We can expect two resignations in the year coming. And expansion of the board by 2 more members. Last proposal by Jimbo is 2 elected members, 4 appointed and himself. There is no mention in bylaws of way to remove appointed members. Elected are renewed every 2 years.
My proposal is to have 4 elected members and 3 appointed ones.
To have a
clear renewal (or removal) of the appointed every 2 years. To have the elected renewed 2 one year, 2 the next year. And preferably to have the ones elected by a sub-group of the community (Foundation members).
Angela wishes us to keep some elected members. I am not exactly sure of more.
Tim and Michael did not give their opinion.
My proposal implies a modification of the bylaws. So, it implies a new proposition AND that board members vote. Jimbo's proposition is consistant with current bylaws I think.
So, if there are no new bylaws, by default you may expect 2 elected and 5 appointed soon. Possibly next year, 2 elected and 7 appointed.
Oh, an important clarification. Naturally, appointed may be from outside of the community or from the community. On this matter, Angela, Jimbo and myself agree that at least the majority should be from the community.
The major benefit of "appointed" is there is more chance to get a united team with complementary skills. The major drawback is to risk similar-thinking people and limit diversity of view points.
Ant
Apart from persons named above I believe only Delphine made a strong case in recent discussions against voting for all board members? Am I right?
For me the major drawback to "appointed" would be that the community (the people that made Wikimedia happen) is not acknowledged for what it achieved so far. The community has been and is competent enough to build a encyclopedia in a few years that ranks among the best. The community has been competent enough to elect two worthy representatives. Most community members have higher education (unproven, but I doubt many would contest this).
I probably won't make myself more popular with what follows, but I favour candidness, while being respectful: I think Jimbo is a great guy, with tremendous vision and drive, and a friendly person. But with all that Jimbo did for Wikimedia, which is a tremendous amount and which may indeed lead him to the Nobel Price some day, it is still an undeniable fact that others (read: the community) did collectively much more, orders of magnitude more. Jimbo invested huge sums of money. Volunteers might have made huge amounts of money had they not spent so much of their free time on this project, I'm sure again orders of magnitude more than Jimbo has. For me it would be great if Jimbo kept his life long membership to the board, as a sincere token of appreciation, but I feel it is over the top, if he treats the foundation as something he has special rights to forever, at least morally.
It can't be that a single person, and members from his close inner circle, be it business partners or other people he knows and values, formally have a final say over a global movement indefinitely, and extend their grip on the organisation through co-optation indefinitely.
I can imagine three reasons why Jimbo would want to bypass elections for at least part of the board:
1 Concern that the community does not have all required skills, and therefore experts from outside need to be imposed. 2 Concern that the community does not have all required information/knowledge to make wise decisions. 3 Concern that the community or possibly a future community does not have the best of motives and wants to hijack the organisation.
ad 1: It is imaginable that the community lacks certain skills. To me it would help if the community thinks so too. If this is not the case, and the board decides to overule the community, how else to call this than 'paternalism'? If board and community agree on this, outside candidates for the board could be proposed, discussed and elected like any internal candidates. No need for appointments.
ad 2: This is probably true, and I still fear becomes more true all the time. I'm cautiously concerned when a non-profit organisation can't discuss most deals in the open, at least in general terms, and has no approved guidelines for which issues can be settled behind closed doors. As stated earlier, to me it would be OK to delegate authority from the community to the board, but delegation is what mattters here.
ad 3: This would be a major concern for me too. But I tbink reasonable precautions can be taken to avoid that say Greenland or the veganist society (to name two unlikely examples deliberately) launches a dedicated attack to take over the foundation by ordering all its inhabitants/members to sign up and vote. At least if we discuss this fear in the open we can discuss appropriate precautions.
Erik Zachte