(Remember to post suggestions on <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2009>, so they don't get lost when the discussion fades.) -- Yours cordially, Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)

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:

On 6/5/08, Lars Aronsson &lt;lars(a)aronsson.se&gt; wrote: That is the question that Lodewijk posed. There is no answer to this question, at least as of yet. My statement regarding the board members is meant to be a lens (one of many) within which we can view the considerably more important discussion of what the community is. I happen to be white-skinned, blue-eyed and right-handed, but I I don't think that follows logically. I am right handed. I could represent the interests of right handed people in such a way that does not discriminate or work against the interests of left handed (ambidexterous controls, for instance, support both groups and harm neither) or no handed people (voice activated supplementary controls, for instance, support this group and do not harm my group). We're not playing a zero-sum game here. I happen to edit Wikipedia and to have the edit count required I have not yet seen anyone saying that they would speak AGAINST non-community members. In contrast I think the idea of quantifying the community helps because it gives us a more definite way to know how to bring in more people from outside the community. And again, simply because they are outside the "official" community does not mean that we don't care about their needs. One trait I've noticed among Wikimedians is that they tend to care about groups other than their own (to take an example, non-gays being worried about the rights of gays at Wikimania). We have many people who are considerably opposed to an idea that would preclude anonymous IP editors from editing projects. However, those IP editors, under many definitions of "the community", would not likely be included. We still care about them and speak in support of them. In any political party, church or other membership association Is that any different than real life? It's a reflection of the dichotomy of which groups you self identify with, and which ones you choose not to. For instance, I can choose to not self-identify as an American, and thus try to exclude myself from the community of Americans, but that community can and should still count me as a member. It works with some things (for instance, swap out nationality with race) and not with others (i.e. religion). What you are arguing here, however, is not a question of the validity of the community itself, but rather how to leave it. That's something that certainly should be brought up in the ensuing discussion on what the community is. I am free to leave the country, just as you are free to leave Wikipedia. But according to the US Department of State, I may not renounce my citizenship (they choose not to recognize it). If I leave the country and happily begin my new life in Iceland, however, do I really care what the vast (and now distant) community thinks of my action? -- Dan Rosenthal --

2008/6/4, Samuel Klein &lt;meta.sj(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: I agree with you though (even if you disagree with me ;-) ) that people who can or may not vote are not necessarily not represented. I do however feel that if you are not in the group that is being represented, that you should not be able to vote either. There is a subtle difference here. And it might or might not be that one counts newer members of "the community" to belong to that community. One could or could not count teachers as part of it. However, if you are going to set who is able to vote and who not, you should *first* ask yourself the question who exactly is this community that is selecting / being represented, before going into details. When this happens, that is a good thing indeed. However, I do feel the urge to mention that only very few community selected board members do this, unfortunately. (Which means that we should maybe select more specifically board members who do this, which is the whole thing we can do with this vote)