RationalWiki talk:RationalWiki Foundation/Archive7

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This is an archive page, last updated 25 July 2025. Please do not make edits to this page.
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Board statement[edit]

We are under advisement from counsel not to discuss any ongoing litigation in public at this time. We'll let you know the status of the current issues when we are able to. Your patience and understanding are most appreciated. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 00:28, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. Pinkerite (talk) 01:00, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
Seconded. KarmaPolice (talk) 01:01, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
You should archive all the above sections and only keep this section for updates from the Board. 161.35.176.99 (talk) 01:08, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

RWF needs to appoint new technical support gurus[edit]

Hi.

I think one of the things the board needs to do is to sort out who has access to the root servers to do things like MediaWiki upgrades. Your current version, 1.35.6 (7c0e83a) is out-of-date. The three guys who currently have root access are volunteers are all busy in real life. Snark: Each of them seem to think it's the others' responsibility to do stuff like that.

Surely there's someone amongst the board members who's technically-minded?

--Duncan from Teflpedia (talk) 01:15, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

Upgrading the server's software is on our roadmap. Unfortunately we have been distracted with more pressing matters lately. We'll keep you informed. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 01:53, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

The foundation's address[edit]

Two pages (RW:legal FAQ and RW:copyright violations) list the foundation's address as 122 Girard Blvd, Albuquerque. It seems this is outdated. Anyone know the current address? Christopher (talk) 12:58, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

A poke[edit]

It's been over a month now, and I think it's time for an update on the two major issues RW is currently facing - the move to Oregon and the agreement regarding all the lawsuits. KarmaPolice (talk) 12:08, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

They're both being handled. Sorry. I can't say any more than that. Spud (talk) 14:59, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

Foundation update: I have good news and bad news[edit]

Disclaimer: I have been authorized by the RationalWiki Foundation Board to post my understanding of the ongoing situation in order to update the community. As I'm mostly an outsider to the Board, some things I say may be outdated, incomplete, or incorrect.

Bad news first: The RW Foundation received another slate of incoming lawsuits over 8 more articles, and the Board's terrible situation is fundamentally unchanged from last time, which means they're probably going to have to settle it out. Two members of the moderation team have also been targeted; they know who they are. Settlements entail taking down the articles and removing mentions of the people being settled with. Yes, this sucks a lot, but the Board is in a very delicate situation right now for reasons I cannot and will not go into.

Good news: The Oregon Plan is being implemented. I will give some details:

