On 6/15/06, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Delphine Ménard wrote:
So we'd have the following defined roles
*Community members (members of all Wikimedia projects)
*Project management committees - for us, these would be people within the community appointed by resolution of the board of directors of the Wikimedia Foundation. Once appointed, the PMC members have a right to propose to add members in their PMC. The PMC would be in charge of making sure the legal aspects of each projects are taken care of and observed, make sure that procedures are followed in the development of the projects. These are not automatically the editors with the greatest number of edits, but rather those who have shown a commitment to the organisation and the day-to-day running of the projects, taking care of legal issues, procedure issues etc. They'd have a responsibility and an oversight role. Not an editing power as such (ie. they can't impose their POV on an article). Their frame of action will have to be very clearly defined, but if it is, they'd be an asset to the projects.
Correction : in the ASF, the PMC are chosen by the community itself. By support from the community (a bit as we agree on our sysops). In our case, that makes sense, because the board does not know enough the local community to suggest names necessarily in a wise fashion. It seems to me as well these PMC should pretty much be self-organised. However, it would probably be best that the board has a veto over those. Another option would be that they be appointed by board upon a suggestion of names given by their community. I would myself support "elected by community with board veto".
Right, I missed the election part, and jumped to the resolution part. My bad.
The PMC have a couple of officers, such as a chair and a secretary. Those could either be appointed by the board or appointed by committee members with veto from board. But in any cases, the officers have a legal responsability, so should absolutely be RealPerson.
*Wikimedia Foundation members - those would be nominated by the board, proposed to the board by anyone else who feels someone should be a Foundation member. They could be issued directly from the community, from the PMCs or from anywhere else.
Correction again. WMF members should not be appointed by the board. They should be elected by the community. I would even go as far as to suggest that there should be NO board veto over these ones. If a problematic person slips in, it will not be a big deal, because of the size of that membership. We could expect a membership of over 100 people. They could indeed be issued from anywhere.
Here I do not understand if you're correcting my understanding of how ASF works, or my application to WMF.
This part: "How does someone get ASF Member ASF member is a person that was nominated by current members and elected due to merit for the evolution and progress of the foundation. Members care for the ASF itself."
is not clear as to who elects the ASF members. My understanding is that they were nominated by an ASF member (or through an ASF member upon recommandation from someone external) and voted in by the existing ASF members. Seems I am wrong.
*Wikimedia Foundation board of directors - are elected within the pool of members of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Note : in the ASF, all board members are actually *from* the pool of members and elected by the members. We might wish to make it possible for "externals" to join the board as well. In this case, we could imagine having the membership pool electing for an "external" to join the board (now, the question is, could we imagine 100 people voting to allow, say, Stallman, to join the board ? Would that be reasonable ?). Or we could have board members been allowed to appoint up to xx external people to get on the board.
Well, my take on that, and how I understood it, is that ASF members could come from outside, since they were voted in by the existing members. But if it is the community that elects the ASF members, then that is moot. [snip]
As I see it, this is indeed an interesting bit. To answer Tim's concerns (and I agree with Lukasz comment, btw), I believe the fact that members of the Wikimedia Foundation would be appointed by the board actually make it pretty "safe" for anyone who might have a problem with a community elected body. For the record, I am one of those. A great editor in a virtual project does not make a great board member in a real-life organisation, and the predominance of one language or one project does not ensure harmonious representation. The model might seem restraining at first (only the board's "friends" could be considered as members of the Wikimedia Foundation) but in a mid-term perspective, I cannot see the board only appointing their best friends/supporters, as it would not scale. And the larger the body that nominates, the more diversified the people on it.
This is the place where I do not understand your explanation. If the board appoints members, and is then elected by members... we might just get stuck in a loop. This is not at all what the AFS did. The community elect the membership. The membership elect the board. I think that this model could get very much in the wrong direction... if the membership is very limited in size (it would actually be a pre-election of the board). But if the membership is rather around 100 people (for example), then the risk of having a total mess in the elected body is actually pretty limited.
