On 6/5/06, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/6/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
One person who immediately comes to mind is Achal Prabhala, an important, charismatic and brilliant international leader in the "Access to Knowledge" movement, i.e. availability of free textbooks and other learning resources, international IP law, etc. (he gave an excellent speech at Wikimania on the topic).
I met Achal when I was in South Africa, and again at Wikimania last year. If there is to be an advisory board, he should definitely be considered for that since he has a lot of very relevant experience and would seem to support our goals. I'd rather keep the actual board limited to people with experience of Wikimedia though, rather than outsiders to increase the chance the Board members are aware of the community's concerns and have some motivation to follow the wishes of the community.
Here the question is what we consider to be experience with Wikimedia. If they are very experienced with Wikimedia, then I think they should be elected by the community. If we're talking about "Have you edited a wiki / posted to the mailing list / etc. at least a few times", then I think this is symbolic experience which can easily be acquired within a couple of weeks.
In other words, _if_ the Board is going to _appoint_ a new member with full voting rights (and we have not really fully established that it should), I think the level of experience with Wikimedia should indeed be a secondary concern. The primary concern should be what additional qualifications they bring to the table that we are unlikely to easily find through an open election process.
In the case of Achal, what also makes a difference to me is, that after long discussions with him, I found him to be a very reasonable person. He would only get involved where it makes sense for him to get involved.
Erik