealistic.  Three years ago,
before the economy went into the crapper, you probably could have found
someone to do it.  I probably would have even done it myself, if someone had
given me access to the servers so I could do it.  What I remember from the
time is that the story was always this is being worked on, not we need
someone to volunteer to redesign this.  Actually I was under the impression
then that you didn't really want to fix the dumps - remember this was during
the beginning of the oversight days.  But today it's probably tougher
finding qualified individuals willing and able to do it for free.

Whatever.  Whether it's done for free or for a price isn't what's important.
 What's important is that it gets done.

We have amazing project work done on search by Robert, toolserver
 operation by River, do note, how much work on CDN infrastructure that
 was done by Mark, or simply all the work done before by Brion and Tim.


Have any of these people fixed the dumps?  Maybe if the current system
wasn't written in Python you could have found someone to do this, but as it
was, it simply wasn't a task which anyone was motivated to do for free.
 Let's just wait a few years and see if someone turns up isn't the answer
to that problem.  Let's spend a little of this 1.7 million we have sitting
in a bank account doing nothing is.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-09-15 Thread Thomas Dalton

2009/9/15 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:

  Still doesn't work.  And yes, it needs an executive level decision,
  and it
  needs a kick in the ass from the board to get the executive level to
  make
  that decision.

 That work is being done at the moment, I'd think that it is being
 handled properly. On the other hand, I'm no longer in position of
 judging that from above, and can enjoy fully not caring ;-)


 I'll believe it when I see it.  AFAICT, the dumps still don't work, and you
 still haven't hired a new CTO.

Progress has been made - we do now have most of the dumps sorted. It
is just the full history dump we still don't have.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

Hi!

 I'll believe it when I see it.

;-)

 AFAICT, the dumps still don't work, and you
 still haven't hired a new CTO.

Dumps work better, and there's work done to get a new CTO.

 1.7

How was that budgeted? Which year? Can you point me at that unspent  
software development budget number?

 The first step in fixing a problem is identifying the faults.

Ones known already?

 The CTO came up with a budget.  He submitted that budget.  That  
 budget was
 accepted.  Then the money which was budgeted went unspent, while  
 glaring
 problems which required spending remained.

You know who'd do better job? I guess WMF would welcome referrals :)

 It's not a matter of motivation, it's a matter of reality.  If  
 you're going
 to limit your selection to people who are independently wealthy,  
 you're not
 going to get as many qualified individuals for the task.

Well, apparently there are people on payroll - so we're not limiting.
On the other hand, can we afford proper .com-level salaries to  
qualified engineers?
Even though there's recession, there's always need for good engineers.

 If there are
 people willing and able to fix the dumps for free, and you can find  
 them and
 give them the tools they need to do it, fine.  But that didn't  
 happen, and
 *in this particular case*, it's probably unrealistic.

Indeed, because this isn't project that is really attractive or  
rewarding technology-wise.
For now we got lots of things done because stuff we did was interesting.

 Three years ago, before the economy went into the crapper,
 you probably could have found someone to do it.
 I probably would have even done it myself, if someone had
 given me access to the servers so I could do it.

One doesn't really need access to servers to fix the code. Well,  
eventually one may need, but that is quite beyond the whole  
implementation.

  What I remember from the
 time is that the story was always this is being worked on, not we  
 need
 someone to volunteer to redesign this.

Depends whom you were talking to, or maybe they were mistaken about  
the project, or maybe they were mistaken about themselves committing  
to it :)

 Actually I was under the impression
 then that you didn't really want to fix the dumps - remember this  
 was during
 the beginning of the oversight days.

How is that any related?

  But today it's probably tougher
 finding qualified individuals willing and able to do it for free.

I wouldn't be that sure. It was always tough to find anyone  
experienced enough.

 Whatever.  Whether it's done for free or for a price isn't what's  
 important.
 What's important is that it gets done.

It gets done. It is being done.

 Have any of these people fixed the dumps?

In a way, everyone did, just probably not enough for your absolute  
benchmark.
Still, all these people volunteered to do great things, requiring more  
work than dumps.
My point is that we can find volunteers for really challenging in- 
depth projects, it gets a bit more difficult if the project in  
question does not provide too much motivation.

  Maybe if the current system
 wasn't written in Python you could have found someone to do this,  
 but as it
 was, it simply wasn't a task which anyone was motivated to do for  
 free.

LOL, replace 'Python' with pretty much any other language, and you can  
use it again.

 Let's just wait a few years and see if someone turns up isn't the  
 answer
 to that problem.  Let's spend a little of this 1.7 million we have  
 sitting
 in a bank account doing nothing is.

You are trolling and you're piggy-backing.
We have dedicated resources for that, paid out of donations, yes.

Is repeating yourself these things over and over something you're  
doing to try to support yourself as original author of these ideas?

Cheers,
Domas

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-09-15 Thread Gregory Kohs

Domas says about Anthony:



How was that budgeted? Which year? Can you point me at that unspent
software development budget number?

...

You are trolling and you're piggy-backing.
We have dedicated resources for that, paid out of donations, yes.



I would consider it equally trolling to assume or pretend that an
unfortunate financial situation did not happen, just because you haven't
taken the time or effort to pay attention to when these issues have been
discussed in numerous, varied forums across the Internet.  Here are at least
a dozen for you, Domas:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=ensafe=offq=%22%241.7+million%22+technology+wikimedia+%22sue+gardner%22

Greg
-- 
Gregory Kohs
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-09-15 Thread Andrew Whitworth

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 3:56 PM, Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com wrote:
 I would consider it equally trolling to assume or pretend that an
 unfortunate financial situation did not happen, just because you haven't
 taken the time or effort to pay attention to when these issues have been
 discussed in numerous, varied forums across the Internet.  Here are at least
 a dozen for you, Domas:

 http://www.google.com/search?hl=ensafe=offq=%22%241.7+million%22+technology+wikimedia+%22sue+gardner%22

I wouldn't consider any of those dozen to be credible or reliable
sources. Nobody has a responsibility to monitor the entirety of the
internet to follow various discussion minutia or unfounded rumors, and
it's not trolling to not assume that responsibility for oneself.

--Andrew Whitworth

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

Gregory,
 Here are at least a dozen for you, Domas:
 http://www.google.com/search?hl=ensafe=offq=%22%241.7+million%22+technology+wikimedia+%22sue+gardner%22

Oh wow, I got my chance to read Valleywag, probably that should be the  
major point of insight for all the efficient non-profit governance,  
right, Gregory?

Now, for those who fail at reading comprehension, let me point out to  
the report from ED to board:
a desire to defer equipment purchases while various donations and  
sponsorship deals were under negotiation

We had major sponsorship deals pending, which didn't happen because,  
dear oh dear, bad economy.
Thats why we stretched a bit, and were doing hardware acquisitions  
next FY.

If you think it wasn't worth getting to those talks and trying to get  
free hardware (or second datacenter, or multi-petabyte storage  
expansion, or ...), you seem to be one in the mood of wasting money.
Oh well, we also did some optimization work (volunteers mostly ;-)  
that allowed us to grow a bit longer.

Do note, our major capacity benchmark is September-October season,  
summer season allows us to restructure lots of stuff.

Yes, we could've done hiring faster, and more aggressively I guess -  
which we discussed at the board level (especially at October 3-5  
meeting in 2008).

