On 7/14/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, What you describe is really hypothetical. The WMF does not have the funds to hire all the trouble makers that we know off. We do not have the funds to hire the people to fill the positions that we have. So the scenario is not only hypothetical it is also unrealistic and as such it is even irrelevant. Even our policy of "assume good faith" argues that when your experience with an individual tells you so, you should not get him in a position to do more evil.
Both your mathematics and your logic fail you. As there are always a limited
number of seats available for election, there would never be a need to "hire all the trouble makers that we know off." (nice use of the word "we" there by the way)
"You" (or rather more accurately, the board, or ED, or whoever the person responsible for hiring at that precise moment in time might be) would only need to hire those persons with a *realistic* chance of getting elected...
And the point of the hypothetical example I gave would not have placed them in a position to do "more evil" (BTW, evil is a relative term, just FYI), but rather would have put them in a harmless position where they would be held busy, but would have little impact at all in anything of significance.
So though the example is hypothetical in nature, your dismissal of it falls really really far short.
What we need in our Wikimedia Foundation is a good working relation between
board and employees. Most of the board members are chosen from our community. There is in my opinion a need for a firewall between the organisation of the Foundation and it projects in the same way as there is a firewall between a chapter and the projects. By denying employees to stand as board member, you prevent that this firewall is undermined. This is true to a lesser extend for ex-employees and it disappears over time.
From my perspective, having employees in the Foundation play an important role in the projects is in my opinion as bad an idea.
Thanks, GerardM
I have absolute difficulty in grasping where you see the need for such a firewall stemming. Inasmuch as the majority of the Board members are *chosen* from the community (quite rightly, BTW) I think it is clear that rather than a firewall, we need to ensure that there is a *bond* between the Board and teh communities.
I still think a cooling off period might not be a bad idea, just from a humane perspective, to give the employee time to reflect and reinvigorate himself, but a firewall? I think not.
A totally different thing is that the communities and the Foundation have different *roles*, and *overlapping* between these roles should and must be avoided. But for that purpose, it is only necessary, and *quite* sufficient that *neither* employees nor Trustees have active roles such as arbcom membership in the communities.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]