When the chapter was set up back in 2008 we had had the recent experience -
the so-called Wikimedia UK v1 - of a board which had been established,
wasn't functioning well but the community was unable to correct this
situation. For that reason the new chapter, when it managed to
set itself up said "we are committing now to being open, transparent and
democratic from the get go"
http://uk.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=1852
The explanatory notes that accompanied the original Articles of Association
proclaimed that "*our charity will be member-led **and we want the norm to
be that directors are elected by the members**"*
A "member-led" organisation - imagine that? In simple terms, an
organisation that trusts the 5,000-strong UK Wikimedia community more than
a handful of people who currently sit on the board.
My goodness how far away has the chapter gone from those original values.
First step down the slippery slope was the move towards two-year terms. Now
we have these bonkers changes drempt up by a consultancy who took no
consideration whatsoever of our particular values and want to
model ourselves on other board-led charities. Guess what, we know how other
charities are run and make a conscious decision at the start to do
something different. After all, no other encyclopedias are written by
non-specialists. Wikipedia was the first major website to give its entire
content away under a free license. No other major website is run by a
charity. Of course we're different. That's the bloody point.
For goodness sake, they even want to change the articles to get some
complex provision in there that means there would never be a majority of
directors up for election in a single year - because god forbid that the
community would actually wanting to kick out a poorly-performing board en
mass. God forbid the board should be subject to any accountability for
their performance.
All I can say is thank goodness we don't have a board that is poorly
performing, divided, poorly led, losing control of the direction of the
charity, losing their major source of income or anything like that.
Because who knows what would happen then?
On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 8:33 PM, Chris Keating <chriskeatingwiki(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Obviously it will be for the membership to decide whether to accept or
reject these particular recommendations but it would be great if you could
review the draft amendments at this stage.
Please do read, consider and comment, here:
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/EGM_2013/Draft_Resolutions
PS. Just to clarify, these are resolutions as drafted by our lawyers: they
have not yet been reviewed by the Board - obviously it remains important
that we draft things in public where we can!
Chris
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