 Yes, you certainly wouldn't want to click the first returned result:
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ 
 Foundation_report_to_the_Board,_May_2008

Thats second to me, first is Valleywag.

Cheers,
Domas

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

Hi!

 Correct me if I'm wrong, but here's what I can gather: Total  
 spending was
 $1.7 million less than budgeted.  Tech spending was $1.7 million  
 less than
 budgeted.  And $1.7 million was sitting in the bank accounts at the  
 end of
 the fiscal year.

We did not spend on hardware, because, well, I explained already in  
some other email.
We did not reallocate the money to hire lots of developers because we  
didn't know how the hardware spending will look like.

 The solution to not being able to afford proper .com-level  
 salaries is to
 offer people nothing?

We're not competitive on the job market. So, if we don't get qualified  
engineers willing to work for less, what should we do - hire less  
qualified ones?

 I'll fix the dumps for minimum wage plus daycare for my two kids.

;-) Are you for these conditions for other projects too?

 I don't know about that.  It's a pretty cool problem, it's just a  
 difficult
 one to solve.  Or maybe it's a cool problem because it's difficult  
 to solve.

I find it very boring problem myself. Probably thats because I'm  
spoiled by really cool problems at work, or maybe somewhat cooler  
problems at Wikimedia ;-)

 It would certainly help.  The problem with the dumps is that they're  
 so
 huge.

They're small. :) And yes, I know what is the problem with dumps :-)

  Not being able to test solutions on a system just as huge is a
 serious constraint.

Problems are known well enough to create quite some work. Resolve 10  
what ifs and you're nearly done.

 Plus you have to remember that the WMF's particular
 installation is not the common one.

Agreed.

  There's probably enough information out
 there to pretty much replicate it, but that's another serious  
 constraint.
 I'm certainly not willing to deal with those unnecessary constraints.

OK!

 It was the existence of the history dumps that enabled Judd and I to  
 find
 the oversighted SlimVirgin edits.

That encourages production of dumps, right? :)

 Once again, I've heard that for three years now, so forgive me for not
 believing it until I see it.

OK!

Domas

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-09-15 Thread Gregory Kohs

Andrew Whitworth opined:

++

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 3:56 PM, Gregory Kohs thekohser at gmail.com
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l wrote:
* I would consider it equally trolling to assume or pretend that an
** unfortunate financial situation did not happen, just because you haven't
** taken the time or effort to pay attention to when these issues have been
** discussed in numerous, varied forums across the Internet.  Here are at least
** a dozen for you, Domas:
**
** 
http://www.google.com/search?hl=ensafe=offq=%22%241.7+million%22+technology+wikimedia+%22sue+gardner%22
*
I wouldn't consider any of those dozen to be credible or reliable
sources. Nobody has a responsibility to monitor the entirety of the
internet to follow various discussion minutia or unfounded rumors, and
it's not trolling to not assume that responsibility for oneself.

--Andrew Whitworth

++

Yes, you certainly wouldn't want to click the first returned result:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Foundation_report_to_the_Board,_May_2008

...Where Sue Gardner (you may not know or trust her credibility or
reliability, but she is the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation,
which is the subject of this mailing list) herself says:

The biggest departmental underspend was in the technology budget

(-$1,673). We attribute this underspending to general conservatism and
caution on the part of the tech team, a desire to defer equipment purchases
while various donations and sponsorship deals were under negotiation, and
delays in hiring.



Is it just me, or is there a significant amount of cotton stuffed in many
ears around here?

Sorry to sound so rude in reply, but you really do turn some of these
would-be contested lay-ups into backboard-shattering slam dunks.

Greg
-- 
Gregory Kohs
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Domas Mituzas midom.li...@gmail.comwrote:

 Hi!

  Correct me if I'm wrong, but here's what I can gather: Total
  spending was
  $1.7 million less than budgeted.  Tech spending was $1.7 million
  less than
  budgeted.  And $1.7 million was sitting in the bank accounts at the
  end of
  the fiscal year.

 We did not spend on hardware, because, well, I explained already in
 some other email.
 We did not reallocate the money to hire lots of developers because we
 didn't know how the hardware spending will look like.


And that has proven to be a huge misjudgment.

 I'll fix the dumps for minimum wage plus daycare for my two kids.

 ;-) Are you for these conditions for other projects too?


For tech projects that I find interesting, and can do from home, sure.
 Daycare alone is $80/day, though.

 I don't know about that.  It's a pretty cool problem, it's just a
  difficult
  one to solve.  Or maybe it's a cool problem because it's difficult
  to solve.

 I find it very boring problem myself. Probably thats because I'm
 spoiled by really cool problems at work, or maybe somewhat cooler
 problems at Wikimedia ;-)


Could be.  But then, I'm probably interested in different types of problems
than you.  And I'm not sure you've considered this problem in the same way
that I have (I'd like to modify the compressed files in place, though that
short description doesn't really capture the solution).
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-09-15 Thread Andrew Whitworth

You said:

 ... you haven't
 taken the time or effort to pay attention to when these issues have been
 discussed in numerous, varied forums across the Internet

To which I replied that it isn't Domus' responsibility to monitor the
entire internet for rumors, discussions, and idle speculation about
this or that nefarious deed.

I could really care less about what Sue has to say about the budget,
what you think about what she says about the budget, or what slam
dunks you think you're making on these issues.

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 4:11 PM, Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com wrote:
 Yes, you certainly wouldn't want to click the first returned result:

 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Foundation_report_to_the_Board,_May_2008

That link doesn't appear on the first page of results when I click your link.

 Is it just me, or is there a significant amount of cotton stuffed in many
 ears around here?

This coming from a man who refuses to hear or believe that the WMF is
not some evil, conspiratorial, criminal organization who commits fraud
and deceit at every turn? Who frivolously and malevolently wastes the
hard-earned money of it's donors? Who purposefully employs people of
substandard moral fortitude and professional capability? Please let me
know when the pot is done calling the kettle black, until then I'll be
out back laughing until I hurt.

--Andrew Whitworth

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

Hello!

 And that has proven to be a huge misjudgment.

Which didn't entirely depend on us. We're a young organization, we  
depend on lots of external influences. You going and pointing fingers,  
without trying to understand, that there were reasons to behave in  
that way, isn't constructive.

 Could be.  But then, I'm probably interested in different types of  
 problems
 than you.  And I'm not sure you've considered this problem in the  
 same way
 that I have (I'd like to modify the compressed files in place,  
 though that
 short description doesn't really capture the solution).

This is entirely off-topic, and could be continued in wikitech-l, if  
you're really eager to tell how you modify compressed files in  
place. ;-)

Cheers,
Domas

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 5:42 PM, Domas Mituzas midom.li...@gmail.comwrote:

 Hello!

  And that has proven to be a huge misjudgment.

 Which didn't entirely depend on us.


The WMF tremendously overestimated future hardware costs by making horrible
assumptions, which I pointed out on this very list.  That depended entirely
on the WMF.

This is entirely off-topic, and could be continued in wikitech-l, if
 you're really eager to tell how you modify compressed files in
 place. ;-)


I've already posted a lot on the subject on wikitech-l, and I have most of
it already working at home.  If you'd like me to go further, I've already
posted my terms.  I'm not eager to tell how I did it.  I'm eager to finish
it, to put it into place, and to watch it work.  And that's not going to
happen at this time unless I can get daycare for my kids and a few bucks for
myself.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-09-15 Thread Tim Landscheidt

Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:

 The tech team prioritised other things over the dumps, had
 the community had the final say they may have done otherwise

 Or not done anything \o/

 I said as much. I wasn't trying to suggest a definite solution, I was
 just responding to the claim that there was nothing to fix.

