Brian wrote:
The WMF is a far cry from the original vision of it as a membership organization. Also, the board propagates stale laws under the notion of status quo for which the original "consensus" is no longer remembered. There is further no top down effort to ask the community if they have any good ideas, and then ask the community what they think about the best of those ideas. That, in my view, is a broken system.
I'm going to take particular issue with the last point here.
On 3 June *2008*, right after last year election, Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild), one of last year election committee member, posted on the talk page of either Election 2009 or election 2008 (and subsequently merged with this year) "If you have an idea on how to improve the 2008 board elections system for 2009, please post them below under a section name that briefly summarizes the subject".
Philippe posted this year rules on this mailing list on 27 May. It has always been the case that election committee will take any feedback or concern expressed and change the rules based on those concern if needed. Example of that happened last year when the recent edit over last 3 months requirement was added and subsequently modified based on feedback to last 6 months. This year, the period of candidate presentation was extended significantly, right up to the start of the election, again based on feedback here on this mailing list.
You can't complain that the election committee don't take on board new ideas or feedbacks if you haven't expressed it before the election started.
KTC