And this is where we seem to disagree. The board might choose to keep people out as long as possible, but it is neither in their interest, nor in the interest of the organisation. If people are voted into the membership by the existing members, there has to come a time where the body that votes the members in is big enough to ensure diversity. Of course, if the board and the first members stop at 10 people, then the model doesn't work. My take is that membership of 10 people is rather stupid, and that 100 sounds like a better approach, whether it is set as a goal to reach in a certain time frame, whether the number is set etc. would still need to be determined.
Note that a suggestion I would do is to include amongst groups of voters, meta and chapters. This would largely tip the balance in favor of those who are *actually* working for Foundation issues.
You forget that many meta users and chapter members are *also* editors in a project or another. This could lead to people either voting twice, or having to choose sides (the project or the chapter? meta or wikipedia?)
We might get to something like
- Wikipedia can elect up to 30 members overall to become members
- Wikibooks can elect up to 20 ...
- Wikiquote can elect up to 1 ... (just kidding)
- Meta can elect up to 20 members
- All chapters members can elect up to 20 members
etc...
It may be that people are supported in two places. So what ? Who cares if there is no strictly fixed number ?
There is another point... You said "a good project editor does not necessarily make a good Foundation member". Yup... so what about "forcing" people to make a *choice* ? Either PMC member... or Foundation member ? The same skills are not required...
Yes, that is indeed a must-be requirement. You have to chose your battles.
(as a reminder, all PMC must have 2 Foundation member on them. These 2 guys may volunteer or be appointed by board or appointed by MWF members. But only these 2 may be both on WMF membership AND a PMC).
The way the PMC are set up also gives the board an oversight. However, it would be stupid from the board to appoint on the PMCs people who have absolutely no community support, because it would make the PMC members' job way harder. So in our case, the appointement of PMCs could be coupled with polls within communities as to who should be on the PMCs. Note that as I understand it, PMCs members have a real life responsibility, which would call for a disclosure of their real life identity. I would argue that PMC members are not necessarily stewards or bureaucrats, which would still be elected as "trusted" community members", but rather people who have made clear what their skills and agendas are as to the responsibility they are offered in being part of a PMC.
Nod. The PMC members could be elected by project, with a veto from WMF. Or a pool be elected by project, and the final members appointed by WMF (roughly, the english arbcom system). I would not suggest that all should give their real life identity as it would exclude too many people. We might require that only from the chair and co.
I personally don't like the veto system. It is uncomfortable both for the board *and* the people involved. Pool to choose from is much better.
The *most* important point would be to very very clearly define their scope of action. They would have no particular rights as editors over the other editors for example, nor would they have the right to run/manage the local projects as "editor in chief".
This is where any model fails, coming to think of it. If the PMC's are elected by the community and have some kind of oversight granted by legal means, where does the "legal" part of their task stops and the "community mandate" starts? If those PMC's are held by community recognition, it is my belief that they will, at some point, have to make a choice.
The big problem with Wikimedia as I see it, is that we are trying to apply something that works to build an encyclopedia (utter democracy, collaborative community decisions) to a world with different rules (legal, financial, etc.), and most of all, rules which can't really be changed with a community decision the way we change spelling or bibliography rules.
The same way copy/pasting the ASF model, or the Greenpeace model, ot the US Federal model, you name it, doesn't work, copy/pasting the Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects model to the organisation doesn't work either.
So well, I'll have to think about this more.
Delphine
Somebody wrote:
I personally don't like the veto system. It is uncomfortable both for the board *and* the people involved. Pool to choose from is much better.
Personally I think this is a very incorrect approach.
It can tend to mask crony networks.
Having to veto the choices, nominations, or elected candidates will inevitably show a trend if cronyism or factionalism gets established. This process should be about getting effective managers/governers/leaders that the "community" accepts as effective and in whom the legal trustees can be equally confident. The ideal incoming leader is percieved as effective in both key roles, operations within the foundation and content creation or other valuable community tasks.
Might be feasible in other organizations but considering that we start from a crony network currently in charge how will allowing the crony network to wait until an appropriate crony or someone they like who might someday become a crony to become available in the "pool" restore any confidence of fair representation in the rest of the community at large?
