On Feb 25, 2016 6:55 AM, "Andrea Zanni" zanni.andrea84@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 2:48 PM, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org
wrote:
What I will disagree on is with the notion that the board has to take
the
org's side against the movement by definition. It is my understanding
that
the board has the role of oversight of the org -- that is, it's the
board's
job to ensure that the Foundation is effectively accomplishing the
goals it
was created to perform.
As much as I agree with Brion, probably Denny's message is telling us a lot. I haven't read carefully the WMF Board Pledge of personal commitment, but this is not the first time this issue is discussed: see for example Cristian mail, two months ago, tackling the very specific thing. [1]
One thing we should do is ensure that the legal obligations of a trustee of a Florida not for profit corporation are not conflated with an arbitrarily-written 'pledge of personal commitment' (or, to be sure, our own preferences).
If the pledge is poorly worded or just wrong, it should be corrected.
(IANAL, so I'll leave further talk of legal obligations to those more familiar with the topic.)
-- brion
Maybe the Board "feels" a lot of pressure about this, and this is a
problem
on itself. We all know that "toxicity" of an environment doesn't need laws or written rules, but people being people, social pressure, etc. If Board members feels without power, bound to the WMF and not the Movement, that's a real problem we need to look into.
Aubrey
[1]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-December/080600.html
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