The WMF needs a stronger community voice on the Board from active editors and participants in community projects. Given the number of elected seats, you would think this would be easier, but many of our strongest community representatives have left or taken other positions: Angela, Anthere, Eloquence.

Board candidacy edit

Samuel Klein (Sj)


Summary details
 
In Taipei, Wikimania 2007. Credit: Joi
  • Personal:
    • Name: Samuel Klein
    • Age: 31
    • Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
    • Languages: English, some German, Spanish, French
Statement Wikimedia should be a model for open, scalable organizations.

As a Board member, I would be a strong community voice, communicating regularly about the Board's work, holding open meetings and soliciting public input. I support developing expertise within the community.

I would also

  • fight for better support for translation and multilingual communication across Wikimedia, particularly for planning discussions
  • represent the technical and practical needs of smaller projects
  • encourage careful use of funds and goodwill, planning for long-term availability of the projects (with an endowment and core services)
  • encourage delegating outreach & community development to chapters


About me: I am an editor, translator, steward, and public advocate for Wikipedia. I started the Meta translators network and the Wikimedia Quarto newsletter (in 5 languages) in 2004, and was secretary of the Special Projects Committee. I founded the Boston meetup group and helped run the first two Wikimanias, hosting Wikimania2006 in Boston.

Outside Wikimedia, for 3 years I have been director of content at One Laptop per Child, working on local partnerships for free content and offline distribution.


Trust edit

On the role of trustees on the Board:

A trustee should:

  • represent the community's goals to the Board
  • represent all Projects, chapters and languages in discussions
  • promote transparency and participation, providing feedback to the community about WMF work & vice-versa
  • ensure decisions, including financial and long-range planning, are driven by community needs & priorities
  • ensure the WMF plans for the long-term availability of the projects (e.g., through an endowment, and defining core services such as dumps/backups/uptime)
  • support the WMF through public outreach