[Foundation-l] Breaking promises (was Re: Where we are headed)

[daniwo59 at aol.com]

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 at lycos.com writes:

Anthere  wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > On 6/4/06, Troy Hunter  <troyhunter0 at 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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