Daniel Mayer:
If, however, only a small part of finance committee
has access to InternalWiki and we have the
draft documents there, then the other members of the committee might as well not be on
the
committee at all since they don't have access to the place where the work is being
done.
Let's say that the finance committee has a subcommittee on fundraising
strategies (this might well be located elsewhere, but humor me). Such a
subcommittee would have to come up with innovative strategies -- social,
technical -- to maximize the return from our next fundraising drive.
Having a dedicated subcommittee for this purpose can help to make sure
that people stay on the ball, have regular meetings, publish their
progress, and so forth. It's also exactly an area where we want to be
fairly open about participation.
Now, not all of these members of the subcommittee are necessarily
trusted to see the entire financial planning of the organization, as
well as all the other information on internal. Nevertheless, they might
discuss strategies that we do not necessarily want to be completely
open, e.g. "Let's do X on day Y of the fundraising drive".
Hence my distinction between core committees and subcommittees. Core
committee members should have complete access to all confidential
information on the internal wiki and internal-l. Subcommittee members
could have their own private communications channels or, as we agreed,
ideally have separate spaces on the internal wiki without having access
to everything else there.
If someone becomes trusted enough through their work in a subcommittee,
they will ideally be invited or apply for membership in the core
committee: meritocracy in action.
Subcommittee would not automatically mean "open to everyone" - you might
have subcommittees where only core committee members are allowed,
depending on the nature of their work.
As a reminder, all these issues will hopefully be discussed about an
hour from now, on #wikimedia-meeting on
irc.freenode.net. :-)
Erik