User:Anthere/Wikimedia

References : Election Candidates

''The page below refers to the elections in 2004. The equivalent page in 2005 is here''.

- Hello,

First, I would like to say that 500 characters will never be enough for me to say what I think about the future of Wikimedia :-) So, I will take the liberty to add a little bit below in three major paragraphs.

'''The rest of the page will be entirely yours. Please add comments, ask questions, give your own vision, explain what you think Wikimedia is, and what the role of a board member should be to your opinion.'''


 * Note that you are also most welcome to fix all my typos or grammar flaws :-)

I have my own dreams, but I sure love to hear other people dreams. A board member is imho, just as should be a sysop, or should be a steward, someone to represent you and your dreams, and someone here to help the whole community achieve this common dream currently uniting us. Please read below my own vision of what Wikimedia is; And please share your own dream.

What Wikimedia Foundation is
My belief is that the Wikimedia Foundation should have essentially two goals.


 * One is to support the development of our dream, via the legal means with which it is empowered (ie, ownership of the servers, ability to collect member fees and receive donations, ability to spend it according to the project goals to distribute knowledge all over the world, ability to protect the content, to buy domain names, to protect participant's rights etc...).


 * The second goal is essentially, in my opinion, to guarantee that our common goal and our core values will be preserved, despite the risks our projects face. I would like the Foundation to be a stable base, acting as a central entity, to give birth to associated local branches, which will have a certain degree of independance but will  have to respect our common goals and principles. I firmly stand for diversity, mixed with unity. Each project should go on managing itself, as it has always been doing, its decisions dictated by participants, as long as it fits with the mission statement of Wikimedia.

Vision for the future of the Wikimedia project

 * Here is what I would have liked to put in my candicady statement. There is no way this can be shortened to 500 characters. How frustrating :-) So, I put everything here, and will try to sum it up on the candidacy page

I consider three levels in Wikimedia :

First, it is a community. Rather loose, very diverse, sometimes with disagreements, but a group of people nevertheless, who have together one common goal : creating or gathering free and organised content together... This community also share global values, initiated by Jimbo Wales, of neutrality, openness, love for others and genuine concerns for the diversity of opinions. I wish this community to nurture these values because
 * these are the path to succeed in our great projects (eg, a neutral, accurate and "extensive" encyclopedia requires the input of very diverse contributors)
 * these also are also the recognition we all have inner value, we all have knowledge and goodwill useful for the projects, for edition, typography, organisation, software development, server maintenance, legal issues, PR, mediators, arbitrators...
 * and finally because this community of people is also a teaching tool for all of us. We can all learn from others, and learn to work with them.

In my vision, the foundation should ensure the core values of the organization are preserved, while allowing diversity of local values on each project (eg, through the setting up of local associations branches, which will have to adhere to a common charter)

Second, Wikimedia is a project or rather a collection of projects. With all its technical requirements, data organisation etc. This is where we are giving the most energy right now. I do think the foundation should not be implicated in every day management of each project, but should aim at maintaining the integrity of the whole (eg, through support of common technical frame)

And last, Wikimedia is a collection of final products, wikipedias, wiktionaries etc... or any other final products made from the knowledge gathered (such as wikiReaders). These products have to be stabilized (cd and paper version), promoted (via press release, interviews), distributed (in as many countries and as many languages possible) and protected (respect of our copyright, brand name etc...). The products are to be provided to the public free of charge and with no advertising, which will require finding funds. The Wikimedia foundation may be involved in all those steps. It should in particular focus on finding and managing funds, providing legal protection of the content and participants rights, and be involved in the distribution of the products (eg, in Africa, where few participants are likely to be able to do it).

Concerns I hope to address
The goals of the Foundation are ambitious, but the Foundation itself is just starting...so there is a lot to do just to set it up. Hence, I'll be very specific : we need to do what is needed *right now *to get the Foundation started, with a solid base to stand on.

The Foundation requires from wikimedians both care on the short term and long term planification. A board of 5 people will not take care of it all, representants are mostly here at your service, and to guarantee that core principles will be respected, but what we need first of all, is that everyone feels empowered to act, and second that we do so together.

Aside from any duties assign to a Board Member, I would like to participate in particular in the following directions.


