I am not a member of LangCom (just a volunteer list-admin), so I will not offer an opinion on Jan's request to join.
However, I *will* offer an opinion about the committee's governance: the current structure still bears the signs of the committee's genesis, out of ad-hoc need, in a very different time for the movement. Today, it behooves this committee, like all WMF committees (and others across the movement), to adopt some measures of good governance to ensure it remains fit-to-purpose and active.
The first such measure that comes to mind is agreeing upon participation expectations (which should of course be appropriate for this particular committee's tasks and the understandable delays they often carry, such as waiting on external experts, etc.), and, after due notice, eventually removing members who do not meet those expectations. This is a relatively easy way to address the "membership for life" issue without setting actual (renewable) membership terms.
Another measure would be agreeing upon some desired size (or range) for committee membership, and then upon some process and criteria for soliciting and accepting new members.
I am bringing this up as advice in my personal capacity as observer of this committee, resting though it does on much observation and work with other Wikimedia committees. My advice does not carry any coercive force, of course; I just invite the committee to consider improving its governance along these or similar lines.
Cheers,
Asaf
>
We have a mailing list where anyone can write to and arguments are heard. So effectively you are part of what we do.
Not entirely. The page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee writes explicitly: "Non-members should generally not participate in discussions. When it is necessary however, they can send a mail which a list administrator will need to accept manually." Not that I mind being moderated, but to put it bluntly, writing a message feels pretty much like being an intruder.
> The language committee was created to say "no".
Hm, perhaps I am wrong, but isn't the language committee also there to say "yes" every once in a while? Mind, I can follow your logic. If one member saying "no" means the whole committee says "no", it makes sense to limit the number of members to a bare minimum, because otherwise saying "no" is likely to become all the committee will ever do. I agree that for normal issues a majority vote would be a much better solution. While I agree with Amir that voting is not the solution for all problems, giving each individual member the right to veto any progress is a solution even worse.
Besides, I read that a quite a few members are completely inactive, which shouldn't come as a surprise if you consider that members are basically appointed for life. Given the fact that (except for Satdeep Gill) not a single new member has been added since 2012, I thought it might be a good idea to change that. That's why I am offering my expertise and help in speeding things up.
Cheers,
Jan
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