[Foundation-l] The Foundation is not a wiki (was Re: RfC: Key priorities for my work)

[Delirium]

Daniel Mayer wrote:
>> Expand the Board via election (possibly Wikicouncil style elections)
>> and not via appointment.
>>     
>
> Elections alone (unless they require certain expertise for the candidate to run) will not result
> in a board that has the talents needed to effectively oversee the operations of the foundation.
> For example, the Treasurer of the board would need to have some expertise in the financial aspects
> of running a non-profit. Other board members will need expertise in the professional aspects of
> fundraising. Some members will need to be cognizant of the legal aspects of running a foundation.
> And on and on. An almost completely amateur board is a really, really, bad idea. 
>
> The foundation is not a wiki, nor is it a democracy. We MUST make sure our board has the right mix
> of people who actually know how a non-profit foundation should be run. Of course, there will
> always be room for up to one third (IMO) of an expanded board whose area of interest is to
> represent the community of editors. But having a whole board composed of mostly those type of
> people would be a recipe for disaster if they, as a group, did not have the right mix of
> expertise.  
>   

While I agree from an operational/legal viewpoint that we should have 
people on the board who can do the technical work that needs to be done, 
my concern with having those people be a majority is that a board is not 
*only* a technical body (although ideally it should function as such), 
but also legally the controlling body.  Thus I'm wary of letting a 
majority of the board, or even anything close to that, become comprised 
of people who aren't on the board primarily because they care so 
strongly about the project that they've decided to involve themselves in 
it.  In fact it seems odd that we would want anyone not a Wikimedian on 
the board at all, except to fill some very narrow role---why would 
someone who has apparently chosen not to join our very-easy-to-join 
project be a good choice for overseeing it?

Now of course the Board doesn't actually control the community, only the 
legal foundations and servers, but if a group of essentially outsiders 
became a majority and chose to take it in a direction the community 
disagreed with, it would cause significant chaos as the community would 
be forced to waste time either pushing back against them or 
forking---always a possibility, but a disruptive one that results in a 
lot of needless delay in progress.

We have something like tens of thousands of Wikipedians (hundreds of 
thousands?), so I'm skeptical that the skills we're looking for don't 
exist anywhere in our community.

-Mark