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

[Ray Saintonge]

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>  
>
>>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.
>>    
>>
>The question I was answering from Angela was concerned with the issue of using community voting vs
>appointment to expand the board. I was NOT advocating bringing in outsiders to serve on the board
>(that is what the advisory board is for). Our community is huge and of course we have most if not
>all of the expertise needed. But to ensure we have that expertise on the board, we either need to
>appoint some members or have elections for roles that require candidates to have appropriate
>credentials and experience (not unlike electing judges or district attorneys in the U.S.). 
>
I don't think that these special prerequisites for being on the Board 
are necessary.  The treasurer should not need to do the bookkeeping 
himself; we are big enough that we can hire someone to keep the books, 
and prepare preliminary financial statements.  The treasurer should be 
able to understand the statements and discuss them with the rest of the 
Board, and with an expanded Board it is certainly more likely that there 
would be a person who can do this.

Ec