 JFTR: I did not claim in any way that there was nothing to
 fix. I asked what - in your opinion - was to be fixed and
 how a different form of organization - in your opinion -
 would affect that process positively.

 Apologies for misrepresenting you. My point stands, though - I wasn't
 trying to suggest a definite solution.

What point? That a different form of organization may have
led to different results?

Tim


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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-09-15 Thread brion

On Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:55:56 -0400, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:
 The WMF tremendously overestimated future hardware costs by making
horrible
 assumptions, which I pointed out on this very list.  That depended
entirely
 on the WMF.

The 2007-2008 Wikimedia budget was the company's first systematically
built budget ever, and many of the numbers were based on estimates and
extrapolations from the previous year's spending which didn't turn out to
be as accurate as originally forseen. While it may be fair to criticize it
as a sub-ideal budget, it's rather pointless to continue on about it over a
year after that fiscal year ended.

You may wish to pay more attention to the 2008-2009 (last FY) and
2009-2010 (current FY) budgets if you're interested in oversight.

As for the decision not to immediately reassign overbudgeted monies to
other unbudgeted uses -- money doesn't just disappear at the end of the
fiscal year! Spending money for the sole purpose of using up the budget
before year-end would have been gross mismanagement and would likely have
been harshly criticized. Given the relatively new company leadership and
the uncertainly of how fundraising might go, treating donors' money
conservatively makes a lot of sense.

Instead of spending it on anything we could think of right away, donors'
money was kept in store so it could be spent more wisely under future
budgets. Over the last couple years we've been building up our human
capacity, and we're now in a position where we actually can do and are
bringing in a lot of new staff and contract developers, both to the general
pool and on specific project teams.

I'm afraid we're not in a position to change what we spent two years ago;
all we can change is what we're spending today, and I don't really see
anything for you to object to. We *are* hiring more tech staff as you
recommend. We *have* assigned the dump fixing to a single responsible
individual as you recommend (and everything is now working except the
English full-history, which is still being worked on). We *are* hiring a
new CTO with a strong administrative background, as you recommend.

What's left?

-- brion

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-09-14 Thread Tim Landscheidt

Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:

 [...]
 If it ain't broke, don't fix it. is a good principle for maintaining
 the status quo, it isn't a good principle if you want progress. The
 job isn't done yet, so progress would be good. If you want progress
 you have to be willing to implement enhancements as well as fixes. One
 of the main fundamental problems I have found with the WMF is with
 regards to prioritising. Often the WMF doesn't prioritise the same
 things as the community seems to want. The dumps that Anthony
 mentioned is a good example of that - a significant number of
 community members complained about the dumps not working for years
 before much progress was made and they still aren't completely
 working. The tech team prioritised other things over the dumps, had
 the community had the final say they may have done otherwise (or they
 may not, no detailed discussion of the options ever took place in
 public so it is difficult to know what conclusion would have been
 reached).

Given the fact that no candidate for the board seems to have
campaigned prominently for this issue in this year's elec-
tion and it does not even seem to have been mentioned in the
two before, I do not see why the board should have decided
otherwise.

  As the re-prioritization seems to have primarily been
triggered by River's rant to this very list, do you find his
behaviour or the subsequent board decision disrepectful of
the community?

Tim


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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-09-14 Thread Anthony

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 5:19 PM, Tim Landscheidt t...@tim-landscheidt.dewrote:

 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:

  [...]
  If it ain't broke, don't fix it. is a good principle for maintaining
  the status quo, it isn't a good principle if you want progress. The
  job isn't done yet, so progress would be good. If you want progress
  you have to be willing to implement enhancements as well as fixes. One
  of the main fundamental problems I have found with the WMF is with
  regards to prioritising. Often the WMF doesn't prioritise the same
  things as the community seems to want. The dumps that Anthony
  mentioned is a good example of that - a significant number of
  community members complained about the dumps not working for years
  before much progress was made and they still aren't completely
  working. The tech team prioritised other things over the dumps, had
  the community had the final say they may have done otherwise (or they
  may not, no detailed discussion of the options ever took place in
  public so it is difficult to know what conclusion would have been
  reached).

 Given the fact that no candidate for the board seems to have
 campaigned prominently for this issue in this year's elec-
 tion and it does not even seem to have been mentioned in the
 two before, I do not see why the board should have decided
 otherwise.


Well, personally I was responding to the it ain't broke part, rather than
proposing a fix.  I don't think having all the board members elected by the
current Special:Boardvote rules would fix the dumps.  In fact, I think if
anything it would keep the dumps broken longer.

One of the biggest problems is that the WMF doesn't really have a
community.  The individual projects have communities, which to some extent
overlap, I wouldn't call that the WMF community.  Activity on a single
project is all that's needed for eligibility to vote for board members.
 There's no need to even feign commitment to the larger goals of the
foundation as a whole.

I guess there's now a wiki for the WMF community: strategy.wikimedia.org.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-29 Thread Delirium

Thomas Dalton wrote:
 Anthony's not exactly being fair, though, when he sort of suggests that the
 shortfall in Technology spending went instead to the Executive Director.  As
 far as I can tell, it went into the bank, to be spent in the FOLLOWING YEARS
 on the Executive Director's need to expand staff to unprecedented levels.
 
 I think most of the tech underspend was due to spending being
 deferred. That money will still be spent on tech. Are you objecting to
 WMF expansion? I think the fact that the WMF can sustain a larger
 staff is a good thing, it will allow them to do much more.

I'd personally place myself on the objecting to WMF expansion side, at 
least in general sentiment. With larger organizations, you can indeed do 
more, but also run more risks. In particular, organizations with large 
staffs run the risk of bureaucratization; and community/volunteer-based 
organizations with large staffs risk capture of the overall project by 
the official organization, rather than the community and volunteers they 
ostensibly act as support staff for.

It's not inevitable the outcomes will be bad, but it's worth thinking 
about, I think, especially as the track record of traditional non-profit 
organizations overall is quite poor in that department.

-Mark

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-29 Thread Samuel Klein

Hello Mark,

On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 3:38 AM, Deliriumdelir...@hackish.org wrote:

 I'd personally place myself on the objecting to WMF expansion side, at
 least in general sentiment. With larger organizations, you can indeed do
 more, but also run more risks. In particular, organizations with large
 staffs run the risk of bureaucratization; and community/volunteer-based
 organizations with large staffs risk capture of the overall project by
 the official organization, rather than the community and volunteers they
 ostensibly act as support staff for.

Can you say more about this  -- both what more you can do and the
risks run -- and cite the track record[s] you mention?  Do you feel
there are similar capacity/risk tradeoffs of larger/more inclusive
communities?  (some might say that the current editing community is
becoming an organization separating itself from the general public,
building barriers to participation; and that this [de facto]
organization risks capturing the overall knowledge-sharing project
within existing guidelines and policies, rather than encouraging bold
participation among the wider world, who are the ostensible audience
and body of future contributors.)

