On 11/21/06, Anthere <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
Amongst these 1000 people, how many really understand
what the
Foundation is about ? I'd say very few. I have memories of editors
asking us repeatedly to block this person, mediate this conflict, decide
which article version was fine. And that is not at all what the
Foundation is about.
Groovy so next time the deletion or not of [[Brian peppers]] will be
left to the wikipedia community? Office actions will be limited to
legal threats only? To those of us in the receiving end the line is
somewhat less clear.
What really bugs me in the end, is this.
If we have at least 1000 people knowing about the Foundation, and caring
enough to vote for its board, we have far less people actually knowing
what is going on, and having an idea what the job encompasses.
I am still perplex of the past election candidates. About half of them
were people I knew. People involved at various levels in the Foundation
itself or in local associations. They have a minimum knowledge about the
role of a board member, and at least, we know they are interested in
these administratives tasks. We may appreciate their job and
personnality more or less, but at least, they showed their willingness
of being involved.
But about half of the candidates, I hardly know. Or did not know at all.
Because they had never been beyond their local project. Never tried to
get involved in making something like a press release, or helping on
otrs, or giving conferences, or giving a hand at Wikimania. Some had
done *nothing* at all at the organisational level.
Still, they get a lot of support from equally unknown people, because
they have a lot of edits, because they are nice and helpful generally.
They could be elected for these qualities regardless of the qualities
they could show on the board.
Or perhaps they got votes precisely because they were outsiders. If we
only elect people with past histories of dealing with the board will
allow the board to a degree become self selecting.
I can't help find that it is weird. I do not feel the board is *above*
people. It is another job. It is serving the project, just as editors
are serving the project, just as developers are serving the project.
Editors get sysops according to the quality of their work on the
project. Developers get more access according to the quality of their
work as developers. But board members... basically, there is no
requirement except that being appreciated/recognised by the largest
number of people for their activity as editors.
Nyet very few people if any ran on their background as editors.
I am not sure indirect elections thanks to a
"wikiblob" are the best way
to solve this actually. There may be different ways to fix that. But the
current situation strikes me as non sustainable in the long term. Until
now, choices were great in the end :-) but if we expand the board with
for example 9 elected people (not very likely), I am more hesitant.
You think you would be unable to work with the kind of people the
community wants in charge? Anyway it will be sometime before any
further elections can reasonably be held which provides an opertunity
for makeing the board better known
Dunno. Maybe there should be requirements on
candidates to show
involvment in organisational issues (but that's hard to measure). Or
maybe the candidates should go through a sort of screening procedure.
While that may be best practice in Iran I see no need to do that here.
--
geni