  • First, some of you may be under the impression that the RationalWiki Foundation (RWF) is moving to Oregon. This is not true. The RationalWiki Foundation will be shut down completely. Its procedures and bylaws don't fully match the way the Board does business, the Foundation often refers to itself by a name it isn't registered under, and it turns out that Board members were not being elected in a legally appropriate way. Not to mention, the guy who originally set it up, Trent Toulouse, wants nothing to do with it anymore and seems to have been refusing communication for over a month. There were other problems too. In other words, it's long past time to get rid of the old Foundation, even regardless of its unfortunate location and its ongoing situation.
  • Two current Board members, @Spud and @Cosmikdebris, as well as a third individual, have taken it upon themselves to establish a new organization, the RationalMedia Foundation (RMF), in Oregon. The RMF currently exists, and is in the process of being made fully operational. This new organization has different founders, different bylaws, different procedures, and a different mission statement. This is being done with the assistance of an attorney and law firm specializing in nonprofit law. The RWF's last act will be transferring its assets and intellectual property to this new organization before being dissolved. Every current Board member not involved in founding this new organization will no longer be Board members of any organization.
    • Under the new Foundation, there will be some changes in how RationalWiki is run. First, no more Board elections. The community will be welcome to have input, but the nonprofit attorney informed Spud and Cosmik that that nonprofits like the RWF and the RMF are not properly legally structured to allow for their Board members to be elected. Board members will thus be elected like other nonprofit boards, namely by the existing Board members.
    • The Board will have much more involved authority over setting standards for what gets published on the wiki and managing the moderation and tech teams, and the exact details of this will be specified when Spud or Cosmik get around to posting the new bylaws.
    • The wiki's mission statement will probably be tweaked a little bit.
  • Because this is a new organization, every Board member but Spud and Cosmik will no longer be members of any Board. This means the RMF WILL NEED BOARD MEMBERS. Once again, there will be different processes to protect these new Board members.
    • First, Spud and Cosmik are getting nonprofit Board insurance set up for the new Foundation to protect individual Board members from legal attacks and fees.
    • Second, the Board's attorney has specified that there is no legal requirement for a Board member's name to be linked to their RW account. In fact, it's preferable that their name not be linked to their RW account. In fact, Board members do not need to be RW editors at all.
    • Third, Board members can no longer operate under pseudonyms. Their real names need to go on paperwork. That's one of the big issues the old Foundation had.
    • Fourth, the new bylaws will formalize the Board's Discord-based decisionmaking. This reduces the burden of quarterly meetings by simply allowing Board members to talk things out in a groupchat. All Board members should need to do is voice their opinions every now and then and indicate their votes in the Discord chat.
    • WE NEED PEOPLE TO STEP UP TO THE FUCKING PLATE HERE. NO PLANS FOR THE FUTURE OF RATIONALWIKI WORK WITHOUT YOU, AND THEN THE RWF MIGHT HAVE TO SHUT THE WHOLE FUCKING WIKI DOWN. If you are willing to volunteer for this vitally important role, please please reach out to Cosmikdebris by email or Discord DM (you could also reach out to me on Discord too). We seriously fucking need you.
  • The nonprofit attorney has confirmed that the Oregon Plan will work. Killing the RationalWiki Foundation will make it impossible to go after it, and its old Board members would not be able to be sued as individuals in New Mexico based on the Foundation's collective past activities. As the attorney put it, it would be like trying to sue a dead person. The RWF's intellectual property assets (the wiki and social media stuff) will be transferred to the new Oregon-based organization and will be handled under the jurisdiction and laws of Oregon, which will give the new Board the ability to fight back against further legal threats.

Back to bad news: There have been some major delays with getting the new foundation fully up and running and the old one sunsetted, which is why we're staring down the barrel of another settlement. The settlements have been to buy time for this permanent solution. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, but you've gotta bear with us. I'll do my best to answer questions, but please understand that there are certain things I am not at liberty to say. DuceMoosolini (talk) 17:26, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