Thanks,
Sj

 It's not inevitable the outcomes will be bad, but it's worth thinking
 about, I think, especially as the track record of traditional non-profit
 organizations overall is quite poor in that department.

 -Mark

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-29 Thread Delirium

Samuel Klein wrote:
 Hello Mark,
 
 On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 3:38 AM, Deliriumdelir...@hackish.org wrote:
 
 I'd personally place myself on the objecting to WMF expansion side, at
 least in general sentiment. With larger organizations, you can indeed do
 more, but also run more risks. In particular, organizations with large
 staffs run the risk of bureaucratization; and community/volunteer-based
 organizations with large staffs risk capture of the overall project by
 the official organization, rather than the community and volunteers they
 ostensibly act as support staff for.
 
 Can you say more about this  -- both what more you can do and the
 risks run -- and cite the track record[s] you mention?


Well, the last part is a judgment call: I'm personally skeptical of the 
extent to which most non-profit organizations remain representative of 
the communities they were originally started by, as opposed to the 
professional staff and boards of directors they're currently run by. 
That is, is the organization itself directing the effort, taking 
decisions from the top down; or is the organization there to provide 
legal and financial backing for implementation of a community's goals? I 
prefer the 2nd variety.

One example I consider near ideal is the relationship between Software 
in the Public Interest (a non-profit organization) and the Debian 
project (a community-run project that SPI is the legal and financial 
backing for). Despite not being a non-profit, the relationship between 
Canonical and Ubuntu is also almost along those lines, too. In both 
cases, there's a separate organizational structure for the community and 
for the legal organization--- SPI does not appoint Debian project leads, 
and the SPI board does not pass Debian resolutions. Wikimedia so far is 
run almost like that, though not quite as strongly.

Basically: why does formal organization with legal structure exist at 
all? For purely online organizations, it *almost* doesn't need to exist. 
But, a decentralized group of people with no legal status has difficulty 
maintaining a server room, purchasing bandwidth, and similar things. So 
one does need to exist. And once one exists, perhaps it can provide some 
other assistance-- if a group of community members think something ought 
to be done that requires some legal status or money, they could go to 
the organization with a request, like we currently do with a paid tech 
staff that implements (some) (sensible) feature requests. But I'm 
worried about whether that will creep towards the organization itself 
increasingly running the show, as opposed to playing mainly a 
supporting/implementation/financing role.


 Do you feel
 there are similar capacity/risk tradeoffs of larger/more inclusive
 communities?  (some might say that the current editing community is
 becoming an organization separating itself from the general public,
 building barriers to participation; and that this [de facto]
 organization risks capturing the overall knowledge-sharing project
 within existing guidelines and policies, rather than encouraging bold
 participation among the wider world, who are the ostensible audience
 and body of future contributors.)

I think there are risks/tradeoffs there, but I don't see them as quite 
the same kind. For, say, the English Wikipedia (what I'm most familiar 
with), Why does it work at all? is a pretty large question, but I 
think to a large extent it comes down precisely to the fact that our 
community *isn't* the public at large, but is a subset of the public 
that is generally well-informed, has some degree of shared culture and 
community norms, and is committed to a set of goals not everyone shares. 
It's worth thinking about whether we're unnecessarily excluding people 
who could share those goals, or could change things to improve the 
quality of the encyclopedia; but I think also worth thinking about 
whether there are important elements of those cultural norms that are 
key to the success of the project and shouldn't be messed with lightly.

-Mark

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-28 Thread Florence Devouard

Ting Chen wrote:
 Hi Thomas,
 
 one year ago when I run for the board election I came with the same 
 proposal as you. Meanwhile I have changed my oppinion. The problem is 
 that this would not work out.
 
 I totally agree with you that voting is the minor part of the board 
 decision making process. Actually in many cases it is only for the 
 protocol and formality. The really big part is before voting, while 
 discussion. Here you are totally right.
 
 There are a lot of differences between a board member and an advisory 
 board member. The most important difference is the dedication. As a 
 board member you MUST attend board meeting, you MUST take part in 
 discussion. As an advisory board member you are not obliged to do that. 
 Naturally, if we have an issue and we feel lack of expertise, or simply 
 because we want to get more input from more sources, we go out and ask 
 members of the advisory board. This is for example why some of our 
 committees has advisory board member in it. This is also why the 
 advisory board would play a crucial role in the strategic planning. But 
 it is totally different between that expertise is already inside of the 
 board or if the expertise must at first be asked from outside of the 
 board. The best examples you can see are Stu West and Jan-Bard de 
 Vreede. Stu with his technical and financial expertise is simply there, 
 in every meeting, in the board mailing list, we don't have to go out and 
 ask someone from the outside, especially because these expertise are 
 really direly needed in every meeting and most of our topics. The same 
 is it with the organizational expertise that Jan-Bard brings into the 
 board both in how an ordinary procedure should look like as well as how 
 discipline must be excercised in the board. This is the reason why they 
 are asked to be on the board again and again and why they hold so 
 important offices in the board. Indeed, my experience with both of them 
 is why I have changed my opinion. I don't know Matt that long yet, just 
 met him in one board meeting. But I do feel that in this one meeting he 
 gave very interesting and important insights. For example how 
 measurement of success should look like. There are also other reasons 
 why we need expert seats. One is that sometimes you are in a discussion 
 and stumbles over something where you didn't see the need of an expert 
 before but where you feel really thankful to have one in the board. 
 Naturally you can say, hey, we need here an expertise, let us at first 
 ask someone in the advisory board and then make a decision. This 
 actually happend in the past year more than once. But this is a slow 
 process, you would go out and e-mail that person, she or he would 
 answer, there would maybe more questions that you would ask again, or 
 the board must first discuss internally and then ask again. This is 
 totally different as if you have already that expertise in the meeting 
 and can directly go forward. I also need not to mention that it is 
 totally different to talk with someone from face to face or via e-mail 
 and we cannot fly all advisory board members whose expertise are needed 
 in to the board meeting.
 
 As I said before I had the same idea as you last year. But some times a 
 change of perspective or new experiences show that the idea doesn't work.
 
 Greetings
 Ting

Incidently, in the context of the strategic planning process, I talked 
this morning with Laura and Barry from the Bridgespan Group, as well as 
with Eugene yesterday.

 From what I understood, the Bridgespan Group is trying to interview all 
advisory board members to collect information and feedback for the work 
started on the strategic wiki (http://strategy.wikimedia.org).

I think that is an excellent way to make use of the Advisory Board 
member and I thank them for our implication in that process.


Ant


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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-28 Thread Ting Chen

Thomas Dalton wrote:
 a) Could you give an example of an organisation with over 100 board members?
   
IOC has, ok only more than 70 members, not totally 100.

 b) You haven't answered the question. Why couldn't the dedicated
 experts that currently go on the board of trustees go on the advisory
 board instead?
   
Actually I had, because not all advisory board members want to have that 
sort of dedication. There are other reasons too. For example because an 
advisory board member don't have certain authority against the staff, 
and because in a lot of cases you cannot definitively say here ends the 
strategic planning and there starts the othervise function.

-- 
Ting

Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/


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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009/8/28 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de:
 Thomas Dalton wrote:
 a) Could you give an example of an organisation with over 100 board members?

 IOC has, ok only more than 70 members, not totally 100.

