On 11/19/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
The issue has been raised often, the possible creation of a council.
Indeed. I'm not a big fan of the idea, but it is a nice buzzword that many people seem to identify with, regardless of the fact that they all seem to mean different things when they are using it. We already have quite a lot of bureaucracy, and I'd like to avoid the creation of new structures that are either redundant or potentially harmful. So let's see what possible functions a council could serve:
* Advise the Board and CEO -- that's what the Advisory Board is for. I'd be open to structuring it in such a way to allow experts from the community an easy way in. * Make project-level decisions -- why replace direct democracy and consensus-based processes with a representative bureaucracy? I'd rather see more project-wide votes. * Act as project representatives to chapters and Foundation, to deal with confidential information -- we already have the committees. We still haven't figured out a way to make them work, especially the SP-COM, which is exactly tasked with developing partnerships around the projects. I'd rather restructure these existing groups than inventing a completely new one. * Raise awareness of the Foundation within the projects -- a group that merely exists to raise awareness can form without the permission of the Foundation. Indeed, such informal groups are probably far less likely to cause trouble than a "Wikicouncil".
My biggest fear is that we start with something poorly defined, or with a very narrow scope, and it evolves into a decision-making structure that replaces existing community processes.Where these processes are currently dysfunctional, I don't think replacing them with a new system is likely to be a good idea. The causes of the dysfunction may only be moved to a different level.
I suggest, as an alternative, that the existing committee and subcommittee structures be reformed and surrounded with completely open "Open Interest Groups" without legal authority. I will make a specific proposal for that in the near future.