Yes, Jimmy is effective in his board role - unfortunately, well, have you seen the threads about his behaviour in that role? If you instead mean he is only valuable as an icon or media figure because of it you'll need a better argument than a statement as if the claim is fact.
Also, no, the United States is explicitly not a democracy. It's a republic. And no, the Wikimedia movement is not a democracy - but it's *also* not a dictatorship or a banana republic with a President For Life. Senior movement figures with zero substantive accountability is a recipe for madness.
But thank you for making the good faith claim that anyone who disagrees with you on this is just making a power play. What was it you were saying about taking an approach that achieves turmoil, again? ;)
On Monday, 18 April 2016, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Do you really think that democratic processes produce a best result? Do you really think that the Wikimedia Foundation or the United States deserve that label?
Many may request democratic processes but I prefer a greater deal of transparency. When you talk about accountability, it is not so much to people but more related to the extend we achieve what we aim for. When you consider where people are and where we have our audience, I find that our results are lukewarm, maybe improving. There are some stellar projects and there are some that are in need of an overhaul. The good thing of our movement is that up to a point people can work towards solutions and make a high impact without getting sidetracked by "democracy".
What our movement needs is more recognition for what works. More room for experimentation helps. More trust in the good intentions of the people that make things work helps.We need less Wikipedia think and more result think. It is a travesty for instance that the great work in Wikisource is not recognised as a generator of traffic. That is what they do in India and it is why I as a non elected member of a committee have a deviant idea: in my strong opinion we need both more wikisources as a tool to generate content and a platform to bring that content to a world audience. I am thrilled that Wikidata will improve the functionality of red links in Wikipedia even though it is only a subset of what is possible. There will be a small conference on sources and quality and that is something I applaud.
I have found that consistently this noisy crowd clamoring for "democracy" is not really interested in results. It feels too much like a power game.that is being played.
Finally; Jimmy is effective. Removing him from the board will disable his ability to function. Think about it in terms of what we aim to achieve and forget all the self serving rhetoric about democracy. Democracy is secondary. Thanks, GerardM
On 18 April 2016 at 20:28, James Heilman <jmh649@gmail.com javascript:;> wrote:
If Jimmy was to stand for community election and not be elected it will
not
decrease his ability to be an ambassador for the movement one bit. If he stands for election and wins it will increase his legitimacy.
What I think many are requesting is democratic processes and accountability. Our movement does not need anyone sitting on the board
for
life. Our current situation is a disheartening for many within the movement.
James
On Sun, Apr 17, 2016 at 10:30 PM, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly@pobox.com
wrote:
On 17/04/16 20:55, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Arguably the latest crop of board members have shown how hard it is in the first place to
make
a meaningful contribution. Thanks, GerardM
In particular?
Gordo
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