The IOC Executive Board (which is the relevant body to compare to) has
15 members.

http://www.olympic.org/uk/organisation/ioc/executive/index_uk.asp

 b) You haven't answered the question. Why couldn't the dedicated
 experts that currently go on the board of trustees go on the advisory
 board instead?

 Actually I had, because not all advisory board members want to have that
 sort of dedication.

That's not an answer at all. I'm not talking about all advisory board
members. I'm talking about people that are currently board members, so
obviously are that dedicated. You really aren't listening. My proposal
isn't complicated, you should be able to understand it.

 There are other reasons too. For example because an
 advisory board member don't have certain authority against the staff,
 and because in a lot of cases you cannot definitively say here ends the
 strategic planning and there starts the othervise function.

Now we're getting to some real reasons. I don't agree regarding
authority - the board as a collective body has the authority, they can
exercise that authority on behalf of an advisory board member if
necessary. The difficulty in drawing lines between different parts of
the role is valid, though. I expect it can be overcome with some
effort, however.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 11:34 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:

 2009/8/28 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de:
  There are other reasons too. For example because an
  advisory board member don't have certain authority against the staff,
  and because in a lot of cases you cannot definitively say here ends the
  strategic planning and there starts the othervise function.

 Now we're getting to some real reasons. I don't agree regarding
 authority - the board as a collective body has the authority, they can
 exercise that authority on behalf of an advisory board member if
 necessary. The difficulty in drawing lines between different parts of
 the role is valid, though. I expect it can be overcome with some
 effort, however.


I think the main valid reason is that it's kind of rude to ask someone like
Halprin to commit a certain portion of his quite valuable time to the
project, absolutely free, and not to even allow him one board vote (out of
what, 10 now?).

I'd rather see a system for experts where the community (with a better
definition than just whoever makes X edits) ratifies the nominees made by
the nomination committee, or at least one where the community has the
power to remove members.  But I'd rather see the Wikimedia Foundation as a
membership organization...  So whatever.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 2:06 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:

 2009/8/28 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
  I think the main valid reason is that it's kind of rude to ask someone
 like
  Halprin to commit a certain portion of his quite valuable time to the
  project, absolutely free, and not to even allow him one board vote (out
 of
  what, 10 now?).

 I don't see why. I donate lots of my time to the project and don't get
 any board votes.


With all due respect, I'd say your time is worth a lot less than his.
 Besides, not all people are like you.

I would hope (and assume) he took the seat because he
 supports the cause not because he is power hungry.


I would too.  Absolutely.  But there's something to be said about
specifically having a power not granted to you because you're deemed
untrustworthy.  In fact, on a smaller scale I think that's one of the
reasons Wikipedia works.


  I'd rather see a system for experts where the community (with a better
  definition than just whoever makes X edits) ratifies the nominees made by
  the nomination committee, or at least one where the community has the
  power to remove members.  But I'd rather see the Wikimedia Foundation as
 a
  membership organization...  So whatever.

 That is an interesting idea. A ratification process wouldn't be too
 difficult logistically and would help keep the real power in the hands
 of the community, where it should be.

 The WMF as a membership organisation would be great, but I don't think
 it is practical.


It's not practical in the sense that there's not a snowball's chance in hell
of the board agreeing to it, but I don't see why it's not practical
otherwise.  The biggest reason people give is that they would want to become
a member without revealing their identity.  To them I say either get over
it, or contribute to the individual project(s) without having membership in
the foundation.

Of course, that leads back to the fact that some (many?) people are not
willing to volunteer for an organization when they have a power not granted
to them because they are deemed untrustworthy.  Of course, in this case, I
say we can do without those people.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-28 Thread Tim Landscheidt

Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:

 [...]
 The WMF as a membership organisation would be great, but I don't think
 it is practical. A better option (which I have discussed with a few
 poeple) would be having the chapters as members of the WMF and the
 community as members of the chapters. There are other global
 non-profits that work along those lines. (The International Federation
 of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, for example.)

Why? What's broken at the moment? The servers are running,
and I really cannot see how a different form of organization
would have any favourable impact on a few million people
writing the best free encyclopedia (*1) in this solar sys-
tem. Not to speak of this thing with the sum of all know-
ledge being shared by every single human being.

  If for each message sent in this thread, one article was
checked for vandalism according to Anthony's proposal, he
could present some results in a few days. If one article was
checked each time a message in this thread is read somewhere
around the globe, he'd be done in a few minutes.

Tim

(*1)   ... and dictionary and books and media repository
   and ...


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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009/8/28 Tim Landscheidt t...@tim-landscheidt.de:
 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:

 [...]
 The WMF as a membership organisation would be great, but I don't think
 it is practical. A better option (which I have discussed with a few
 poeple) would be having the chapters as members of the WMF and the
 community as members of the chapters. There are other global
 non-profits that work along those lines. (The International Federation
 of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, for example.)

 Why? What's broken at the moment? The servers are running,
 and I really cannot see how a different form of organization
 would have any favourable impact on a few million people
 writing the best free encyclopedia (*1) in this solar sys-
 tem. Not to speak of this thing with the sum of all know-
 ledge being shared by every single human being.

I think most people want the WMF to do more than just keep the servers
running, though. It is the extra stuff that depends on good
governance.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 3:06 PM, Tim Landscheidt t...@tim-landscheidt.dewrote:

 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:

  [...]
  The WMF as a membership organisation would be great, but I don't think
  it is practical. A better option (which I have discussed with a few
  poeple) would be having the chapters as members of the WMF and the
  community as members of the chapters. There are other global
  non-profits that work along those lines. (The International Federation
  of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, for example.)

 Why? What's broken at the moment?


The English full-history dump, for one.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-28 Thread Tim Landscheidt

Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:

  [...]
  The WMF as a membership organisation would be great, but I don't think
  it is practical. A better option (which I have discussed with a few
  poeple) would be having the chapters as members of the WMF and the
  community as members of the chapters. There are other global
  non-profits that work along those lines. (The International Federation
  of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, for example.)

 Why? What's broken at the moment?

 The English full-history dump, for one.

And that would work if the WMF were a membership organiza-
tion? Interesting.

Tim


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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009/8/28 Tim Landscheidt t...@tim-landscheidt.de:
 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:

 [...]
 The WMF as a membership organisation would be great, but I don't think
 it is practical. A better option (which I have discussed with a few
 poeple) would be having the chapters as members of the WMF and the
 community as members of the chapters. There are other global
 non-profits that work along those lines. (The International Federation
 of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, for example.)

 Why? What's broken at the moment? The servers are running,
 and I really cannot see how a different form of organization
 would have any favourable impact on a few million people
 writing the best free encyclopedia (*1) in this solar sys-
 tem. Not to speak of this thing with the sum of all know-
 ledge being shared by every single human being.

 I think most people want the WMF to do more than just keep the servers
 running, though. It is the extra stuff that depends on good
 governance.

 I did not ask what you think other people want, I asked what
 you think is broken at the moment and how that could be
 mended by another form of organization.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. is a good principle for maintaining
the status quo, it isn't a good principle if you want progress. The
job isn't done yet, so progress would be good. If you want progress
you have to be willing to implement enhancements as well as fixes. One
of the main fundamental problems I have found with the WMF is with
regards to prioritising. Often the WMF doesn't prioritise the same
things as the community seems to want. The dumps that Anthony
mentioned is a good example of that - a significant number of
community members complained about the dumps not working for years
before much progress was made and they still aren't completely
working. The tech team prioritised other things over the dumps, had
the community had the final say they may have done otherwise (or they
may not, no detailed discussion of the options ever took place in
public so it is difficult to know what conclusion would have been
reached).

