[Foundation-l] Will the Board accept the election result?

[Anthony]

On 7/7/07, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com> wrote:
> On Sat, July 7, 2007 18:59, Thomas Dalton wrote:
> > The board are glorified web hosts. They know perfectly well that we
> > can find a new board if we have sufficient motivation - what would
> > they have to gain by given us that motivation?
>
> I don't wish to be presumptuous about what you understand the WMF Board to
> be, but one thing they certainly are *not* is replaceable or under any
> sort of control of the users in any way.  The present voting is,
> therefore, an indication of general support which the (current) Board may
> choose to act on however it sees fit. Without a membership structure they
> are the sole arbiter of who is and is not appointed.
>
Besides the possibility of a fork, there's also the fact that the WMF
board is dependent on donations to keep itself running.  And as a
public charity that means broad-based public donations.

> Saying that though, for the Board to decline to accept the results as
> tabulated would, imho, be a very 'bad thing'(TM) which would not be good
> for the projects and the 'editor buy-in'.
>
Agreed, and as such I'd say there's about no chance of it happening.
OTOH, forcing a board member to sign an onerous confidentiality
agreement and then kicking him out if he either breaks it or refuses
to sign it, that's conceivable.  Any single board member can easily
have his powers diminished to a single vote in the case of an
otherwise evenly divided board.  Slightly more if they decided to push
the letter of the law with regard to holding proper meetings and
giving proper notice of those meetings.

> Last time around there were suggestions made during the voting period that
> certain people would be 'unwelcome' on the Board, indeed that some Board
> members would refuse to work with other who might get elected. In the
> event, whilst not perfect, the world of Wikimedia did not collapse when
> the results became known and I doubt that no matter who wins this time
> around the Board will see that it should accept the universal suffrage
> decision and work together for the benefit of the projects.
>
I don't see any reason to obfuscate things, this much is public at
this point.  Last election Jimbo discovered that Erik was winning, and
that Kat and Oscar were following behind him.  So he urged everyone to
vote for Kat and Oscar, and made reference to other candidates that
were "entirely unacceptable".  But this was too late, or maybe people
were just smarter than to fall for that, and the community elected
Erik anyway.  So then the board decides retroactively to accept three
candidates instead of one, giving Oscar and Kat each a seat,
effectively overriding Erik's vote on whatever "unique opportunity"
Jimbo was referring to in his message.  So instead of an uproar over
the repudiation of the election, the board is hailed for becoming
*even more* community based.  And then, after Erik takes office, he
suddenly shifts from outspoken to nearly silent, having almost surely
signed a confidentiality agreement.

See, no need to repudiate the election.  There are plenty of other
ways to get what you want while leaving the cries of foul to people
like me who no one is going to listen to anyway.