 * Improve communication, with
 * more detailed mission statement defining the purpose of the Fundation, and the community/organisation cores values.
 * internal feedback of the Foundation decision making, and activity to all the participants wikimedia wide,
 * ensuring that all participants opinions are communicated to the Foundation
 * more visibility and transparency for potential donators and/or partners (eg, refactoring of the wikimedia website).


 * Empower participants to help toward all these external activities, which will be increasingly necessary as the project grows : legal issues, money collecting, management and use, partnership establishment, edition and distribution of paper or CD products, servers purchase and management etc... see the brainstorming proposal on Official position. Wikipedia in itself (less so for other projects) is very " organised ", to the point it is sometimes a bit bureaucratic. I wish to avoid the Foundation to become paralysed by a too complex organisation. I hope the way to do this is to go toward decentralization, delegation and a flat decision-making structure.

I mean by " delegation " setting up official positions which will have the ability to take some decisions themselves, without having to necessarily get it full stamped by the board : for example, I believe a good part of the computer equipment could be bought by a couple of trusted and very involved users themselves, rather than the purchase being slowed down in a bottle neck organisation where only one person is allowed to make use of funds. A general budget could be set, and responsability to spent it in the best way be given to trusted developpers.


 * PR activities myself, such as contact with charitable organisations, either to make partnership for content exchange, or to improve our visibility and reputation, or to get funds. Internet will probably (hopefully !) always allow us to fully distribute our content free of charge. It is not so easy to ensure " free of charge " printed editions or CDs, as these generate costs of production and distribution, (and indeed the first attempt by the German Wikipedia is not one " free of charge "). However, if a low cost might potentially be acceptable for many users in developed countries, I would like to see our content be freely distributed to schools, public libraries, hospital, prisons, anyplace where it might be welcome, useful, and in reach of a public who can’t afford bying the product or freely accessing internet. I envision that some of these distributions might be funded by charitable organisations. I also think that some donations might be done to the Foundation for a specific purpose rather than to generally help the project. We should make this possible for the donator.


 * Setting local branches in other countries, which would all have a certain degree of independance, but suscribe to the mission statement of the central Wikimedia Fundation. I wish us to be strongly united, but that we respect the diversity and pecularities of each project. You probably all know that two wikipedias are currently working at setting up local associations. I would like to focus on how these local branches and the mother wikimedia could relate to one another, especially in financial terms as well as representation (ie, while local branches give part of their funds to the mother association, how could local representant be involved in decisions about how to spend the money).

Zeno and real name
Hi Anthere,

I am glad to here that you are running for the Board of Trustees. However, I have one question: Why don't you disclose your real name? There is no need to feel ashamed ;-)

--zeno 19:43, 7 May 2004 (UTC)


 * it is not a question of shame :-) I have a very pretty name... I am just not done filling up the form :-) SweetLittleFluffyThing

--

Tomos, availability issues, participation to policy
Hi, Anthere. I am also glad to know that you are running. :)

If I remember correct, you are steward, active sysop on fr., sysop on meta. You are also a mediator on en. You are a very active participant of discussions on multiple mailinglists. And aren't you one of the few people who communicate back-and-forth between fr. and the rest of the wikipedias? So I worry you may already be too busy. (Or you are one of those non-humans like mav is alleged to be :-p). Do you worry about it? Do you ever think about resigning from some of the positions?

Also, I have been feeling that only a very small percentage of wikipedians (wiktionarians, wikibookians, etc.) are active in participating to policy and administrative discussions. Do you think this is just the way things are? Maybe people are not motivated to participate to those discussions partly because they feel things will go well without their input? Or is it a sign of failing democracy? Do you have any thoughts about it? If so, I would like to know.

Thanks, Tomos 18:59, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi Tomos. Thanks for your insightful questions (insightful, because they meet some of my concerns). As for being too busy...well, that is a concern to me as well :-).

It is perfectly correct I am sysop on meta, fr and en. I am a nearly inactive sysop on en in reality, as I hardly use these more than once a month. I actually make little use of sysop power of fr and on meta, as well, essentially for managing reasons, such a protecting a decision, but I hardly take care of cleaning any more. I mostly help those who ask :-) I have never been much of a dedicated cleaner :-) I mostly like organising things. So, resigning of being a sysop...no, because it is useful for administrative clean up, and...I might say...to take a couple of tough decisions sometimes against problematic users. But sysop duties are very little time consuming, and likely to be less and less I think.

