2007/4/26, Christophe Henner christophe.henner@gmail.com:
As far as I know it's almost like that, except for the ending date. Usually a board member announce the start of a discussion, then discussion is held, a decision is taken, and then the final decision is announced.
Well... not really. First of all - on this list the unofficial discussions are constantly mixed with official ones. The only way to know which is which is to take a look who started it. But Board members and officers sometimes starts official discussion and sometimes not official, and you have to be smart to know which is which. There is plenty of "bla, bla" on this list which you can totally ignore, so many people ignore many topics and do not read them. I guess they quite often make mistakes what to read and what not - including me of course.
Maybe the good idea would be to start open to read by anyone, but strictly moderated E-mail list devoted to the official discussions only? Or the Board members and other Foundation's "VIP's" should clearly mark this kind of discussions, by using for example a prefix in a topic like [Official] or [Important]. Such kind of starting E-mails should be written in more formal, official way the others. For example:
Official Announcement:
Wikimedia Foundation Board, would like to start discussion about: XXX This is important because: XXX The end of discussion is: XXX
The info about starting such discussion should also be put od announcement pages of projects, which are pottentially interested in this, and also sent to their E-mail lists.