[Foundation-l] wikicouncil

[Andrew Lih]

Although there has already been a massive exchange in the last 12
hours, I'm going to respond to the initial question. One problem is
first mover (or first discusser) bias, and the entire conversation has
gone down one way, when I think it's best to start with a fresh look.

What Damian mentioned about Wikicouncil as "representative democracy"
is closest to what many Wikiretreaters in Frankfurt expressed - that a
body of experienced, learned, informed, engaged and knowledgeable
Wikimedians from different projects could form a body with real powers
to decide on community matters and even for the purpose of being a
body of electors for determinng the election of board members.

Wikicouncil folks would be responsible for things that  that either we
(inappropriately) appeal to the "board of trustees" to do now, or ask
developers to do on the fly. It's not fair to ask Brion or Tim to be
decisionmaker for community decisions from random parts of the
Wikimedia universe, and it's traditionally beyond the scope of a
"Board of Trustees" to be managing down to the approve/deny level of
individual projects on a week to week basis. That's where a
Wikicouncil would come in.

As for the argument that Wikicouncil would not be a "direct
democracy," I mentioned this to Erik in Frankfurt, but I believe there
is a less compelling argument for every Wikimedian having equal vote
as any other Wikimedian for some value of "n" edits and "m" months of
membership. The idea of every community member getting equal say as in
a "true democracy" is not compelling since there is no concept of
"natural citizenship" in Wikipedia - people join by choice, they
self-identify for tasks, and they elevate. It is different than a
citizen of a country or territory. As Damian noted, many folks don't
know, nor do they care, for issues related to higher level governance
or WMF board matters. They're there to write an encyclopedia, create a
Wikiversity course, contribute to Commons, etc. A Wikicouncil would
have the expertise of folks who have put in the time, passion, energy
and thought into working with the WMF community matters, while the
board would oversee the big picture matters. I believe that the
Wikicouncil would clarify and solve many of the problems we have now
with the scope of board and executive level matters.

In this sense, I think the idea of a Wikicouncil is quite familiar -
I'd imagine a Wikicouncil would be made up most of folks you will find
right now in Wikiproject leadership, chapter activities, committee
involvement, and the like. It would be a formalization of what takes
place already, but where there is currently no procedure or authority
to act on group consensus.

That is a brief summary of what hopes I saw people had in the idea for
a Wikicouncil. I cannot speak for all the folks, so I invite other
folks to chime in on this.

-Andrew


On 11/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I write this email with much hesitation.
> The issue has been raised often, the possible creation of a council.
> Naturally, setting up such a structure is bound to be difficult, due to
> the following issues to discuss and decide
> * what would be the roles of such a council ?
> * would that council vote the people to become Wikimedia Foundation
> board members ?
> * would this council become a sort of goverment of the project ?
> * how would people be added to this council (and along with which rules,
> depending on project size, languages etc...)
> * ...
>
> In short, a nest of questions.
>
>
> The issue has been raised many times already.
> If there are people interested in setting up a proposal, please just
> tell me. I am not talking of "discussion" here, I am talking of "writing
> down a proposal". On which the board could have a look. On which the
> community could comment and then vote.
>
> Anyway, if interested, jsut tell me and we can organise a little chat
> and a page about that. If noone interested, time will see :-)
>
> Ant
>
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