 | This Wikipedian is deceased. His user page is preserved here in his memory.
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IMPORTANT LEGAL NOTICE
Alex756 never thought when granting a GFDL license to the foundation that his membership rights would be unilaterally terminated and he hereby gives notice that he also revokes all GFDL and CC licenses due to said misrepresentation of the Board of Trustees (BoT) and herewith demands that all his contributions prior to this page be removed because they are infringements on his copyrights.
This is the "user" page of Alex756 who was once a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. until December 2006 from its inception. Now W.M.F., Inc. does not have any members, so he is no longer a member but he is still a "user" and an administrator. He has deleted the page history here because there is some personal information stored there under a principle known as "right to vanish" but that does not mean he does not want anyone to not know him or that he does not want to be remembered for what he did in Wikipedia projects before. He does not make a lot of edits but he is still here and available if anyone wants to contact him (which does not happen very often). If you want to see the pages that have been "deleted" for any legitimate historical research purposes they still exist and are accessible through administrator privileges.
Alex756 wrote—with Jimbo Wales—the original bylaws of WMF in 2003–04, and also helped Wales get it tax-exempt status, helped complete the trademark applications started by Jimbo to USPTO for the Wikipedia, MediaWiki and WikiNews marks and make a lot of suggestions as a volunteer "member" regarding the area of dispute resolution, membership rights and obligations, establishing good record keeping for fair use rationales and editing thousands of articles in the process. Alex756 was never "hired" to do this, he did it as a pro bono volunteer. He was never paid for any of his expenses or his time. It was a gift freely given to help start what he thought was a membership organization that would work with "members" to create new structures and new ways for people to collaborate, through thick and thin...
When Alex756 ran for the board of trustees in September 2006 one week after his identity and biographical information (that included all the above about his history with the foundation) was approved by a certain staff member of the foundation that same staff member had an interview published that stated that alex756 was doing "copyright work" for the foundation. Clearly if a potential voter who was reviewing alex756's statement along with the statement issued by the foundation staff person it appeared that alex756 was exaggerating his role played at the foundation. No doubt that influenced individuals who might have voted for him, why would you vote for anyone who alleged he did much more for the foundation than one of it's official paid employees? Democracy belongs to those who control the press, not those who try to contribute to some freebie publication like Wikipedia.
Alex756 never thought when granting a GFDL license to the foundation that his membership rights would be unilaterally terminated and he hereby gives notice that he also revokes all GFDL and CC licenses due to said misrepresentation of the Board of Trustees (BoT) and herewith demands that all his contributions prior to this page be removed because they are infringements on his copyrights.
Alex756 also started the Wikipedia:Association of Members' Advocates, but now the status of this organization is in jeopardy because the Board of Trustees (BoT) unilaterally amended the bylaws and took away the status of Wikipedia "users" to be members of this entity, so how can you have an "association" of members when you don't have any membership only some vague and non-transparent status as "community" that can be changed according to the BoT's whims?
Getting rid of members implies taking away any entitlement they have to their voice, the right to seek redress to their grievances on the Board level(there was also a Disciplinary Board that the bylaws created) and to have some, if only minor, status in the WMF hierarchy. This has been replaced by some vague promise to some vague "community" to elect some directors or trustees amongst "users" of WMF projects (actually it does not even say that!). Basically this means the board can do whatever it wants and you can yell and scream and they will do nothing if you have any kind of problem or grievance because legally they have decided that you really have not status or voice in their decision-making process. You are irrelevant because you can easily be replaced by other "users" who want to participate in the Wikimedia explosion, so much for an ongoing "collaboration" and the alleged "transparency"!
How did this happen? It was done without any kind of organized consultation, just a few notices on the mailing list and a couple of wiki pages that all members have been "deemed" to read. Even though the bylaws were drafted early in 2004 when they were summaried changed in 2006 by one individual it was done without providing any rationale for the changes or real discussion by way of a bylaw revision committee or commission that would seek input from current or former active members of the foundation. It was just changed on a page with a little note that it had to be changed and then voted upon by a handful of people without getting any vote from the membership that at that point numbered in the hundreds of thousands. This is what the Board and its staff apparently think is "democracy". Apparently there was also a mistaken belief that a membership organization could only have directors from amongst its members or that somehow a cabal of members would "takeover" the organization (besides the small group that actually did take it over); or that a membership meant that the business activities of the organization had to be run by consensus (sometimes confused with democracy). Alex756 finds these points to be coming from individuals who have a naïve, incomplete point of view or who perhaps did it for some purpose that has not been disclosed (what about NPOV here guys, obviously it does not apply to the WMF which is run from the POV of absolutism?) regarding not-for-profit corporate structures. In any case Alex756 does not agree with this kind of propaganda and his exercising what ever remaining right he might have to criticize the powers that be (who knows maybe this page will soon disappear). But he is now just the "remains" of a former member, a carcass without soul, that is only traced by some edits and other electronic remnants of his former member status so whatever he thinks is really very insignificant in the WMF superstructure.
How unfortunate that the original impetus for Wikimedia was to be run much like the rest of the wiki projects it started through a transparent open collaborative process, now it is a holding corporation that is run in the dark without transparency to those who contribute time or money to it or any clear idea of what is really going on amongst the powers that be. If you want to complain it appears that the only redress you have is through the courts since they (the BoT) appear not to want to give former members any organized internal grievance procedure to follow to resolve disputes on the organizational structure (unless the WP arbcom is adapted to resolve supraproject disputes which is clearly inappropriate to anyone who is making a contribution to non-English Wikipedia projects).
How unfortunate! What a mess! That is the opinion of Alex756 and it seems very few people really care. Why? Maybe it is a sign of the times and how citizens are now controlled by an apathy that prevents them from doing anything that is not in their individual self interest. Today the internet is polluted by people who only see it as a money making opportunity, they start a true volunteer organization so these volunteers can be "used" as "users" so the "organizers" can turn their "benevolence" into cash that stuffs their and their cronies pockets, so much for altruism, remember the old adage, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely!"
Alex756 never thought when granting a GFDL license to the foundation that his membership rights would be unilaterally terminated and he hereby gives notice that he also revokes all GFDL and CC licenses due to said misrepresentation of the Board of Trustees (BoT) and herewith demands that all his contributions prior to this page be removed because they are infringements on his copyrights.