[Foundation-l] wikicouncil

[geni]

On 11/21/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Amongst these 1000 people, how many really understand what the
> Foundation is about ? I'd say very few. I have memories of editors
> asking us repeatedly to block this person, mediate this conflict, decide
> which article version was fine. And that is not at all what the
> Foundation is about.

Groovy so next time the deletion or not of [[Brian peppers]] will be
left to the wikipedia community? Office actions will be limited to
legal threats only? To those of us in the receiving end the line is
somewhat less clear.

> What really bugs me in the end, is this.
> If we have at least 1000 people knowing about the Foundation, and caring
> enough to vote for its board, we have far less people actually knowing
> what is going on, and having an idea what the job encompasses.
>
> I am still perplex of the past election candidates. About half of them
> were people I knew. People involved at various levels in the Foundation
> itself or in local associations. They have a minimum knowledge about the
> role of a board member, and at least, we know they are interested in
> these administratives tasks. We may appreciate their job and
> personnality more or less, but at least, they showed their willingness
> of being involved.
>
> But about half of the candidates, I hardly know. Or did not know at all.
> Because they had never been beyond their local project. Never tried to
> get involved in making something like a press release, or helping on
> otrs, or giving conferences, or giving a hand at Wikimania. Some had
> done *nothing* at all at the organisational level.
> Still, they get a lot of support from equally unknown people, because
> they have a lot of edits, because they are nice and helpful generally.
> They could be elected for these qualities regardless of the qualities
> they could show on the board.

Or perhaps they got votes precisely because they were outsiders. If we
only elect people with past histories of dealing with the board will
allow the board to a degree become self selecting.

>
> I can't help find that it is weird. I do not feel the board is *above*
> people. It is another job. It is serving the project, just as editors
> are serving the project, just as developers are serving the project.
> Editors get sysops according to the quality of their work on the
> project. Developers get more access according to the quality of their
> work as developers. But board members... basically, there is no
> requirement except that being appreciated/recognised by the largest
> number of people for their activity as editors.
>

Nyet very few people if any ran on their background as editors.

> I am not sure indirect elections thanks to a "wikiblob" are the best way
> to solve this actually. There may be different ways to fix that. But the
> current situation strikes me as non sustainable in the long term. Until
> now, choices were great in the end :-) but if we expand the board with
> for example 9 elected people (not very likely), I am more hesitant.
>

You think you would be unable to work with the kind of people the
community wants in charge? Anyway it will be sometime before any
further elections can reasonably be held which provides an opertunity
for makeing the board better known

> Dunno. Maybe there should be requirements on candidates to show
> involvment in organisational issues (but that's hard to measure). Or
> maybe the candidates should go through a sort of screening procedure.
>

While that may be best practice in Iran I see no need to do that here.

-- 
geni