On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 11:06 PM, Bence Damokos bdamokos@gmail.com wrote:
About this list and wiki to be created: would the would be chapters with a chance of being approved before a Board approval on this question be invited?
I personally don't oppose it (though, in order to be fair, we would need to draw a line, like "All those who have been recommended for approval by ChapCom already") but I think this is something that the chapters need to decide.
As a general comment (and I can thus avoid separately replying to Thomas Dalton):
This is prima facie a chapters matter, as the seats are called "board seats to be appointed by the chapters". Yes, the board will eventually have to approve them de iure etc. but as said, the main idea was: The chapters figure out a process and then appoint two people.
Therefore, I strongly urge that first we have all the chapter board members together on the wiki and on the list and then, we can discuss there whether there is a consensus agreement to open it up to the public. I would personally be okay with discussing the appointment processus in public, but I don't see much value in having a public foundation-l-type discussion on whom we appoint, because then, we're back to a general community appointments (read: quasi-election), which was explicitly not what these seats were created for. This is not a vote against transparency. But we have seats to be filled by NomCom, seats to be elected, seats to be appointed by chapters, maybe we'll once have a seat appointed by server admins, whatever. But we should distinguish, otherwise, we'll just say that we have a 100%-elected board, which is certainly worth considering, but for the moment, the board decided against it.
About ChapCom transparency: the ChapCom members have been helpful, but I don't find their work transparent. How does one chapter get approved by them (or even the Board) before incorporation, or just faster then the chapters presenting their bylaws roughly at the same time? Is the slowness in some cases deliberate to test the endurance and capabilities of a given community or even a contactperson? I don't think the answer is yes, yet without transparency and clear criteria, one cannot help to wonder, what is he doing wrong, and can have no idea how to correct his mistakes if the Chapcom is not approving the chapter, while other chapters "zoom by" at the same time.
It's very easy: Some bylaws are easier & shorter, some are less. This doesn't mean that some are "better", but it's just that some bylaws are very closely modelled on existing ones, and can therefore be approved much more quickly, while others have a completely novel structure which needs somewhat more time to understand, if we want to do our job properly.
Michael