[Foundation-l] Would you consider being on the Board?

[Michael R. Irwin]

Delirium wrote:

>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>  
>
>>valdelli at bluemail.ch wrote:
>> 
>>
>>    
>>
>>>The community could accept only representative members voted with normal
>>>procedure. 
>>>   
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>Of course.
>>
>>But community vote is not the only way to get board members.  We have
>>some very good board candidates who are not famous in the community and
>>who could bring to the table professional expertise that we greatly
>>need, but who would not put themselves through the troll wars of an
>>election.
>> 
>>
>>    
>>
>This sounds reasonable, although I think they're not entirely different 
>things, if we're speaking in an informal sense (which is really what 
>will dominate community-board relations more than the formal setup 
>will).  It's possible, for example, that there are people who would 
>actually prevail in an election, but are deterred from running because 
>of the election process.  If they were appointed, those people could be 
>said in some tea-leaf-reading sense to actually represent the 
>community.  Then there are gradations---people who wouldn't actually win 
>an election, but who are generally respected and don't engender much 
>objection; then unknown people; and finally people who are actively 
>disliked by a large segment of the community.
>
>We could try some variation on some of the consensus-style methods we 
>tend to use on the encyclopedia.  For example, solicit nominations, 
>possibly in private, and then privately contact the people nominated to 
>ask if they'd accept a position if chosen.  Then make a (public) list of 
>potential candidates, and solicit feedback on them, possibly 
>privately-expressed feedback so people don't have to publicly attack 
>anyone.  Then appoint the people who have reasonably good consensus 
>support.  Assuming the feedback is indeed expressed in private, and the 
>list is more than a handful of people, those not selected shouldn't 
>really be negatively impacted (not being selected for 2 slots out of a 
>list of, say, 15 isn't particularly bad).
>
>This is a little trickier than the way we do it on articles, because to 
>avoid public flamewars and driving people off, much of it would have to 
>be done in private communications, and therefore the decision of what 
>constitutes consensus would have to be made by whoever reads those 
>emails.  It could be the current board, or someone they designate.  
>Technically/formally, that would essentially be the board appointing new 
>members itself, but if you five agree to follow some rough community 
>consensus in making those appointments, I'm pretty sure you're not going 
>to actually lie to us and claim someone had consensus support when they 
>didn't, even if we have no way of verifying that.
>
>Anyway that's a pretty off-the-top-of-my-head outline of how to design a 
>system that merges community consensus and sensitivity towards potential 
>members who aren't politicians, so I'm sure there are better ways of 
>doing it.  I do think some sort of balancing of those goals is 
>necessary, though.
>
>-Mark
>
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>  
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Bah.

In other words we must allow the current stacked Board to stack the 
future Boards to get the desired responsible, effective, expert Boards.

This begs the question ..... if a stacked Board is the best way to 
attract the skills and participation needed to effectively manage our 
communities then why is there a lackluster interest for volunteers with 
the expertise to participate in current community management activities?

A bigger stacked Board micromanaging the community will leave us in the 
future right where we are now.

regards,
lazyquasar