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 3:35 PM, Tim Landscheidt t...@tim-landscheidt.dewrote:

 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:

   [...]
   The WMF as a membership organisation would be great, but I don't think
   it is practical. A better option (which I have discussed with a few
   poeple) would be having the chapters as members of the WMF and the
   community as members of the chapters. There are other global
   non-profits that work along those lines. (The International Federation
   of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, for example.)

  Why? What's broken at the moment?

  The English full-history dump, for one.

 And that would work if the WMF were a membership organiza-
 tion? Interesting.


I have no idea if it would or wouldn't, but it's certainly within the power
of the board to pressure Sue to hire a CTO sooner rather than later.  It's
certainly also within the power of the board to ensure that budgets are set
honestly and that the money allocated to technology is spent on technology,
not on the office of the executive director.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009/8/28 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
 I have no idea if it would or wouldn't, but it's certainly within the power
 of the board to pressure Sue to hire a CTO sooner rather than later.  It's
 certainly also within the power of the board to ensure that budgets are set
 honestly and that the money allocated to technology is spent on technology,
 not on the office of the executive director.

Has tech money been spent on other things previously? That is news to me.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:

 2009/8/28 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
  I have no idea if it would or wouldn't, but it's certainly within the
 power
  of the board to pressure Sue to hire a CTO sooner rather than later.
  It's
  certainly also within the power of the board to ensure that budgets are
 set
  honestly and that the money allocated to technology is spent on
 technology,
  not on the office of the executive director.

 Has tech money been spent on other things previously? That is news to me.


Depends how you want to look at it, since the dollar bills aren't color
coded or anything.  But the last budget I bothered to look at (which I
believe is the one before the last one released) was underspent in the area
of technology and overspent in other areas.  So I think it's valid to say
that tech money was spent on other things.  As I said, I didn't even
bother looking at the last budget.  After hearing Sue admit that the one I'm
talking about was padded, there was little point.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-28 Thread Gregory Kohs

Thomas Dalton asked:

Has tech money been spent on other things previously? That is news to me.

For your edification, Thomas, since at least you seem willing to listen, as
opposed to some others here who simply tut tut at all the trolling and
the time wasting any critics might have to offer:

http://philanthropy.com/giveandtake/article/858/wikipedias-fund-raising-success-questioned

Please make sure to read my comment there, which references this document:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Planned_Spending_Distribution_2007-2008

Which does not square away with this document, specifically Page 4:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/41/FY_2008_09_Annual_Plan.PDF

...which says, tech department underspending equalled 1.7m.

Anthony's not exactly being fair, though, when he sort of suggests that the
shortfall in Technology spending went instead to the Executive Director.  As
far as I can tell, it went into the bank, to be spent in the FOLLOWING YEARS
on the Executive Director's need to expand staff to unprecedented levels.

Pay attention, Thomas.  I've discussed this issue in many places.  On the
Wikimedia-controlled places, I'm often censored or blocked, but there are
plenty of other non-WMF venues where facts can be laid out for the curious
to learn the truth:

http://www.mywikibiz.com/Top_10_Reasons_Not_to_Donate_to_Wikipedia

Greg
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009/8/28 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
 Depends how you want to look at it, since the dollar bills aren't color
 coded or anything.  But the last budget I bothered to look at (which I
 believe is the one before the last one released) was underspent in the area
 of technology and overspent in other areas.  So I think it's valid to say
 that tech money was spent on other things.  As I said, I didn't even
 bother looking at the last budget.  After hearing Sue admit that the one I'm
 talking about was padded, there was little point.

There were explanations for all those over- and under-spends. I
considered them all to be good explanations. I would have to look at
the report again to be sure, but I think there was a better than
budgeted surplus in the year you are talking about, so the reason for
not spending the full tech budget wasn't lack of funds from having
spent them elsewhere.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-28 Thread Brian

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 1:35 PM, Tim Landscheidt t...@tim-landscheidt.dewrote:

 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:

   [...]
   The WMF as a membership organisation would be great, but I don't think
   it is practical. A better option (which I have discussed with a few
   poeple) would be having the chapters as members of the WMF and the
   community as members of the chapters. There are other global
   non-profits that work along those lines. (The International Federation
   of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, for example.)

  Why? What's broken at the moment?

  The English full-history dump, for one.

 And that would work if the WMF were a membership organiza-
 tion? Interesting.

 Tim


If it were once again a membership organization it would imply that the
Foundation had not reneged on the original vision without the ability of the
community, which approved that vision, to provide input on the modified
input. It would turn around the Foundation's usurping of community power. It
would give each community member a voice.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-28 Thread Brian

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote:



 On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 1:35 PM, Tim Landscheidt 
 t...@tim-landscheidt.dewrote:

 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:

   [...]
   The WMF as a membership organisation would be great, but I don't
 think
   it is practical. A better option (which I have discussed with a few
   poeple) would be having the chapters as members of the WMF and the
   community as members of the chapters. There are other global
   non-profits that work along those lines. (The International
 Federation
   of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, for example.)

  Why? What's broken at the moment?

  The English full-history dump, for one.

 And that would work if the WMF were a membership organiza-
 tion? Interesting.

 Tim


 If it were once again a membership organization it would imply that the
 Foundation had not reneged on the original vision without the ability of the
 community, which approved that vision, to provide input on the modified
 input. It would turn around the Foundation's usurping of community power. It
 would give each community member a voice.


Sorry, input is an overloaded word for me due to my occupation in neural
networks. I happen to be working with several input layers right now and
flubbed that entirely ;) But it should say, to provide input on the
modified vision.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009/8/28 Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com:
Thomas Dalton asked:

Has tech money been spent on other things previously? That is news to me.

For your edification, Thomas, since at least you seem willing to listen, as
opposed to some others here who simply tut tut at all the trolling and
the time wasting any critics might have to offer:

http://philanthropy.com/giveandtake/article/858/wikipedias-fund-raising-success-questioned

Please make sure to read my comment there, which references this document:

Your comment there (I didn't read all of it, I prefer to limit the
time I spent reading people whine) seem to be mainly complaining about
the salaries paid to WMF management. Compared to people doing similar
jobs elsewhere, their compensation is decidedly modest.

Anthony's not exactly being fair, though, when he sort of suggests that the
shortfall in Technology spending went instead to the Executive Director. As
far as I can tell, it went into the bank, to be spent in the FOLLOWING YEARS
on the Executive Director's need to expand staff to unprecedented levels.

I think most of the tech underspend was due to spending being
deferred. That money will still be spent on tech. Are you objecting to
WMF expansion? I think the fact that the WMF can sustain a larger
staff is a good thing, it will allow them to do much more.

Pay attention, Thomas. I've discussed this issue in many places. On the
Wikimedia-controlled places, I'm often censored or blocked, but there are
plenty of other non-WMF venues where facts can be laid out for the curious
to learn the truth:

http://www.mywikibiz.com/Top_10_Reasons_Not_to_Donate_to_Wikipedia

I think you mean Truth, with a capital 'T'. I've never been
interested in learning the Truth.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 5:06 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:

 I think most of the tech underspend was due to spending being
 deferred. That money will still be spent on tech.


