Hello Elias, Welcome to the mailing list.
On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 1:25 AM, Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva <tolkiend...@gmail.com> wrote: > 2010/5/9 Andreas Kolbe <jayen...@yahoo.com>: > (..) >>> board to do things is to give guidance to the communities. But, this >>> topic is already pending for years. Looking back into the archives of >>> foundation-l or village pump of Commons there were enough discussions. >>> If the problem cannot be solved inside of the community, it is my >>> believe it is the duty of the board and every board member to solve the >>> problem. >> >> Ting >> >> I see no indication so far that the community *is* able to solve the problem. > > Sorry, I have never posted here, but I feel so sad reading such > words... and other words spoken here at foundation-l.. the projects > under the umbrella of WMF are so beautiful, so precious, to be treated > this way... =~~~~ Thank you for your kind words for the projects. > But well, so that's the reason Jimmy Wales must be so authoritarian? > Because the Community of Commons can't solve this issue through > consensus? > > Is solving this particular issue really more important than reaching > consensus? Why? It seems to me the only way a project can work through this sort of complex issue is through careful consensus and decision-making. I do not think solving it somehow is more important than reaching consensus, or a decision that everyone can live with. Questions of how to deal with highly controversial content -- from images of Muhammad to private personal information to explicit images of sex -- are often difficult to solve. This may be the sort of complex decision that would benefit from a community-run advisory or policy group, with representatives from many projects. Such decision making can take many months, and needs slow but persistent attention and progress towards a balanced resolution. [often our current practices of wiki-based decision making simply lose steam after an initial burst of interest, and future iterations on the theme have to start over from scratch.] > Are you a member of the Board of Trustees or something? > Could you inform me if the whole board has this kind of position? No, the whole Board does not have this position. (not to speak for others -- I am on it, and I am opposed to the idea.) This is out of scope for the Board, which like the Foundation itself generally stays out of content creation, policy-making, and governance of the individual Projects. > BTW, I also have a broader question. Who entrusted power to the Board > of Trustees? They are serving the interests of who? And who can revoke > the trust upon a specific trustee, or the entire board, in the event > it was misused? The Board governs the Foundation to support the interests of the mission and the needs of the Projects. In an emergency, the Board itself could remove a Trustee; in practice there are elections and appointments each year. Of our ten trustees, there are six 'community trustees': three elected by the editing community every two years, two selected by the national Chapters every [other] two years, and Jimmy as founding trustee, reappointed each year. The other four trustees are appointed each year by the community trustees. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_board_manual http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_member > PS: I may look inquisitive, but I see this anti-porn campaign > contrasting to the complete lack of action when it was found that > wiki-en was grossly offending Islam for no better reason. I agree that the issue of images of Muhammad is similar to that of explicit sexual content -- both are highly controversial, considered by some to be educational or important; and by others to be useless and offensive. We must find a way to deal evenly with all controversial material, and to understand the perspectives of different audiences. SJ _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