I have some questions. 1 How many volunteers do we need? 2 How much time do we still have until the site shuts down? 3 I assume you guys won't pick unreliable people just because we're desperate, right? Giving an extreme example let's say that only RobSmith wants to be part of the board. Then Spud and Cosmik will rather take down the site than betray our mission, right? — Unsigned, by: GeeJayK / talk / contribs
Answers. 1). At least 2, but preferably 3. 2). Shutting the site down is a worst case scenario, so that's not immediately a risk. 3). The current Board will vet applicants. RobSmith will not be a Board member. DuceMoosolini (talk) 18:36, 12 June 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for the update. And thanks to everybody involved for their good work, this has been a tough time. In spite of my complaints I am grateful for your efforts. I don't want to be a Board member, but I am available for other tasks and I would definitely donate to the new RMF, so I hope the leaders of RMF-Oregon consider starting a fundraiser to help defray start-up costs. And unless there is anything in the rules/laws that say otherwise, I hope a donation option will be available on an ongoing basis on the RMF-Oregon wiki, rather than only as occasional fundraisers. Pinkerite (talk) 17:58, 12 June 2025 (UTC)
RE: other tasks. If you're willing to DM me on Discord (I'm in the Community chat as the Spaghetti PFP), we can talk further about some stuff. In private, I can tell you more about some of the decisions that were made. DuceMoosolini (talk) 18:37, 12 June 2025 (UTC)
Second Pinkrite's sentiments etc. One tiny minor pedantic point; 'election by other board members' is known as co-option. Now, I'm going to spike any possible 'wtf, over my dead body!' complaints about the instillation of the new 'dictators for life diarchy' but the current method failed and failed bad, which is why RMF ended up in the position it is today. I fully appreciate Duce's intense irritation to the folks in the past who were yelling 'no surrender' but not offering any alternatives or seemingly willing to put in any slog to find them either.
I am personally going to not put my name ahead for this new board; a) it might be wise for this new board/foundation to not have any connections to the English legal system [or at least avoid that possible headache] and b) I do believe that the new board shouldn't be mods or perhaps even major contributors in mainspace [which I think is where my skills are best used here].
I appreciate there's stuff you can't say and by extension, I'm not going to ask particular things or think aloud on them. So I will limit this right now with only two questions. a), what shall happen to us mods and b) once all the 'setup slog' has been done, how active is this new Board going to be in the everyday operations of this new RW?
On the 'other tasks' point; I don't do Discord but feel free to email me [Cosmik has it] to discuss. You're 100% right, Duce; that we need folks to not just 'step up to the plate' re: being on the board but in also deal with a lot of the backlog of work to do etc. I believe it can be done [I would have flaked by now if I didn't] but it cannot be left to the mythical Someone Else. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:03, 12 June 2025 (UTC)
Answers to KarmaPolice questions. 1). Nobody talked to me about this in detail, but I think it'll just involve having lines of communication through email/Discord between the mod team and the Board in case info/directions need to be shared. The Board basically just wants to be able to flex some official institutional muscle if necessary. 2). I don't know. Probably not super involved when it comes to day-to-day stuff. DuceMoosolini (talk) 19:16, 12 June 2025 (UTC)
Also, I do very much appreciate the expressions of support from you guys. Genuine thanks. DuceMoosolini (talk) 19:17, 12 June 2025 (UTC)
Thank you, Duce for your hard work and for whatever personal risks that you may have taken. Bongolian (talk) 19:59, 12 June 2025 (UTC)
I've only joined this Wiki rather recently (comparatively), but I can see RationalWiki wouldn't have been the same without you. Thank you for your work here. I wish you the best for the future. ミ★ LunaAHHHHH 20:14, 12 June 2025 (UTC)
Will ApooftGnegiol and Ephrom be leaving the Board as well (in addition to Trent)? ミ★ LunaAHHHHH 20:14, 12 June 2025 (UTC)
Yes. DuceMoosolini (talk) 20:28, 12 June 2025 (UTC)
May the favor of the gods be upon all those holding up the legal end as best they can. and Duce for bringing this news to us-they have suffered far more for us than we have earned.-Flandres (talk) 20:42, 12 June 2025 (UTC)
Can I ask which articles are being deleted and if they're related to the previous "people" that tried to launch torpedos at us (I just received word from this via Geejay, so...)? Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 15:51, 14 June 2025 (UTC)
If the settlement is that they're scrubbed from the site, like most of the others, then I wouldn't imagine so, no. Just watch recent changes and especially the Deletion Log.
Regards, Avarice   16:32, 14 June 2025 (UTC)
Where is the Deletion Log? I know Special: Recent Changes and RationalWiki:Articles_for_deletion but not another deletion log.Polydamas (talk) 17:25, 17 June 2025 (UTC)
In the sidebar, a little above the support button, there's a link to "All logs." Go to the dropdown, and select "Deletion Log." You can also do the same thing through Special:SpecialPages, at the bottom of the sidebar. Or, just use this link.
Regards, Avarice   17:48, 17 June 2025 (UTC)
I just wanted to take a moment to say that I'm happy with the direction you all have taken with this project and its Foundation(s) in. It's things Boards of the past had hoped to gradually accomplish, but there was never a concrete plan, nor a hardcore push to accomplish them (as well as certain immovable obstacles along the way). I do realize legal trouble is what finally pushed it in that direction, but as I'm sure you all know all too well, it was long past time for the Board running this place to get its shit together. With that, I offer a pat on the back to you all. John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt (talk) 11:18, 20 June 2025 (UTC)
Thank you. Spud (talk) 11:28, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Mass deletion[edit]

As authorized/instructed by the RWF Board of Trustees, I have conducted a mass deletion of articles in compliance with a past user's request to have their past work removed from this site as a precondition for voluntarily dismissing a lawsuit against the Foundation. There were also other reasons this was done. Undoubtedly, there will be redlinks left over, please go ahead and remove them where you find them. Thank you for your attention to this matter. DuceMoosolini (talk) 03:31, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

Resigination[edit]

As of yesterday, I have resigned from the board. --Ephrom (talk) 13:41, 27 June 2025 (UTC)