That's not what happened.  In 2007-2008, the tech budget was $2.6 million.
Only $900,000 was spent.  In 2008-2009, the tech budget was $2.7 million.
If the tech underspend was deferred, the 2008-2009 tech budget would have
been at least $4.3 million (more since the total budget was higher).  The
money wasn't spent on tech.

Even if it was, it makes no sense to defer it.  Why wait three years to
implement a new dump system, when you can implement one today for the same
price (lower, probably)?
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-27 Thread Ting Chen

Hi Thomas,

one year ago when I run for the board election I came with the same 
proposal as you. Meanwhile I have changed my oppinion. The problem is 
that this would not work out.

I totally agree with you that voting is the minor part of the board 
decision making process. Actually in many cases it is only for the 
protocol and formality. The really big part is before voting, while 
discussion. Here you are totally right.

There are a lot of differences between a board member and an advisory 
board member. The most important difference is the dedication. As a 
board member you MUST attend board meeting, you MUST take part in 
discussion. As an advisory board member you are not obliged to do that. 
Naturally, if we have an issue and we feel lack of expertise, or simply 
because we want to get more input from more sources, we go out and ask 
members of the advisory board. This is for example why some of our 
committees has advisory board member in it. This is also why the 
advisory board would play a crucial role in the strategic planning. But 
it is totally different between that expertise is already inside of the 
board or if the expertise must at first be asked from outside of the 
board. The best examples you can see are Stu West and Jan-Bard de 
Vreede. Stu with his technical and financial expertise is simply there, 
in every meeting, in the board mailing list, we don't have to go out and 
ask someone from the outside, especially because these expertise are 
really direly needed in every meeting and most of our topics. The same 
is it with the organizational expertise that Jan-Bard brings into the 
board both in how an ordinary procedure should look like as well as how 
discipline must be excercised in the board. This is the reason why they 
are asked to be on the board again and again and why they hold so 
important offices in the board. Indeed, my experience with both of them 
is why I have changed my opinion. I don't know Matt that long yet, just 
met him in one board meeting. But I do feel that in this one meeting he 
gave very interesting and important insights. For example how 
measurement of success should look like. There are also other reasons 
why we need expert seats. One is that sometimes you are in a discussion 
and stumbles over something where you didn't see the need of an expert 
before but where you feel really thankful to have one in the board. 
Naturally you can say, hey, we need here an expertise, let us at first 
ask someone in the advisory board and then make a decision. This 
actually happend in the past year more than once. But this is a slow 
process, you would go out and e-mail that person, she or he would 
answer, there would maybe more questions that you would ask again, or 
the board must first discuss internally and then ask again. This is 
totally different as if you have already that expertise in the meeting 
and can directly go forward. I also need not to mention that it is 
totally different to talk with someone from face to face or via e-mail 
and we cannot fly all advisory board members whose expertise are needed 
in to the board meeting.

As I said before I had the same idea as you last year. But some times a 
change of perspective or new experiences show that the idea doesn't work.

Greetings
Ting

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009/8/27 Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com:
 On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:24 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 I think part of the problem is that there were some odd ideas about
 how the Advisory Board would work. For example, it has a chair. I
 can't work out why. Why would the advisory board ever meet as a group?
 Being an expert is only of use if you are an expert in the subject
 being discussed. Individual members of the advisory board should be
 [snip]

 Presumably a chair can track membership and expertise and handle
 routing messages to the relevant parties, participate with recruiting,
 and otherwise act as an impedance match between the board proper and
 the advisory board.  I'm not sure if that was what was envisioned, or
 if chair is the best name for it, but I think that it's a reasonable
 alternative to the sort of flat structure that you're describing.

I guess that is somewhere being a chair and a secretary. The job title
isn't important, as long as the role is clearly defined.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009/8/27 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de:
 There are a lot of differences between a board member and an advisory
 board member. The most important difference is the dedication. As a
 board member you MUST attend board meeting, you MUST take part in
 discussion. As an advisory board member you are not obliged to do that.

That's only because we don't specify such an obligation. There is
nothing stopping us having such an obligation included in the rules
for the advisory board.

 The best examples you can see are Stu West and Jan-Bard de
 Vreede. Stu with his technical and financial expertise is simply there,
 in every meeting, in the board mailing list, we don't have to go out and
 ask someone from the outside, especially because these expertise are
 really direly needed in every meeting and most of our topics.

Brion and Véronique have that expertise and could easily be brought in
to whatever meetings they are needed for.

The same
 is it with the organizational expertise that Jan-Bard brings into the
 board both in how an ordinary procedure should look like as well as how
 discipline must be excercised in the board.

Sue seems to be pretty good at that kind of thing.

The only time I can see that using staff expertise wouldn't work is
when you are fulfilling the oversight role of the board and need to
check up on those staff members. In those situations, an expert on the
advisory board could be consulted. Does that kind of checking up
happen in every board meeting?

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-27 Thread Geoffrey Plourde

Well, I have never understood why the board is so involved. Generally in 
business, the Board hires and fires the CEO and that's it. 

I also consider expert seats a waste of space as that is why we have department 
heads. 

Then again, I suspect I am and always will be in the minority.



From: Anthony wikim...@inbox.org
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 6:41:53 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 6:35 AM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote:

 There are a lot of differences between a board member and an advisory
 board member. The most important difference is the dedication. As a
 board member you MUST attend board meeting, you MUST take part in
 discussion. As an advisory board member you are not obliged to do that.


Why isn't it?  What's the difference?  Is it just an ego thing?  People are
willing to commit to something if they can put board member on their
resume, but not if they can put advisory board member on it?

 I also need not to mention that it is
 totally different to talk with someone from face to face or via e-mail
 and we cannot fly all advisory board members whose expertise are needed
 in to the board meeting.


You could always get rid of the expertise seats and not replace them with
community seats, then fly out the board plus those advisory board members
who would have been regular board members if there had been advisory seats
available for them.

But if people aren't willing to make that commitment unless they have a
vote, I guess that makes sense.

Ideally most experts should be paid, not part of a board.  But maybe the WMF
can't afford that.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009/8/27 Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com:
 Well, I have never understood why the board is so involved. Generally in 
 business, the Board hires and fires the CEO and that's it.

I don't think that is the case. The board has a duty of oversight and
is generally responsible for high level decisions about the direction
of the company. The CEO is responsible for the day-to-day
implementation of the board's decisions.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-27 Thread Ting Chen

Anthony wrote:
 On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 6:35 AM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote:
   
 There are a lot of differences between a board member and an advisory
 board member. The most important difference is the dedication. As a
 board member you MUST attend board meeting, you MUST take part in
 discussion. As an advisory board member you are not obliged to do that.
 


 Why isn't it?  What's the difference?  Is it just an ego thing?  People are
 willing to commit to something if they can put board member on their
 resume, but not if they can put advisory board member on it?
   

No, it is not an ego thing. It is just that. Some people don't want to 
be so involved. The board is the head of the Foundation, it is an 
essential part of it. This is the reason why the board is so dedicated. 
There are other organization that work otherwise, with more than hundred 
board members who mostly don't really take part in board work. But the 
WMF board works otherwise. We are a working board. There are experts who 
don't want to be so dedicated. They are friendly to us. They are ok to 
help if they can and if they have time for it, but they don't want to 
give that a dedicated commitment. They are still very valuable and 
helpful members of advisory board.

