Board of Trustees

From Wikimedia Foundation Governance Wiki
Revision as of 23:43, 23 August 2004 by Anthere (talk | contribs)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

The corporate structure of Wikimedia Foundation is composed of five trustees according to Wikimedia Foundation bylaws, (article IV).

The initial trustees (article IV, sec. 2.2.) include the following individuals, three partners and two (other) Wikipedians:

No vice chair was nominated.

The two elected positions, were selected from volunteer and contributing members of Wikimedia (article IV, sec. 2.3). They were elected by held in June 2004. The election was open to all active members of the foundation who had made their first edit at least 90 days ago.

The Board of Trustees are the ultimate corporate authority in the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. (article IV, sec. 1). The Board has the power to direct the activities of the foundation. It also has the authority to set membership dues, discipline and suspend members (article III), and to amend the corporate bylaws (article VI).

The Board is also empowered to set up committees to delegate its powers (art. 4 sec. 3). There is currently a proposal for individual Wikimedia Project Governing Committees that delegate the issues relating to issues such as policy and member disputes on each individual Wikimedia project.


Trustees

Tim Shell

Tim Shell, self-photo

Tim Shell is a founding partner of Bomis. He lives in the Mojave Desert but he can't stand the sun. He claims to have had an important role in the creation of Wikipedia, but no way of proving this. He likes Epicurus, Ayn Rand, Eric Hoffer, Julian Simon, and Friedrich Hayek and thinks Mark Twain wrote better English than just about anyone else.

I have noticed in reading history that people in every era are held in thrall by ideas that in retrospect are shown to be untrue, even silly. I do not doubt that the current era is any different.
I think socialism and creationism are in essence the same theory (centrally planned order imposed on the system by a higher authority that exists outside the system). Both theories are equally absurd. I think evolutionists who see spontaneous order in complex natural systems, while advocating central planning in complex human systems, have zero intellectual integrity.
I believe in every god I've ever seen.


Other links