effe iets anders wrote:
Yesterday the Board announced a major change in the
bylaws and power
structure. Although I see some positive aspects in the change from my
personal point of view (I have still not seen the official changes -
as you might know by now, I am for balance - so until then I can't be
definitive about that), let me summarize what is happening here:
Without asking any feedback from the community before the decision has
been made, the Board decides to convert two community seats into
chapter seats (it has always been announced that Domas' and Michaels
chair were intended to become community seats too) and two expert
seats were added, bringing down the community share in the board from
71% to 50% or 30% (depending whether you count chapter seats as
community seats) of course assuming that the expert seats will be
filled too.
I take to heart your comments about the lack of soliciting feedback.
Some elements of the idea I had previously discussed with people
(community, chapters, staff), including in my election campaign last
year, and generally the responses I received were positive. I don't
recall it being a topic on this list, though. The responses here to the
Volunteer Council proposal illustrate some of the challenges of getting
useful feedback that way. I followed that closely and had difficulty
coming away with a useful take-home message, amid the various criticisms
and diffusion of counter-proposals or suggested modifications.
I think this restructuring of the Board only shows
once more why we
need a Wikicouncil. The Board itself is apperently not able to ask
input herself on big decisions, and this sets a very bad precedent to
the future. Apperently the Board is in need of some kind of council
that is, in contrary to the few community members left in the board,
able to bring through the questions to the communities. Maybe the VC
would not function perfectly, but from what I am seeing now, it would
at least do a much better job, because of course this is a very sad
day for community involvement in the Wikimedia Movement.
So please, Domas, Florence, Frieda, Kat and Michael, (and maybe Jimmy
too), let's just be fair and state your opinion. What is *your*
thought about community involvement. Should community only be allowed
to say something every two years? Should community only be allowed to
say something afterwards (the perfect receipe for ranting, btw)? Do
you think community members could be smart people who have a smart
opinion about the topics you discuss? Do you think they might come up
with arguments you did not think of yet?
If you think so, you should start working, in one way or another, on
some kind of platform that is able to improve your attempts to contact
the community on major decisions. And no, I have no ready-boiled plan
for it, but I do know that there is a catalyst out there, that could
come up with a nice result. That catalyst consists of a group of
dedicated people, with a wide range of views, that could maybe come up
with something that is actually good.
Lodewijk, I'm very glad to see that you've changed your labels to
recognize that the catalyst should be the people working on the
proposal, instead of waiting for the board to be the catalyst as you
were putting it previously. I think it likely that if the board creates
a council, that will end up defining its relationship to the community
and the world at large, and it will be perceived as a creature
(literally, "thing created") of the board. If so, it would lose nearly
all the value hoped for in its development. On the other hand, if the
community creates a council, then I would certainly want to be aware of
its perspective on foundation issues, and I expect other board members
would as well.
--Michael Snow