I do not plan to resign from the MC, but I am definitly on a break of it for now. I expect not to participate to mediations much, essentially because it is very demanding on me for language issues. However, I would like to help it to further organise itself. But this may be done only when I find time. I also expect stewards issues to be less and less demanding as things get organised. And we are fortunately numerous enough to guarantee user confort (thank god we did not limited ourselves to 4 people !).

I tend to do things one after the other, in turns. Beginning of 2004, I mostly worked on articles (such as ecology, then I mostly took care of mediation stuff. Then, I switched to meta reorganisation for a while (it was a relief...). I then help setting a new blocking policy on fr. At the end of this month, I will present a meeting in a french city, so I am mostly focused on this this month. I try to turn my attention to various activities one after the other. Benefits are that I can meet numerous fascinating people :-)

So, resigning, probably not. But I expect that if elected, I will decrease the time spent on organisation and on policy setting on fr a lot; both to gain time, and to avoid confusion of roles.

This said, if some people think I should give a break to some activities, well, I might :-)

As for the small number of people involved in policy making and administrative discussions...yes, this is rather true. And I think it is just how things are. People often participate in more than one activity on wikipedia, but they usually have favorite fields. Some participate a lot in development, others love cleaning up, others setting up policies, and some only focus on making articles. I think this is good. We all have the opportunity to do what we feel like doing, when we feel like doing it, and what we are perhaps best at; I think this is important, and a major point of Wikipedia. We just give to people the opportunity to reveal themselves in what they are really good at, and what makes them happy. And we need all these various activities and preferences. Only editors, with no organisers will end up in anarchy. But an organiser without editors has nothing to organise. We all need the others for it to work fine.

I do not think it is a sign of failing democracy. I certainly sometimse find it depressing that no more people do participate to organisation, but in more cheerful moments, I see that those not participating usually trust what we do, just as I trust that they do well in their edition activities.

I try to remember that there are different types of silence. Silence of disinterest. Silence of disapproval. But very often, silence of agreement, of the one who trust per default, or the one who look at the proposal, and just think "this is all right". More frequent feedback would be nice, but well...we can't change people :-))))

So, no, to my opinion, this is not a sign of failing democracy. Which does not mean either that we are really in democracy. There is certainly work to do in that direction.

It is important though... not to confuse silence with total lack of interest and take the opportunity to do things alone in a corner, without saying anything to others. These silent people probably need a careful dosage of moments they are not asked anything, moments where they are asked their opinion and moments they are asked to vote. When not asked often enough, there is unfairness and unthoughtfulness. When asked too often, they get bored. That is where just providing people information is important. Access to information give them the opportunity to participate, but it does not force them.

Did I answer your questions proper ? Second point is only my opinion, but I feel that if you ask, it is that you may feel yourself that democracy on wikipedia is in trouble. If so, may you explain (publicly or privately) what is problematic to your opinion Tomos ?


 * Thanks for the answers, Anthere! I wanted to know about these things anyway, but thought this was a good opportunity. Regarding the first question, I just hope you will not burn out. Regarding the second question, no, I don't have particular strong opinion at this point. I recognize this tendency at mailinglist, en, meta, ja., and other places where I have been. I thought you knew this as well. So, I was curious about your opinion. I might form my own oponion sometime later. And at that point, I might talk to you, since you would be willing to listen to it. :) Tomos 06:08, 11 May 2004 (UTC)


 * Whether as a board member or not, I will always try to take time to listen to it Tomos :-) ant.

Delirium, local branches
Hi Anthere! Glad to see you're running. I see you've written a lot of stuff here, so I don't have too much to ask, but I was wondering if you had particular thoughts on how to organize the international structure of Wikipedia, especially since you participate in more than one of the languages. Should there be local branches of the Foundation, and if so, how should those be related to the international parent one? Basically, how can we both serve the needs of each Wikipedia but also keep the project coherent as a whole? There's a bunch of other more minor concerns (what about the fact that de: is both the Wikipedia for Germany and the one for Austria&mdash;should there be two de: foundations or one?), but that's the gist of the question. --Delirium 00:32, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

Hello ! Thanks for the comment !

I fear I will be long again...

I have a very clear opinion on whether we should have local branches or not. Yes. There should be. Wikipedia is growing exponentially. We needed a Foundation to have a legal structure to look for funds, to receive funds, to use these funds. We also needed a legal structure to "own" a couple of things such as servers or possibly a brand name. We also need a legal structure to defend some rights toward content in particular. I think specifically of any legal issues we might have with the use of "fair use" image or a problem with copyrighted content... And finally, to my opinion, the Foundation is there to preserve the spirit of openness, neutrality, respect for diversity. May we envision that some servers be hosted in Japan ? I say yes. Is "fair use" accepted in all countries ? No. May we envision that a french paper version of wikipedia has a legal issue with the french law ? I say yes. May we envision that german contributors would like to get tax deduction for their donation to a charitable organisation in the future ? I say yes. Could specific fundings be offered specifically for the development of one language ? I say yes. How much do non-english speakers feel like belonging to an association set in a language they do not speak at all ? Would they involve themselves more if such an association existed in their language ? I think they would feel more confortable. All this suggest me that local branches should exist. And two of the 4 biggest wikipedias aside from en, feel this is important already.

Now, as you mention it, there are a lot of questions. You mention german... but that is true for most languages. Most languages are spoken in several countries. Fr: has contributors from France, but also Belgium, Switzerland, Canada... Should there be an association in each country ? Well, no one is mentionning right now, setting up associations in Great Brittain, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada... though these speak english... ;-) I think it is probably important that there is a legal entity for each language as soon as it is reasonably represented, and this will probably be set in the country with the highest number of participants, and where a lawyer or a judge is likely to be part of users. Which mean very likely, Germany, France, Japan, Spain etc... It is important to set these associations for the legal reasons listed above and because people speaking only one language need to identify themselves to an entity they understand.

It would be nice that several countries are covered, but as long as only a couple of people participate from this country, it is likely there will be not much trend toward setting an association. So, I think the setting up will happen just naturally, under the gentle pressure building up when several users from the same area will begin to gather. In a huge structure, it is a natural trend that people gather by affinity.

Now, in terms of representation, these associations should just be careful not to favor one country, one culture, the best they can. This is exactly what we are trying to do on the wikimedia Foundation right now. We may have a board made of 5 americans people, or we may have a more mixed board. They board may decide to spent all the money (aside structural expenses) on distribution in the USA, or it may decide to use money in various ways, perhaps wikireaders in Germany, leaflets in China, schoolbooks in Africa. The ways will rely on the projects set up by Wikimedians. If only german propositions are made for distribution, I guess it is just fair that money goes to support the propositions made by the Germans. If several propositions are made, then the best ones should be funded. This will rely a LOT on what wikimedians will propose, don't you think ?

In terms of relationships between associations, I really think these should be strong. That is why I support us working on a common charter. With the local associations agreeing to go by the charter. I would like also to suggest that all donations and membership fees are put in the same pot.

I would like that each project has representants on a sort of big international board, and that these representants discuss on a Wikimedia-wide provisional budget every year. After basic operating costs are covered, the big board could agree on how to use the funds globally (how much on PR, how much technical investment, how much for distribution, how much to hire an expert...). Depending on each budget, the biggest part could be used for fundings of global actions agreed in common, and perhaps the rest of it will be refunded to each association, and used independently by each association upon decisions by its local members.

That is a rough layout I can think of, but I think doing this would
 * Keep the project coherent as a whole, as we would decide together on how to use the money best. I think it would promote concerted moves to do this way.
 * Make it possible to give a "special help" to a language we specifically decide to help, but has no association on its own
 * Preserve a bit of independance at a local scale, with opportunity for a given language to use money for a local project

I also think it important to make it possible for donators to make a donation for a specific project.

Possibly, the key answer to preserve unity is to set some multilingual working groups on specific topics (committees ?). Possibly, if we decide to send some paper versions to some african countries, we should aim at sending them in three languages mixed, even though one language will be better covered than the others (for example, a version sent to Algeria could be in arabic and french). I think that will be useful over there, and this will be a way to promote cooperation between associations.

Obviously, there is a lot of thought to put in this, and we need help of all to decide what is best, and help of "legal" people to set all this up :-)

Oups, sorry I was so long :-) Hope that clarifies my position.^

Muriel, my contributions as an editor of articles
Just out of curiosity, and i am asking this to everyone who is standing, i would like to post a question. Could you point me to two or three of your favourite contributions in Wikipedia? Not the whole bunch of them, which I am sure you all have in powers of 10, but that special article you wrote, or made substancial changes to, and makes you happy. Just to see what you've been up to :) Cheers and all the best to you all, MvHG 14:54, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi Muriel !

That is a funny question :-) A list of my major contributions (or those I prefer) is there User:Anthere/Contribs.

I probably authored 90% of Ecology. In french and in english. That is an article I like very much, for two reasons. One is that I just find it good now, and ihmo, basically finished. That doesnot mean I do not let it live its own life, but to my opinion, it is of publishing quality, and I do not feel I will add any more to it now. It took me two months to write it and translate it :-) The second reason is that, just as many articles, I did it in two languages, but to be certain it would be a good article here (I mean, not in broken english), I asked help to translate it. And I got that help from several people (such as Brian Corr). I thought that was a great cooperation, and I loved it. I am currently reworking biodiversity (which I essentially authored many months ago) along the same lines. I do it as a personal sub page at User:Anthere/biodiversity, and I hope some english people will help me again to translate it when I am done, so that we set a great article together.

In english, a twin set I worked on not a long time ago, is Islam in France and French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools. I like them, because many people worked on them with me and after me, so it was a nice experience and lead me to meet Fabiform. And because I know it is an informative article for many english people.

I also like a lot Trade war over genetically modified food. The initial version was entirely wrote by me, but excised by Graft from another article (Genetically modified food), so my authoring it was entirely lost in the move (I still feel pain over this :-)). I appreciated writing it a lot, and think again that is typically one of these articles important to help people from different countries understand each other culture.

Local food is quite typical of many articles I often write on fr. It is not finished.

And Donella Meadows' twelve leverage points to intervene in a system, which is of a rather unusual form, is a very sweet memory to me, and for those who wonder, is the approach I use with Wikipedia (and the approach I used when writing incivility).

Hope I did not put too many ;-)

Cheers.


 * Not at all! Its nice to see all the different kinds of answers to the question I made. Happy election! MvHG 10:55, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi. Due to the concerns of a number of people, we are considering adopting a new system to replace First Past the Post. What is your preference? Please respond to WikiElections AT aol DOT com. This is not an assurance that the system will be changed, but rather an attempt to gauge the will of the electorate. Danny 03:58, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

James and License compatibility issues
As you're probably aware, one of the issues the project has is the wide variation in what can and can't be used under copyright law in different jurisdictions and the differing definitions of free used by contributors to the project. How will you seek to resolve the inevitable tension between those who want a completely free to use public domain Wikipedia, those who want to make full use of all works they are free to use under the copyright law of their jurisdiction, those who want a GFDL only encyclopedia, those who want a copyleft encyclopedia and those who want the best possible encyclopedia and accept all content which doesn't infringe copyright, even if some of it might be hard for all reusers, or a small number of reusers? The most compatible license is public domain, so does that mean that you prefer public domain content over other content? Would you want to strongly favor public domain content to maximise the freedom to reuse the work? How do you believe that increasing or decreasing the acceptability of licensed content will increase or decrease the participation in the project? How do you believe it will increase or decrease the chance of a competing project to fill any gaps in what we accept? Jamesday 05:59, 13 May 2004 (UTC)


 * Hi James. I know not why...I am not surprised by that question ;-) I will answer to it later today or tomorrow. ant

Thank you for your question James. Copyright issues are difficult questions as far as I am concerned, because I have little legal background in my education. Currently, I am fairly open on the topic, essentially because I consider I do not have enough information in my hands to have a serious informed-opinion. Any decision on copyright issues must take into account a lot of implications, and I think I do not perceive (yet ?) enough of them.

Now the good news is that I am not alone on Wikipedia, but sharing this project with many others participants, who have legal experience :-) And the other good news is that a representant is, imho, not one supposed to take decisions alone, but to listen to people who have knowledge on the topic, to foster discussion between these people, to learn all positions, benefits and drawbacks of options, and then perhaps, if necessary, to draw conclusions and suggest directions.

Question is... do I do that ?

Well, I think I do. I will share my little experience on copyright matters with you. It is perhaps going a bit in details, but I think you may find it interesting :-) About 9 months ago, an editor started uploading a large number of images on the french wikipedia, images obviously under copyright, but with no labelling whatsoever. The images were mostly copied from the english wikipedia, where no labelling existed either at that time. After requesting information from the user, I was answered that all these images could go along the "fair use doctrine". I proceeded to look for information from french editors, then on the mailing lists. Some editors answered me that I should not care, since the information was stored on US servers, so legal under the fair use doctrine. I got deeply concerned by the topic. This answer was not acceptable to me, because very obviously, french versions of Wikipedia will be printed, or distributed on CDs, or may simply be downloaded, on many territories aside from USA. In such cases, distributions of Wikipedia would not be legal, we would be liable and it would be hurting our global image. The second point was also that end users (those reusing our contents) had no way to know whether they could or could not use these pictures, since these were not labelled). In short, we could be responsible for putting the users in trouble, or worried users could decide not to reuse our content. I also read several times, questions from users about using other licenses, such as pd, copyleft, creative... At this point, I felt there was a major need for structuring a bit this area in wikipedia, and figured that labelling had to be mandatory. After I read in length many discussions on the mailing lists, I headed for the person who was most likely to help me on this at that point, User:Alex756. As a lawyer, someone working in the art business, and speaking french, I felt he was a person who could teach us, answer our questions, help us figure out what fair use was and help us set that labelling thing. Alex756 very willingly brought us help on this. I was not aware really of any legal person able to help us then, but I suppose I would today gather information from more people, probably ask Michael and you James and Eloquence and others, more advices and opinions, before setting my mind on what should be done :-) But at that point, there was only one counsellor really and I consider him a good counsellor.

I launched a sort of campaign : I read all the pages Alex756 suggested me on the english Wikipedia, to understand the various cases surrounding fair use. Then, I gathered a small team of interested people on fr:, we translated the fair use article the best we could, and set a bunch of policy pages for image uploading, a page dedicated on fair use images... (see perhaps fair use, w:fr:Wikipédia:Fair use, w:fr:Wikipédia:Image among others). I think that was a great working team, and in a couple of weeks, we had a much clearer view of what to accept and what not to accept and how to label it and so on. We also tried to push the setting up of forms in the upload page on the tech list. And we started inforcing the new policy. We are fairly liberal in our acceptance of licenses, but labelling is something very important to us. I gather that, once the pictures are labelled, it won't be a huge issue later on, to set a category system, which will allow to download or print only pictures which are legal in a given country and serve end users the best we can.

Note : our labelling system is not perfect, It needs a bit of review and improvement again, in particular since we have the mediawiki now. But the most important thing, clearing up the area, and beginning to label was a very important step. We set it as soon as november 2003, earlier than the english wikipedia. I think the french system is a fairly inclusive system, and various licences are authorized, as long as they are clearly indicated. In short, what happened was, listening around, becoming aware that an issue was cooking, then trying to set a working team on that topic, first for understanding the matter and deciding what to do, second to implement it, and third to enforce it.

I think this is part of what a representant should be. Listening to what is happening, listening to people. When an issue becomes a problem, try to gather people so that they can work on it together and reach an agreement together. Perhaps could this require to set some "working committee" for some topics. If the board needs to take a decision, make that decision taking into account the opinion voiced by this "working committee", as long as this opinion is befitting the core principles of the project.

As there are two members who can help make the board into more than a rubber stamp for Jimbo these people need to be communicators. They also need to be people who will listen to the members, not just take their own opinions to the Board, but engage in an active dialogue with the Wikipedia communities.

I may not answer to your last questions here James, I have some ideas about this myself, but I think a candidate that has a lot of fixed ideas or opinions, is not someone who will help to make the organization more flexible. A board member with a lot of fixed ideas won't be so open to the community feedback, and I think hearing the feedback is what will be good for a representant. It will be best to transmit opinions of the participants to the board, so that it may be more effectively discussed in the board context.

I hope this answer your questions, even if perhaps not directly so ;-) If not, please say it. I know this is an important topic to you and others.

Life with the candidate
--

Hi Anthere

I would like to ask you to reconsider standing for only one of the two available board positions, but rather to stand for both. Both you and Eloquence address my concerns, and I would hate to see only one of you on the Board! Greenman 00:37, 22 May 2004 (SAST)

Hi Greenman. I first want to thank you for your support. I find interesting that you support both Erik and I, but I agree we balance each other a lot. The good news is that you can vote for both of us if you wish. Why am I interested by the contributing position ? Well, in particular because I wish to expand Wikimedia across the world, with local daughter associations, so that we can better benefit of donations and subventions, and more efficiently spread the word. The relationship between all these associations will be moral certainly, juridical yes, but financial a lot as well.