User talk:Tmtoulouse/bylaws

I can imagine some people hating this idea, but it's an essential step and it's a case of "not if, but when" it needs to happen. On the face of it 9 trustees with you (Trent) as a 10th for a combination of practical and historical purposes seems okay. However, I think it may be too high. 9 people chatting in a board room is just about controllable, but discussions are likely to take place online where 9 people are going to be difficult to organise or will take time to gather round for their say. Also, if discussions between The Nine (I understand that this is more about ownership and very high level governance rather than administration or management of the wiki itself, but I'm going to assume that, as a board, discussions of something will have to happen between these people) take place on the wiki, 9 people going at it will be Edit Conflict central, so you'd have to switch to something like Google Wave and copy minutes into the relevant place. Of course, you can reduce the number to make it less hectic in practice, and set it as a rough fraction of the active userbase to change as required (one assumes we're not going to get millions of users in the next few years). I'm not too hot on legal jargon to comment on the rest but I assume it's standard stuff, I'm only commenting on the nature of trustees because if that LJ thing is anything to go by, that'd be the biggest headache - you might be best off, as it's currently you that owns it all and it's your prerogative, to just directly appoint people to the board (on a "first refusal" basis more than forcing people) with the promise that those people hammer out a more democratic system for implementation later. My only other point is that the entire reasoning behind doing this still seems vague. Yes, I understand that you want to make RW an entity in itself and divorce it from you (in so much that it can be, when it's physically sat in your place) but I think you need to clarify an actual example of what this means, even if it's improbable. Think back to cogitative biases; improbable but highly specific events resonate with peoples minds better than highly probably but vague ones. 07:14, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * IRC meetings are eminently manageable for 5 or 6 people - David Gerard (talk) 08:47, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, so lets trim it down to 5+me till the +me gets told to go back to my yacht and leave everyone alone. Perhaps we can split the difference and have me+2 others be appointed at the start of the NPO (since it requires three "trustees" in order to even register the corporation. Then with in "x" months these 3 will figure out election protocol and the site will elect 3 more members. Then in the next year cycle all 5 can be voted on. tmtoulouse 15:20, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds fine by me. 15:41, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Reasons
So lets brain storm ways to make the reasons for doing this more clear. The basic ideas is:


 * 1) putting into place legal protection for me as an individual, and anyone else associated with running the site
 * 2) divorcing RW from its ultra reliance on me, right now I can do anything I want to do and there is nothing any of you could really do about it, now I don't do that but that simple fact should be disconcerting for people and a desire to put into place safe guards should resonate
 * 3) to spread the responsibility around a bit, and to give me an "out" if I ever want it, or if I ever need it, or if it is ever forced on me, better to have things setup to allow for a transition, and have it all figured out over time, then have to make it up in the middle of a crisis
 * 4) establishing an RW NPO also gives us that little extra edge in terms of legitimacy, and its kinda cool

This are probably in the vague category Armondikov mentioned....if they are not very convincing what would be? tmtoulouse 19:06, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I know [of] a lawyer in New Jersey who set up an "educational foundation" or some such NPO/LLC for his website. Shall I email him on your behalf for advice?  03:18, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Which reminds me, did we ever set up orange box notifications for edits to user subpages? 03:19, 22 May 2010 (UTC)