On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 1:51 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Transparency is necessary for democracy, but it is
only one part of it. I
think Lodewijk wants to discuss ways of involving the community in the
Foundation's governance, not just ways to keep it informed.
On Nov 3, 2012 12:48 PM, "Patricio Lorente" <patricio.lorente(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
This is a complex problem in my opinion.
In a democracy the better solution would be to know the opinion of all
people.
For instance in Switzerland there are a lot of referendum but the people
having a vote are relatively cut and a referendum may give an opinion the
day after (I am speaking about opinion but in a perfect democracy this
opinion is more an "approval" vote).
The democracy is a good way if there is the possibility to have an
opportune people's opinion in a well defined time.
The problem of huge communities is to consult the people and to do it in a
timely manner in order to have an opinion in short time otherwise the
democracy may decide never and may spent the time only to find a consent.
For this reason the biggest democracies use the way of the representative
bodies.
The community elects a parliament and this parliament votes and decides
instead of people (in our case we may speak about "board").
All the modern democracies are structured in this way.
For this reason I would not speak about democracy because there are people
in the WMF board elected by the communities and by the chapters. I would
speak about transparency in order to give to these representatives the
opportunity to be clearer.
The transparency may help them to keep a trusted link with the communities
and may help the communities to build a more appropriate reliance.
Ilario