Might as well save time and energy and have the Board or Jimbo appoint their buddies in the first place.
Regarding discomfort. It is no more comfortable for people nominated to hang around waiting indefinately for a call that will never come than it is to be told firmly no, you are not accepted for the position.
This is why most well run companies or organizations will eventually send a letter of some kind telling aspiring candidates that there is no place currently open or another interviewee was selected for the position. Thank you for your interest and time.
regards, lazyquasar
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
Somebody wrote:
I personally don't like the veto system. It is uncomfortable both for the board *and* the people involved. Pool to choose from is much better.
Choosing in a pool may also be a problem if the pool was selected through a complete election process, as the board would be expected to choose the people according to the percentage of support they got. This is the case for the english arbcom. I am not aware Jimbo ever felt embarassed with any of the pool member, but it is likely he feels compound to pick up the top of the pool.
Choosing in a pool selected by support/oppose election type would be much easier, but a much more complicated process if the number of nominees is largely bigger than the number of final members. Is it best to pick up 1 person with 80% of support - 10 votes, or to pick up 1 person with 70% of support - 100 votes ?
I think the final decision is mostly one based on what we want the Foundation type to be, private Foundation (business Foundation) or public Foundation (communittee Foundation) ?
Delphine Ménard wrote:
On 6/15/06, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Delphine Ménard wrote:
Note that a suggestion I would do is to include amongst groups of voters, meta and chapters. This would largely tip the balance in favor of those who are *actually* working for Foundation issues.
You forget that many meta users and chapter members are *also* editors in a project or another. This could lead to people either voting twice, or having to choose sides (the project or the chapter? meta or wikipedia?)
Representing more than one project should in no way give a person two separate votes. There's nothing wrong with choosing to vote one way or the other.
We might get to something like
- Wikipedia can elect up to 30 members overall to become members
- Wikibooks can elect up to 20 ...
- Wikiquote can elect up to 1 ... (just kidding)
- Meta can elect up to 20 members
- All chapters members can elect up to 20 members
etc...
It may be that people are supported in two places. So what ? Who cares if there is no strictly fixed number ?
There is another point... You said "a good project editor does not necessarily make a good Foundation member". Yup... so what about "forcing" people to make a *choice* ? Either PMC member... or Foundation member ? The same skills are not required...
Yes, that is indeed a must-be requirement. You have to chose your battles.
Most Foundation members/councillors should be PMC members.representing that PMC. Why should people be forced to make a choice?
(as a reminder, all PMC must have 2 Foundation member on them. These 2 guys may volunteer or be appointed by board or appointed by MWF members. But only these 2 may be both on WMF membership AND a PMC).
I don't see the point of this
The *most* important point would be to very very clearly define their scope of action. They would have no particular rights as editors over the other editors for example, nor would they have the right to run/manage the local projects as "editor in chief".
This is where any model fails, coming to think of it. If the PMC's are elected by the community and have some kind of oversight granted by legal means, where does the "legal" part of their task stops and the "community mandate" starts? If those PMC's are held by community recognition, it is my belief that they will, at some point, have to make a choice.
No. In a federal system of government citizenship in the broader country is not incounsistent with citizenship in a constituent state. A PMC would be the governing body of a project. Members of that project who choose to operate outside the law need to accept the legal consequences.. Your expression "oversight granted by legal means" is unclear. In terms of legal obligations it doesn't matter how the PMCs are chosen. To maintain the separation that you mentioned before it is important to maintain the autonomy of the projects.
The big problem with Wikimedia as I see it, is that we are trying to apply something that works to build an encyclopedia (utter democracy, collaborative community decisions) to a world with different rules (legal, financial, etc.), and most of all, rules which can't really be changed with a community decision the way we change spelling or bibliography rules.
Does this need to be a problem?
The same way copy/pasting the ASF model, or the Greenpeace model, ot the US Federal model, you name it, doesn't work, copy/pasting the Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects model to the organisation doesn't work either.
We can use any of these for ideas, but ultimately it would be our own model.
Ec
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