Thomas Dalton wrote:
Talking about
board seats...
Sue...
I'd like to acknowledge the fact that local associations are apparently
unable to create a separate mailing list for discussing the nomination
of chapter representatives. It did not appear to me to be a huge
unaccessible task, but unfortunately, that's a fact. Not the right
infrastructure I guess.
I even envisionned to create a Google list, that the idea really turned
me off :-)
What have you tried? A request on
bugzilla.mediawiki.org would be the
best way, I think (I've searched and can't find one there). Unless the
sysadmins have orders from on high not to give you a mailing list, I
can't see why they wouldn't be able to do it pretty quickly.
No, I had a dream... a dream where chapters would be big guys enough to
be able to set up themselves a place to discuss a matter where - imho -
the Foundation should not be involved.
I raised the topic of creating a list, hosted by a chapter, to do so. I
got about 3 or 4 comments back, no more. No one created such a list. We
tried on the French side, for now over two months. Problem is that we
are hosted for free by a hosting company - and as a "free customer", we
have a zero priority. We asked them, were put on a waiting list for over
a month; when the list was finally set, it revealed itself buggy. That
was a month ago.
In my view, when the board of WMF decided to let chapters select two
representatives, it was also a heavy message to the chapters: collect
your wits and be grown ups. I am not quite sure how chapters can select
board members when they are not even able to self organize to get a
common mailing list for an election. That's not necessarily out of bad
will, but mostly poor infrastructure and lack of cooperation.
I have not set up a request on bugzilla because I hoped that we would be
able to precisely avoid doing that. I was wrong, and prefer to make it
clear why I am asking for it now, whilst for two months, I said no thank
you :-)
Hopefully, in
two years from now, for next elections (we can set it up
for ourselves as a GOAL), we'll be able to host a list to discuss WMF
rep, but since that's not the case right now, I'd like to officially
(and humbly) ask that the WMF set up a wiki for us to discuss the issue.
After much thinking, it seems to me that setting up a list would not be
the easiest way to come to a consensual agreement, whilst a wiki could
host at the same time, discussions and votes if necessary.
This wiki would not be public. Its members would be chapter board members.
The way I see it, there are two things the chapters need to decide. A
method for selecting chapter reps to the WMF board, and then actually
selecting them. I can see why the latter may need to be private (that
would depend on the method chosen), but why can't the former be
public? Or, at least, publicly viewable - discussion sometimes moves
faster if you restrict who can take part.
Given that CHAPTERS are going to select these two guys and given that
all chapter board members would be part of this wiki, there is no
planned restriction of access.
Now, the fact is, there is no agreement on how chapters will select
these two guys. So, it might just be nice to start by looking at WHO is
interested in becoming so ;-)
Ant