This is an example of why I find the questions "Who voted for it?" and "Who voted against it?" immensely troubling. In a true democratic system, the secret ballot allows people to vote their conscience, rather than voting for popularity, material reward, fear of censure, and whatnot.

A commitment to openness should not be misused so cynically.

Danny

In a message dated 6/4/2006 10:30:20 PM Eastern Daylight Time, troyhunter0@lycos.com writes:

Anthere wrote:

Erik Moeller wrote:

...

On 6/4/06, Troy Hunter troyhunter0@lycos.com wrote:

...

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_committee_conduct

With regard to this resolution in particular, which tried to guarantee a minimal level of openness in the committees:

• Why was it rejected -- what were the arguments against it? Who voted

against it?

• Is any similar resolution planned for the future?

Erik

Tim and Michael against. Angela and I for. Jimbo abstained.

This is a violation of Jimmy's promise to never vote against Anthere and Angela except on matters of grave importance. The September 2004 Wikimedia Quarto states:

"To date, Tim and Michael have played a minimal part in board discussion and decisions, and there is no plan to change this. In order to ensure that the community voice is real, Jimbo has pledged, as a matter of convention, never to vote against Angela and Anthere, unless he feels that it is an issue of an absolutely fundamental change of direction for the project -- which is not likely to happen, since Angela, Anthere and Jimbo share the essential values of the community and the project. So as a practical matter, power is in the hands of the two democratically elected board members on most issues, and Jimbo defers to that."

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WQ/1

Restated in February 2005:

"Angela and Anthere are unbelievably good as board members, and we have a casual agreement between us that if the two of them ever vote in one direction, I will defer to them, so that it does not matter how Tim and Michael vote. The only exception I would make to this is if they wanted something that I felt endangered us in some very extreme way -- but this is basically impossible because they are so good at what they do."

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/20359

and in April 2005:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/2922

Jimmy wrote:

The first resolution was something that we discussed at the board level but never quite came to a firm conclusion. I think that's one which we will revisit at some point in the future. The general idea was to make sure that committees not engage in excessive secrecy, which is a good idea, but at the same time, we did not want to encumber them with a lot of paranoia that they have to announce evertything all the time. Different board members had different perspectives on how to get those central points across.

Yes, different board members had different perspectives. That's to be expected, they come from different backgrounds. Some of them represent the community, some do not. But the elected members were not arguing for an "absolutely fundamental change of direction", were they?

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