Message: 2 Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:03:55 +0200 From: phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Foundation-l] resolution on voting transparency Message-ID: <CAAi3vqFXi9tPrkD9LUQPT6uqpe+d6MNhiOMv027SDX+QeykZ=Q@mail.gmail.com
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During the Board of Trustees meeting today we passed a resolution on Trustee voting transparency:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Board_of_Trustees_Voting_Tran...
asking that in future resolutions we publish the names of trustees with their votes for each resolution.
best, Phoebe
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That's a very welcome move, and I hope it helps build bridges back to the community. From time to time we will have very divisive issues to discuss, and in such situations it is much easier for the "losing" side in the community if they can see that their voice was heard on the board, as opposed to the board appearing to make a monolithic decision. In the current arrangements it can sometimes seem that the community is divided and the board is on one side of that divide. It will be much healthier for the movement if the board takes a majority decision in scenarios where the community is divided.
Sometimes it may even be worthwhile to record why the board minority dissented.
Regards
WereSpielChequers
On 30 March 2012 13:56, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
That's a very welcome move, and I hope it helps build bridges back to the community. From time to time we will have very divisive issues to discuss, and in such situations it is much easier for the "losing" side in the community if they can see that their voice was heard on the board, as opposed to the board appearing to make a monolithic decision. In the current arrangements it can sometimes seem that the community is divided and the board is on one side of that divide. It will be much healthier for the movement if the board takes a majority decision in scenarios where the community is divided. Sometimes it may even be worthwhile to record why the board minority dissented.
Yes. This will also avoid, as recently, board members appearing to later disclaim actions (a vote) that they were in fact responsible for taking.
- d.
On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 12:19 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 30 March 2012 13:56, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
That's a very welcome move, and I hope it helps build bridges back to the community. From time to time we will have very divisive issues to discuss, and in such situations it is much easier for the "losing" side in the community if they can see that their voice was heard on the board, as opposed to the board appearing to make a monolithic decision. In the current arrangements it can sometimes seem that the community is divided and the board is on one side of that divide. It will be much healthier for the movement if the board takes a majority decision in scenarios where the community is divided. Sometimes it may even be worthwhile to record why the board minority dissented.
Yes. This will also avoid, as recently, board members appearing to later disclaim actions (a vote) that they were in fact responsible for taking.
It's worth recalling that for the majority of 2008-2009 the board did record all votes, and often noted who moved the motion, but the practise was dropped. Its great to see it is now mandatory.
-- John Vandenberg
Hi John,
Yep, that was part of our (relatively short) discussion as well. I cannot recall why we dropped it at that time, but the Board Governance Committee proposed this now as a good practice.
Jan-Bart
On 30 mrt. 2012, at 16:27, John Vandenberg wrote:
On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 12:19 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 30 March 2012 13:56, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
That's a very welcome move, and I hope it helps build bridges back to the community. From time to time we will have very divisive issues to discuss, and in such situations it is much easier for the "losing" side in the community if they can see that their voice was heard on the board, as opposed to the board appearing to make a monolithic decision. In the current arrangements it can sometimes seem that the community is divided and the board is on one side of that divide. It will be much healthier for the movement if the board takes a majority decision in scenarios where the community is divided. Sometimes it may even be worthwhile to record why the board minority dissented.
Yes. This will also avoid, as recently, board members appearing to later disclaim actions (a vote) that they were in fact responsible for taking.
It's worth recalling that for the majority of 2008-2009 the board did record all votes, and often noted who moved the motion, but the practise was dropped. Its great to see it is now mandatory.
-- John Vandenberg
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On 30 mrt. 2012, at 15:19, David Gerard wrote:
Yes. This will also avoid, as recently, board members appearing to later disclaim actions (a vote) that they were in fact responsible for taking.
- d.
1) Assume good faith, I cannot recall ANY incident in which a board member purposely "lied" about their vote within the board. 2) If this was a real problem, the resolution on transparency would not have passed unanimously.
Jan-Bart
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