On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 11:02 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
(1) The most compelling arguments in favour of having appointees as voting board members (as opposed to having them as advisory board members),
I'm not sure what you're asking. I think that both external experts and the community-elected and chapter-appointed Board members should be voting members, if they are to be on the board. If you're asking whether it is useful to have external appointees on the Board at all, I think the answer is quite obvious - we need the level of engagement and expertise, that will not be available if we ask them to be on the advisory board, and I don't think it is likely it would be if they were to no non-decisive board members. Proportions between solely board-appointed and community-nominated people is a different story.
(2) If you are comfortable doing so, the most important risks or downsides attached to the present arrangement?
well, there are several, just from the top of my head: community/chapter elected members do not always have any prior experience of working on an NGO board or in any similar body; the current system disfavors diversity, externally-appointed experts have trouble understanding open collaboration organizations in general, and Wikipedia ecosystem in particular... I could go on, but at the time I can't really sit down to it methodically.
I am glad to hear you are working on a proposal to increase the number of community/chapter seats on the board (though I personally tend to think that at 2 vs. 3, the chapters are already slightly over-represented, compared to the general community).
Sadly, humans count in full numbers only, so it could be either 1 or 2 in the current system, and 1 is not that many neither :)