Message: 1 Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2012 08:48:55 +0100 From: Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board Resolutions from March 30th 2012 Message-ID: <CAFche1q0KhJtZK2MyPK1SsKKxK0H3EebfiAf_1uMGaCiV1tbXQ@mail.gmail.com
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On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 5:56 AM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com
wrote:
On 31 March 2012 02:03, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
I expect that the minutes will explain the varied positions of the board. If not, then the board should put in place procedures to prevent abuse of abstains.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by "abuse of abstains"?
An abstention is a refusal to vote. By doing this, a trustee must have a good reason, such as conflict of interest, and it should be minuted why, or they are refusing the duties of their appointment and should be removed.
I have never heard of this idea before - where did you get it from?
People with votes on all kinds of bodies abstain on things all the time, for all kinds of valid reasons. The most prominent recent example I can think of is that Sivlio Berlusconi's government in Italy was brought down by MPs he expected to support him abstaining instead.
We don't know why Arne and Bishakka abstained, or why SJ voted against - it is only evident they did not feel able to support the motion as it stood.
Regards,
Chris
For the record, those who did not vote in favour of the resolutions, this morning explained their reasons for doing so. I'm sure someone more eloquent than I can summarise those reasons, but I think that they were valid. John Vandenberg is correct that if people are consistently abstaining to avoid making hard or unpopular decisions then that is a problem, but I do not think that this is presently the case with the BoT.
Cheers, Craig Franklin
Craig Franklin, 31/03/2012 23:20:
For the record, those who did not vote in favour of the resolutions, this morning explained their reasons for doing so. I'm sure someone more eloquent than I can summarise those reasons, but I think that they were valid. John Vandenberg is correct that if people are consistently abstaining to avoid making hard or unpopular decisions then that is a problem, but I do not think that this is presently the case with the BoT.
There are some notes on http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/wmcon12-day2-board-chapters
Nemo
P.s.: It's a bit weird to focus so much on the reasons to oppose; why should opposing be justified /more/ than supporting?
On 31 March 2012 22:33, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
P.s.: It's a bit weird to focus so much on the reasons to oppose; why should opposing be justified /more/ than supporting?
There's supposed to be a Q&A coming that will explain the supports.
On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 11:40 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 31 March 2012 22:33, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
P.s.: It's a bit weird to focus so much on the reasons to oppose; why should opposing be justified /more/ than supporting?
There's supposed to be a Q&A coming that will explain the supports.
That's true! Soon -- in a couple of days (everyone is traveling today/tomorrow so it's hard to review quickly). I'll send a note when we get it done, of course.
In the meantime, if there are any questions for us (as a board) or for individual trustees I encourage you simply to send those along, either to me (if you want them to go to the whole board, as I will pass them along) or privately. That would help make sure that we can address the questions people actually have, rather than speculating. It sounds like people are interested in individual trustee motives. I do think it's better if trustees individually write/talk about where they are coming from, rather than trying to put that information in an official document like the minutes, where everything is condensed and there is the possibility of misrepresentation.
Nemo, thanks for sending around the notes -- that's quite helpful! I think we have some notes that Joslyn took too, I'll see if there is anything I can add from that (though etherpad still doesn't seem to work well in my browser - boo.)
-- phoebe
phoebe ayers, 01/04/2012 07:49:
In the meantime, if there are any questions for us (as a board) or for individual trustees I encourage you simply to send those along, either to me (if you want them to go to the whole board, as I will pass them along) or privately. That would help make sure that we can address the questions people actually have, rather than speculating. It sounds like people are interested in individual trustee motives. I do think it's better if trustees individually write/talk about where they are coming from, rather than trying to put that information in an official document like the minutes, where everything is condensed and there is the possibility of misrepresentation.
Misrepresentation is a risk also for "majority views": minutes are always partial but they're supposed to explain or briefly highlight how the body came to some conclusion. Individual members should also be able to submit a few lines of explanation summarizing their view, if they want (again, I don't know if some of them actually wants, but they should definitely be allowed to).
Nemo, thanks for sending around the notes -- that's quite helpful! I think we have some notes that Joslyn took too, I'll see if there is anything I can add from that (though etherpad still doesn't seem to work well in my browser - boo.)
Don't use HTTPS! Unless the editing is still hectic (I doubt so), we could just immediately move those on Meta, which is their final destination anyway.
Nemo
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