[Foundation-l] About transparency

[Tomasz Ganicz]

2007/12/28, Derrick Farnell <derrick.farnell at gmail.com>:
> > What mechanisms do we have in place where we could consult with the whole
> > Community?
> >
> >
> None as far as I am aware - which is my complaint!  :-)
>
> But there are already mechanisms for the community to elect board members,
> and of course decide the content of projects, so why not also for every
> other decision? There could be an online location for such debates (the
> Foundation wiki?), which would be followed by a vote. Even if only a small
> percentage of the community takes part in such debates and vote, that would
> still be hugely more people than the 8(?) on the board - and the point is
> that any member can at least in theory get involved, and have a vote. I've
> been an anonymous contributor for years, but am new to this list - has the
> community actually every agreed to the board growing from merely being an
> unwelcome legal necessity , as described in the piece in my earlier post? As
> the author wrote:

Making all or even vast majority of Foundation's decision by voting by
general Wikimedia's projects community IMHO doesn't make sense.
Foundation matters are mainly about the real-life issues - like
methods of collecting money for maintaining servers, legal things -
like  changing bylaws or closing of a project because it contains
large number of copyright violation etc. Bear in mind that if a
decision made by voting would be against US law, Foundation's Board
members should immediately resign - as the realization of illegal
decision make them criminals in US. Bear in mind that Wikimedia's
projects community is not a collection of registered citizens or at
least members, but rather an amorphous group of project's accounts in
vast majority completely or semi-anonymous. One can vote one day, and
completely leave Wikimedia's projects next day. Moreover a system of
voting of any decision could simply paralyze Foundation. What to do if
a given decision has to be taken fast, for example overnight, and this
decision might be crucial to survival of Foundation?


-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.poli.toya.net.pl
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html