Hi all,
First of all, thanks a lot to the people that have given their constructive feedback when there was asked for, I am glad you did not wait until the resolution was handed in, but joined the process when there was still plenty of time. </irony>
In the risk of repeating myself and others, I will try to explain why the resolution is as it is, with some proposals to take away the worst pain with some.
As you can read in the threads that extensively discussed this topic a few weeks ago, on this very same list, there has been a call for a volunteer platform, a council (back then mainly called "wikicouncil", as you might remember) for years. In that time, I heard, both in public discussions, but also in private conversations, many times words among the setting of "oh, a volunteer council would have been very useful here". This is confirmed by the fact that quite some people put quite a lot effort in writing proposals, discussing models, to come to a fair representation etc.
The exact reasons why people think a Volunteer Council (the real thing) is required, differs from person to person. Some reasons are amongst the lines that the Board could take care of less community issues that way, so that they can attract more experts, some think it would be good because it could give a direction to some commonly accepted community policies, some think it would be better because it would be less of a "who shouts the hardest, gets it's way". Because if we are honest, even though in the past this list might have served as a soundboard for opinions, we can hardly say any more that it is still the case on many issues. A few people tend to dominate several discussions, and the constructive behavior is in some topics very low. When the Board members try to get feedback on issues, they often get no or no useful respons (probably Florence can (dis)confirm my interpretation of this). This is why I think it is good that the Board establishes a Volunteer Council in general.
However, in the discussions on this topic, both in public as in private, every time I found that there was hardly an easy to reach a compromise. To take an example, me and millosh had/have very different ideas on the aspect of representivity, and what purpose such a council should practically serve. That is not bad, but it clearly shows that there is a need for more discussion, but probably in a more organized way. Because as everybody can check on meta and in the mailing list archives, the topic comes up, fades away after a month or so, and several months later, it returns, and starts all over again. This is why I think that it is not possible to define exactly how the Volunteer Council should look like.
In the resolution, you will first find an introduction, why it is good to let the community have a council like this. Then you will find the creation of the VC. Yes, this is intentionally a VC, and not PVC yet. This VC however, will be "empty" for the moment, but it does show the intention, and sets the boundaries between which the PVC will have to formulate their proposal. There are not many details in it of course, as those are still to be determined. Mike has a valid point with respect to point 2.3. The exact wording of this might indeed be changed to something along the lines of "advising on changes (...) and discussing these with the volunteer communities". Whether the final VC will have the "power" to approve/disapprove these, is indeed a point of discussion, and should not be fixated yet.
Then there might indeed be an unexpected transition in point 4, where we speak about a PVC. It might have been good/better to have a line between 3 and 4 to define the existance of the PVC first, something along the lines of "To come to a effective Volunteer Council, the Board creates a Provisional Volunteer Council, which..." This effectively does not change much to the resolution, but I see no major objection against this change of wording.
I hope this clarifies things up a bit, and takes away a few of the concerns that have recently been expressed.
With kind regards,
Lodewijk
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org