-- 
Ting

Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/


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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009/8/27 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de:
 Anthony wrote:
 On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 6:35 AM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote:

 There are a lot of differences between a board member and an advisory
 board member. The most important difference is the dedication. As a
 board member you MUST attend board meeting, you MUST take part in
 discussion. As an advisory board member you are not obliged to do that.



 Why isn't it?  What's the difference?  Is it just an ego thing?  People are
 willing to commit to something if they can put board member on their
 resume, but not if they can put advisory board member on it?


 No, it is not an ego thing. It is just that. Some people don't want to
 be so involved. The board is the head of the Foundation, it is an
 essential part of it. This is the reason why the board is so dedicated.
 There are other organization that work otherwise, with more than hundred
 board members who mostly don't really take part in board work. But the
 WMF board works otherwise. We are a working board. There are experts who
 don't want to be so dedicated. They are friendly to us. They are ok to
 help if they can and if they have time for it, but they don't want to
 give that a dedicated commitment. They are still very valuable and
 helpful members of advisory board.

a) Could you give an example of an organisation with over 100 board members?

b) You haven't answered the question. Why couldn't the dedicated
experts that currently go on the board of trustees go on the advisory
board instead?

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-27 Thread Michael Snow

Thomas Dalton wrote:
 The best examples you can see are Stu West and Jan-Bard de
 Vreede. Stu with his technical and financial expertise is simply there,
 in every meeting, in the board mailing list, we don't have to go out and
 ask someone from the outside, especially because these expertise are
 really direly needed in every meeting and most of our topics.
 
 Brion and Véronique have that expertise and could easily be brought in
 to whatever meetings they are needed for.
   
This is incomprehensible to me. One of the key responsibilities of the 
board is to oversee the work of the staff. That requires a combination 
of the board's own expertise plus outside advisors on occasion to 
supplement this. Brion and Veronique do great work and we need their 
expertise in doing it, and occasionally they may be brought into our 
meetings to provide information. But it would be totally abdicating our 
responsibilities for us to call on that expertise in order to review the 
work they themselves did.

--Michael Snow


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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009/8/27 Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net:
 Thomas Dalton wrote:
 The best examples you can see are Stu West and Jan-Bard de
 Vreede. Stu with his technical and financial expertise is simply there,
 in every meeting, in the board mailing list, we don't have to go out and
 ask someone from the outside, especially because these expertise are
 really direly needed in every meeting and most of our topics.

 Brion and Véronique have that expertise and could easily be brought in
 to whatever meetings they are needed for.

 This is incomprehensible to me. One of the key responsibilities of the
 board is to oversee the work of the staff. That requires a combination
 of the board's own expertise plus outside advisors on occasion to
 supplement this. Brion and Veronique do great work and we need their
 expertise in doing it, and occasionally they may be brought into our
 meetings to provide information. But it would be totally abdicating our
 responsibilities for us to call on that expertise in order to review the
 work they themselves did.

If you read the entire email I sent you will find that I addressed
exactly that point. Please don't selectively quote to misrepresent
people, it is either extremely stupid, extremely immature or extremely
malicious, and I'm not happy with any of those qualities in the chair
of the WMF board.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-27 Thread Ting Chen

Thomas Dalton wrote:
 That's only because we don't specify such an obligation. There is
 nothing stopping us having such an obligation included in the rules
 for the advisory board.
   
Yes there are. See my answer to Antony about dedication.

 Brion and Véronique have that expertise and could easily be brought in
 to whatever meetings they are needed for.
   
 Sue seems to be pretty good at that kind of thing.
   
Naturally are staff expertise very important for the board, but they 
cannot substitute board expertise. The board must have expertise of its 
own to supervise the staff. Replace the role that Jan-Bart is taking on 
the board with Sue would be a good example of bad governance.

-- 
Ting

Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/


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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009/8/28 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de:
 Thomas Dalton wrote:
 That's only because we don't specify such an obligation. There is
 nothing stopping us having such an obligation included in the rules
 for the advisory board.

 Yes there are. See my answer to Antony about dedication.

I did see your answer. I didn't see any reason for not having
dedicated people on the advisory board.

 Brion and Véronique have that expertise and could easily be brought in
 to whatever meetings they are needed for.

 Sue seems to be pretty good at that kind of thing.

 Naturally are staff expertise very important for the board, but they
 cannot substitute board expertise. The board must have expertise of its
 own to supervise the staff. Replace the role that Jan-Bart is taking on
 the board with Sue would be a good example of bad governance.

As I've already said, the oversight part of the job can be assisted by
advisory board members. I would expect you to know what kind of
expertise you will need for oversight as soon as the agenda is put
together, so the appropriate advisory board members can be invited. It
is the discussions about future direction that are likely to need
unexpected expertise and there is no reason not to use staff for that.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-27 Thread Geoffrey Plourde

There can only be one leader in a business. 

From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 1:26:22 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009/8/27 Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com:
 Well, I have never understood why the board is so involved. Generally in 
 business, the Board hires and fires the CEO and that's it.

I don't think that is the case. The board has a duty of oversight and
is generally responsible for high level decisions about the direction
of the company. The CEO is responsible for the day-to-day
implementation of the board's decisions.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009/8/28 Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com:
 There can only be one leader in a business.

Not true at all. There are often lots of people leading different
things. The leader of all the leaders is the board, which isn't one
person, it is a committee.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

2009-08-27 Thread Michael Snow

Thomas Dalton wrote:
 2009/8/27 Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net:
   
 Thomas Dalton wrote:
 
 The best examples you can see are Stu West and Jan-Bard de
 Vreede. Stu with his technical and financial expertise is simply there,
 in every meeting, in the board mailing list, we don't have to go out and
 ask someone from the outside, especially because these expertise are
 really direly needed in every meeting and most of our topics.
 
 Brion and Véronique have that expertise and could easily be brought in
 to whatever meetings they are needed for.
   
 This is incomprehensible to me. One of the key responsibilities of the
 board is to oversee the work of the staff. That requires a combination
 of the board's own expertise plus outside advisors on occasion to
 supplement this. Brion and Veronique do great work and we need their
 expertise in doing it, and occasionally they may be brought into our
 meetings to provide information. But it would be totally abdicating our
 responsibilities for us to call on that expertise in order to review the
 work they themselves did.
 
 If you read the entire email I sent you will find that I addressed
 exactly that point. Please don't selectively quote to misrepresent
 people, it is either extremely stupid, extremely immature or extremely
 malicious, and I'm not happy with any of those qualities in the chair
 of the WMF board.
   
As the portion of your email making that caveat did not appear until 
after quoting another portion of Ting's message, suggesting that it 
would be addressing some other aspect of the discussion, I missed that 
you had hedged what seemed to be a pretty plain statement. Honestly, 
considering the significance of this responsibility, I would have 
expected the sentence to be qualified immediately since the point 
negates so much of the basic assertion.

Meanwhile, there have been a lot of messages to read on this list 
recently, and I've learned as part of list etiquette to trim replies to 
the material you're responding to, as a courtesy to readers. I apologize 
for overlooking the additional context as a result, but I had no 
intention of misrepresenting you and I don't think it was particularly 
stupid, immature, or malicious.

--Michael Snow


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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion