Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2007/Candidates/Kim Bruning/questions

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Feel free to ask me any question! --Kim Bruning 01:39, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Change

Hi Kim,

What is the top 3 things you want to have changed in the current strategy of the foundation? Thanks, Effeietsanders 06:31, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

• The current board will likely have appointed a new executive director and legal counsel by the time the elections are over. This allows the new board to concentrate on actually looking towards the future and giving guidance rather than taking care of day to day matters all the time. In a way this is more of a continuation than a change,I guess, but still a very important one.
• I'd like to promote more openness and insight into the foundation by the communities. Maybe if I'm elected alongside Eloquence (Eloquence's answer), together we might be able to tip the balance in that direction.
• Finally, just like I said on my candidate statement, we need to start working on ways to get the communities talking with each other. We can talk about spending millions of dollars on resources and external cooperation, but if the communities squander it all on duplication of effort and repeating the same mistakes, or even outright fighting, we still won't get any further. If instead we get communities to cooperate more strongly, we will need less resources to do the same amount of work, and the load on the board and the foundation will be reduced as well.

Added Value

Hi Kim,

What kind of value do you add to the current set of boardmembers in the area of Legal, Financial, Accounting etc expertise? Thanks, Effeietsanders 06:31, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I am not exceptionally skilled in any of those fields, but the foundation does hire people in those fields. Some of our (appointed) board members do have some of these skills, and Mindspillage is currently stuying law.

As a member who would be elected by the community, my own expertise is in fact ..prepare to be amazed ... in the field of online communities. I've been working on a very large community (en.wikipedia) for quite a while now, and I have not hesitated to ask people from other communities for opinions and advice (and vice versa, people from other communities have sometimes asked me for advice too). --Kim Bruning 16:03, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Multilinguism

Hi Kim,

I noticed you are a native Dutch speaker. Could you please elaborate on why you have not also written your candidate statement in Dutch? And could you also explain your view on the multilinguism of the Wikimedia Organization (broader as only WMF)? Thanks, Effeietsanders 06:33, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Wow, you were so quick with the questions! I just finished writing my statement in dutch, right before coming here to answer the questions. :-)

We have people contributing in many many different languages. This way, we can one day spread knowledge to every single persn in the world. But every advantage has a disadvantage. By having so many different languages, they end up acting as a barrier to cooperation between projects. The best solution I can think of so far is to invest heavily in making life easier for translators. This would include technical solutions, as well as increasing community awareness of, and respect for, translators and translation efforts. --Kim Bruning 16:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Checkuser policy

What is your opinion of the privacy policy, particularly relating to checkusering of adminship candidates? Majorly (talk) 09:24, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Sister projects

What do You think of the sister-projects? Do You think they have been given enough support by the foundation in the past? Which ones would You support more than in the past, if any? Thank You, --birdy geimfyglið _{(:> )=|} 11:16, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

We should try to get projects to cooperate with each other more. Even many of the smaller projects are capable of putting forth a lot more man-hours than the office of the foundation itself. Think what would happen if we improve cooperation between 700 projects by even a fraction of a percent. --Kim Bruning 16:43, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Office Evolution

In what way do you forsee the office (and staff) evolving under your tenure as a board member, should you be elected? i.e. would you be in favor of expansion, contraction, status quo, more interns, new positions, less, what? Swatjester 13:47, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Professional?

By nature and design, wiki communities are an amateur, unstable amalgam of widely differing perspectives and agendas. There is no individual or collective responsibility and no competence test for participation. Yet, the board of the ever-expanding and legally constituted foundation that runs one of the world’s top websites, needs to be highly professionally, highly competent, collectively coherent and responsible. It must have business savvy, and be willing to make hard-nosed and even unpopular decisions. In your opinion:

1. Is the current board, vision and structure fit for that purpose?
2. Are you? (Would you be a competent candidate for a board in any non-profit venture?)

(same asked of all candidates)--Doc glasgow 14:44, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Chapters

Taking into account the growing importance of Wikimedia chapters in furthering our common goals on the one hand and the impact the decisions made by the Wikimedia Foundation have on the work (if not existence) of the Wikimedia Chapters on the other hand: What do you think about the idea of giving the chapters a formal say in WMF's decision making process? What do you think especially about a) letting the chapters appoint one or more board members (beside the ones elected by the community) and/or b) changing the WMF back to a membership organization (with the chapters as members)? Do you have any other ideas to achieve more checks and balances between Foundation and chapters? On top of that, would you care to elaborate on your vision about the current and future role of the Wikimedia chapters? Thanks in advance, Arne (akl) 15:40, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Project policy involvement

What are your views on board involvement in writing and implementing policy for the various projects, especially in controversial areas where it appears that community consensus will be difficult to establish, such as on the "attack sites" [1] and biography of living people (BLP) [2] issues? Cla68 15:52, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Improvement of internal communications

How do you envision to go about improvement of internal communication? We have a Communication Manager (although it is not clear to me to what extent her job includes internal communication. Maybe it is mainly press etc?) and we have a Communication committee, with various subcommittees. How do you look upon the role of comcom and subcommittees? You mention we should make things easier for translators. How should that be accomplished?

What I'm getting at is: OK you know what you want to do. Do you have a good idea of how to do it, too? // habj 17:54, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Ads, branding, business dev., GHGs.

1. On the board, will you vote for ads on Wikimedia sites?
   1. yes
      1. pop-ups/flash/banners/graphics
      2. flash/banners/graphics in skin whitespace or at bottom
      3. company logos in site notices
      4. prominent text ads
      5. company names in site notices
      6. text ads in skin whitespace or at bottom
      7. opt out
      8. opt in
      9. other
   2. maybe
      1. only for a huge amount of money
      2. only during budget emergencies
      3. only if editors support it
   3. never
   4. other
2. What are your thoughts on Wikimedia branding?
3. What are your thoughts on the foundation's hiring of a business developer?
4. How would you vote on the board about the foundation reducing or offsetting anthropogenic greenhouse gases, e.g. power used by hardware, flights, etc.?

Thanks. -- Jeandré, 2007-06-19t18:08z

1. Never for sites with established communities. Very very maybe for new wikis, depending on the goal of such a new wiki, and whether advertising would damage it in some way. (think wikia)
2. You mean thinkgeek and cafepress kinds of deals? Hmmm, I love t-shirts, if I don't have the T-shirt, it never happened. ;-) You have to be really careful though, since reputation is wikimedia's main asset. I would want to keep a close eye on what kinds of things are being sold, and maintain a veto right, to be written into any such contract.
3. Sounds like a good plan. No matter what we're doing, be it that we just stick to donations; or if we have innocious cafepress-like deals; or if people decide more sophisticated marketing with perhaps a larger risk to our reputaion; whatever we choose, we should at least have at least one person in the organisation who actually understands what we're doing.
4. I think network-based organisations like wikimedia already do a lot to reduce greenhouse emissions as a side effect. Anytime we save money on power requirements or cooling, often the environment is helped too. Even so, I guess it can't hurt to keep our eyes peeled, in case of the hopefully rare situation where this doesn't quite hold. Going from there to actually becoming carbon neutral should be easy enough (famous last words).

--Kim Bruning 20:31, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

What if

What would you do/recommend when elected and faced with 40% budget deficit? Absolwent 18:45, 19 June 2007 (UTC)