On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 9:17 AM, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 1 February 2012 16:44, Stuart West
<stuwest(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I'll give my personal view on the question,
and invite others on the board
to jump in. I think the difference between the specific expertise seats
and the appointed seats is subtle but important.
My sense is that the WMF Board specific expertise seats are more focused
on board operations and governance. so the Board might do a
self-assessment and identify that it needs someone with financial/audit
oversight experience to serve as Board Treasurer, and then go out and find
it. That's me. It's also reactive and designed to fill in the gaps. So we
as Board decided a few years ago that we lacked sufficient insight and
perspective from outside North America and Europe, so we sought out and
were incredibly luck to find Bishakha.
The opportunity for the two seats appointed by movement organizations like
the chapters is broader. Many more people are involved in identifying and
surfacing potential candidates, so it has the potential to cast a wider and
more thoughtful net. And there is less constraint to meet specific
governance needs, which frees up the process to focus on the people and
perspectives that can have the most positive impact on our movement's
pursuit of the mission.
-
This is well and good, but it gives the impression that the current three
elected members of the board are somehow considered not representative of
the movement, and that the opaque selection and appointment process for the
"chapter" seats is somehow more representative of the movement. It
concerns me a lot that the 97% of active Wikimedians who are not chapter
members seem to not be considered part of the movement.
In the 2011 community board election, less than 3400 "users" voted.[1]
In the 2012 chapter board election, 39 chapters consisting of more
than 4000 identified people will be voting.[2]
Unfortunately neither process captures a large percentage of the
active Wikimedian community.
1. see bottom of
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2011/Results/en
2. see "members" column of
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters#Existing_chapters
--
John Vandenberg