[Foundation-l] "officials" (ignore my last post)

[Daniel Mayer]

I sent my last post too early - please disregard that one and read this one
instead. 

--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> I've already stated, several times in the past, that the roles of trustee and
> the roles of corporate officers should be divorced from one another. This is
> needed in order to provide proper checks and balances (the board oversees the
> officiers and the foundation membership oversees the board). 
> 
> 
> Ant : I agree
> 
> > I view this as fairly loose. Let's have a page on
> > meta. People interested list themselves there. The
> > community then approve or does not approve to give
> > this "official" title. Finally, the board approve or
> > not.
> 
> I strongly feel that it should be the other way around; the board appoints
> officers and the foundation membership either approves or disapproves the
> appointees. This provides a check against merely popular people being
> appointed
> to positions they are not qualified to perform. The board members themselves
> are the ones that are directly elected. Thus they are the ones legally
> responsible for their appointees. 
> 
> Ant : 
> 
> I admit that the legal responsibility and qualification is a major issue. 
> 
> However, I must say I would be troubled that the management would be done in
> such a top down approach, as I feel it could raise issues of fairness and
> transparency. In particular if those “coordinators” are a mandatory path for
> subsequent activities.

I guess I would be *OK* with the board selecting a qualified group of people as
finalists and have the Wikimedia membership choose the winner. However, that
group of finalists will often be very small since the board has to assume that
any one could become the actual officer. That way the membership and the board
are responsible for the person who is eventually selected (but that would have
been the case in the appointee/confirmation scenario as well). This does have a
drawback:
*Until the membership votes, none of the board-selected candidates will be able
to perform the duties of the office. Appointees to the cabinet level in the
U.S. government (all the Secretaries of ..) work in their appointed role while
Congress is going through the confirmation process - if they are not confirmed
then they have to stop work and the process starts over.

But I don't think that the membership will ever not confirm a board-selected
officer. If that is done, then something is wrong with the board. The reason
why confirmation is needed is just to provide a check against the board making
bad decisions. So I still think that the appointee/confirmation process is the
most straightforward path and the one less likely to bog down the work of the
foundation. IMO, officers should not be too hindered by the political process -
they have work to do. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


	
		
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