[Foundation-l] Re : on (re)organizing wikimedia

[Kelly Martin]

On 6/11/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> osar's ideas as outlined below are far too general to
> formulate much of an argument for or against.  I will
> say I am against the Wikicouncil as described on Meta.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicouncil
>   It would be far too large to be effective.  I can't
> see how a group of more than 20 people max could be
> useful in an advisory role.

Yes, the only point to a large body as described in the Wikicouncil
proposal is to act as an assembly or congress; in an organization such
as Wikimedia such an assembly would normally be the final governing
authority for the organization, would elect the board and the
officers, and be the legal source of authority for the board and
officers to act.  I would not object to Wikimedia moving to a congress
of delegates as the final governing authority, but I suspect such an
idea would be unacceptable at this time to the current Board.  In any
case, the entity described by the Wikicouncil proposal has no
authority at all and I see no point in it existing, except perhaps to
throw a nice party at Wikimania.

As you state, an advisory body will function better at a smaller size.
 I'm not sure that we're at the state where an advisory board would be
useful, though.

Kelly