On Bitcoin-- we (and the web in general) desperately need a zero-overhead micropayment system of some kind. I can't help but think our fundraising efforts would be helped if people would able to, on impulse and without premeditation, donate $1 to WMF in thanks for particular articles and have the full $1 actually get sent, without transactions fees.
A open-standard, widely-used, zero-overhead, hopefully-anonymous micropayment system _might_ even be so important that it'd be worth us to pay somebody an insanely large sum of money just to develop it for us and the rest of the web. Before we actually did something of that magnitude, I'd obviously want lots of other people to agree, and in particular we'd want lots of input fundraising team (who have consistently amazed me with their mad skills), to actually assess whether it would be a wise use of resources. The Bitcoin system itself might not be what we're looking for. But if you're curious about why everyone's so excited about it, that's why. It's not that we're 'novel currency enthusiasts', it's not that we're trying to undermine the US federal reserve or anything crazy or overtly political. A system like this would be an amazing tool for the entire planet, especially for us-- if it actually worked and its use was legal and easy in the US. A Bitcoin-esque system is something we need to be looking for, if not actively building ourselves. Keep your eyes peeled. ---- On the other side of the thread: > Out of the 6.5 billion-plus people in the world, one of four or so who were > partners at the organization that was donating $2 million to Wikimedia was > the best choice? With those kinds of odds and that kind of luck, I would've > been buying a lot of lottery tickets. So, this particular incident hasn't overly stressed me out as much as it does others, but I think MZMcBride et. al. are the "canary in the coalmine" on this-- an early indicator pointing out an existing problem. Namely, a widely-populist / massive-multiparticipant volunteer movement won't like its highest-level decisions being made by appointed officials. I understand the pragmatic reasons for it, which have been well-stated. I also understand some of the unstated pragmatic reasons for it-- i.e. so that big name donors can feel comfortable that their money isn't going to go to a bunch of insane info-anarchists hippies who will blow all their money on something stupid. But as more and more people get emotionally invested in the foundation, as our editors get more diverse, these sorts of board-appointed board-members are going to start becoming more and more controversial. Right now, we haven't gotten much heat for this issue because people don't necessarily look to the board for "leadership", they look to the board to "keep the lights on". But as the foundation starts to gear up for even more of a leadership and development role, I think there might be an advantage to revisiting the way we do things so that the global community can have some involvement in the appointment of all the "top level" personnel. That choice process need not be the same as the process for community appointed members, but let's start to look down the road and see how to responsibly give the global community a slightly more direct say in it's top-level leadership. (alternatively, we could just ever-so-slightly demote the board-appointed members so their votes would never be 'decisive'-- but this has a lot of other disadvantages and also seems unnecessarily rude to the board members who are working very hard and, through no fault of their own, find themselves sitting in an board-appointed rather than an community/chapter seat. ) Right now, this isn't a big deal, but that should change with rime. Right now, except for Meta/mailinglisters, nobody much cares who sits on the board. But by the same token, no one automatically cares what someone sitting on the board has to say-- atleast not because they're sitting on the board. As we've seen before, outside of enwp, any unwanted 'interference' from the foundation in local project policy provokes great controversial from the global users. The "board-appointed board members" and the "foundation as mere ISP" are two facets of a shared issue, involving global community trust and investment in the foundation board as a institution of leadership (rather than an institution of 'Keeping the lights on'). I don't want to sound hysterical or give this issue too much weight-- how we appoint our experts is, admittedly, a semi-ceremonial issue. But if we really want the Wiki movement to really go global WHILE still keeping strong ties to an English-speaking US-based board, we need to at least consider some of these ceremonial aspects. Alec _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
