Lars,
The distinction is that the community board members will represent the
community, of which you are a member, but you are not the sole member.
To my knowledge, no board candidate has said that they represent Lars.
Rather, they wish to represent a community of which Lars is a member.
That is a key difference. There is an intervening layer there.
Consider the following:
Lars hypothetically believes that the sky is blue and the earth is
flat. The community, of which Lars is a member, believes many things,
but the majority of the community believes that the sky is blue and
the earth is round. A board member in a community seat represents the
community, and believes that the sky is red, and the earth is round.
However, in his role as a board member, he votes in favor of the sky
being blue, and the earth being round. In that vote, he has
represented the community as a whole, which includes you as a member,
while not representing you in one particular aspect of your views.
Representation does not mean that actions are done on your personal
behalf, or even with your personal approval. It means that there is a
representative to whom you can offer your voice and have the
opportunity to be heard, and his authority is derived from the voices
of the people he is representing. It means that actions are taken on
the collective behalf of the community, which may result in actions
being taken that you don't support. Such is the way with membership in
any community. I don't agree with actions taken by the the U.S.
Government. That doesn't mean that I am not represented in the U.S.
Government. It means that the actions taken are not my preferred ones,
but (in theory, not that this happens in the U.S. Government anyway)
they are the preferred action of the community that the taker
represents.
-Dan
On Jun 3, 2008, at 9:33 PM, Lars Aronsson wrote:
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
Lodewijk, it's worth noting that several of
the board candidates
(myself included), have interpreted "community selected seats"
as inherently being "community representative seats", meaning
that they carry with election the responsibility to represent
the desires of the community. There's no written rule that says
it has to be that way, but rather a moral obligation towards the
community, even beyond that of the electorate.
Dan, you might be of the opinion that this kind of representation
and moral obligation is something good. But I have bad experience
of other people claiming to represent me against my will. People
who feel that they represent me do things and claim that they do
it on my behalf. When I protest, they say I have no right to do
so because they are elected by people like me, and thus have a
right to act on my behalf. I'm totally allergic to people
claiming to represent me. So please refrain from that language.
In particular, we have many people who could be counted as our
community, but who aren't currently allowed to vote for the board.
For example teachers who instruct their pupils on how to use
Wikipedia, without ever contributing to articles, never get the
edit count necessary to vote. If you're voted into the board, you
cannot claim to have been elected by these teachers. You cannot
claim to represent them, because they were excluded. It wasn't
your fault that they were excluded, it was just the way things
went. The same goes for old time contributors who were passive
during the last year, and whole categories of other people.
I suggest that the people who are elected or appointed in various
ways see this as a strike of luck, and once on the board they only
claim to represent themselves, as best they can, for the good of
all mankind. I don't mind the WMF being undemocratic. I think
that is a fact, and one I accept. What I don't accept is an
undemocratic body claiming to be democratically elected or
representative.
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik -
http://aronsson.se
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