hi,
On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 5:12 PM, Ben Creasy ben@bencreasy.com wrote:
Last month, "Geoff and Stephen prepared a draft set of basic best-practice recommendations [on governance]". These weren't released publicly as far as I am aware. "Maria and Dariusz were tasked with preparing a proposal for a lightweight structure to increase transparency" but as far as I am aware we've received no color on what this proposal might end up looking like. Someone on this list asked Dariuszand he declined to offer details; if I recall correctly he said the boardshoulddo what it can internally first. I disagree with this: if you do a bunch of work without consulting your stakeholders, there's a good chance you'llhave to scrap all that work. In the software world we call early feedback from the stakeholders "Agile", and it is widely viewed as a superior process to long efforts without feedback.
I generally agree with the principle of consulting first, it is just that I believe that in our efforts to increase transparency we do not necessarily have to work on all-encompassing and mutually exclusive initiatives, but rather add modules and alements to the system. The reason why I suggested slight delay is also that our ideas will be soon published (we're currently voting the minutes from May meeting). I definitely do not perceive our initiative as the end of discussion about transparency, but rather a beginning.
I've personally also had a feeling of urgency that we need to start working on increasing transparency (even if through an imperfect way) rather than await community consultations. I just believe that the community conversation is unlikely to scrap all of that work, but rather improve it.
In principle, I would hope that the Board should accept a policy in which the content of our discussion is public, unless needed otherwise. As a person coming from a different cultural background I care much more about the actual practices of communicating within our community, than the procedures and policies, although I am well aware that the latter have some influence on the former.