<snip my desire for an alternative to a proportionally
representative Wikicouncil>
Wikicouncil would certainly be a possible body to
oversee overall
day-to-day operations. It could function in
addition to a governing
Board AND and advisory board.
< snip governing Board >
<snip advisory Board>
A Wikicouncil needs to represent three broad groups:
languages,
countries and overall projects. It needs to avoid
domination by any one
group or sub-group, and at the same time it needs to
avoid becoming so
large as to become unwieldy. The size of the
Wikicouncil can be
open-ended but still include policies to slow the
growth.
Compare this paragraph with your openinig sentance:
"Wikicouncil would certainly be a possible body to
oversee overall day-to-day operations."
I am sorry but I do not believe all this would be
effective. I doubt it is possible to actually
assemble a group as described above, and I am
confident such a group could not oversee day-to-day
operations.
Groups and sub-groups all need a large degree of
autonomy, and a higher
level of governance should have its right to impose
policies clearly
restricted. The recommended governance scheme for
sub-groups needs to
vary in relation to the size of the group.
For countries it would be easy to suggest one seat
for each national
chapter as the initial model, but this could change
as the chapter idea
becomes more developed. Currently there is still
only a handful of
chapters concentrated in countries with functional
education systems and
internet access, and no account is taken of the size
or etnic
diversities of countries. I think that issues such
as whether US
representation should be allocated to states or
judicial districts or
whether Belgium should have separate French and
Flemish representatives
will need to wait for a later stage of development.
For projects, size matters. Number of articles is
an easy metric to
work with for the sake of these comments. A metric
that also reflects
active membership and the number of megabytes of
data in a project may
be more accurate if it can be developed. I could
allow for the fact
that Wiktionay finds stubs perfectly acceptable, or
in Wikisource it
could cope with decisions of whether a given book is
all on one page or
divided into chapters.
Basing this on the completely arbitrary metric of
25,000 main namespace
articles in a language on any project with that many
articles would be
guaranteed one seat on the Wikicouncil. Smaller
languages within that
project would be able to combine their numbers to
receive one seat for
each 25,000 articles. Larger languages within a
project on a sliding,
perhaps logarithmic, scale.
These paragraghs describe a very complicated
logistical mess. And this is just about assigning
seats! Think about how what the actual elections
would entail. Every sub-group must decide on
citizenship; are dual citizens allowed; how far can
one subproject's policy in this regard veer from the
median of the rest. Then the elections must actually
be conducted and counted, but those editiors who
normally count such things will probably be running so
who may perform the duties of striking sockpuppets
etc. Then we must find election auditors with
appropriate language skills, or we can take it all at
face value and hope the whole first session of the
Wikicouncil isn't overrun by accusations of false
elections. After all that, we will have a WikiCouncil
which I believe will be ineffective. And honestly, it
will be mostly made up of people who are buearacrats
on a sub-project.
I must ask is proportional representation really worth
the effort? Even if the effort is half what I believe
it will be, do you really believe the results will be
surprising, that these representatives will not be
current leaders within projects? If you do not
believe the effort is a problem in itself, how do you
feel about how much time it will take to execute these
elections?
Is it not possible to gather a diversity of viewpoints
and leaders with any easier or more effective method?
Do the editors really need to be "represented" or do
they just need to have a designated person (or group)
to approach with larger questions?
Please think for a moment about the origins of
proportional representation. It was designed to make
sure everyone had a voice in a situation where
communication was a real problem. I mean people had
to travel great distances (without airplanes!) to meet
and communicate. It is the lack of *organized*
communication which I believe is our problem. Not the
lack of ability. After all we are speaking about
*wikis* here. Every single editor (barring language)
is able to communicate directly with a Board Member if
they so chose. The development of proportional
representation in order to give editors of a *wiki*
their "voice" in these matters is one of the largest
wastes of effort I have ever heard of. I am sorry to
be so critical of ideas many of you have been working
a long time on, but the more details I hear of this
model the more confident I am that it would be
buearacracy for its own sake. What we need is a
simple organization that allows the leaders from
sub-projects to collaborate with one another and with
the Foundation. We need a "chain of accountabilty" to
ensure problems are solved or passed on up to until
they reach the board (with the research already
done!). We do not need a goverment. I think we could
build something workable from the base of the Apache
model. I am sure there are also other models we could
work from instead. However, I do not believe a
parlamentary goverment is one of them.
Birgitte SB
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