[Foundation-l] Future Board election procedures and guidelines

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On 7/14/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 7/14/07, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > There are currently seven seats.
> >
> > Three are held by appointed members (Jimbo, Michael, Jan-Bart) and
> > their terms expire on 31 December this year. From that time onwards,
> > appointed members are appointed for terms of one year.
> >
> > Three are held by elected members (Erik, Kat, Frieda) who were just
> > elected yesterday, their terms last for two years, and will expire on
> > 30 June 2009.
> >
> > The odd one out is Ant, who was an elected member whose term was due
> > to end 30 June this year, but she was converted to an appointed member
> > at the last board expansion with a term expiring on 30 June 2008. At
> > that time, Ant's appointed seat will be replaced by an elected seat.
> >
> > I anticipate (based on the most recent Board expansion resolution)
> > that the Board will expand to nine members at that time, adding
> > another two community elected seats, with terms commencing 1 July
> > 2008. This will result in two tranches of three elected members
> > serving two year terms, beginning on 1 July, offset from each other by
> > one year, and one tranche of appointed members with one year terms
> > beginning on 1 January each year.
> >


Fixing inadvertent top posting...

>Hoi,
>I have supported and do support that employees and ex-employees should not
>be eligible to stand for an elected function of the Wikimedia Foundation.
>Ex-employees would become eligible again after a year.

>This original point was made in an e-mail on the Foundation list by
>Jan-Bart.

>Thanks,
>    GerardM

>http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-April/029433.html

A year long cooling period, perhaps even one year and a half for good
measure, sounds at first hearing like a capital idea.

However, this does open theoretical avenues for abuse... strictly
theoretical mind you...

To take a perfectly hypothetical case. Let us say the foundation
board members are worried that notorious troublemaker Tweedledee
is going to run for board of trustees membership. And despite his
tendency to rouffle feathers, or perhaps because of it, they fear
Tweedledee might easily do well in the elections, maybe even get
in.

So the trustees have a bright idea! They hire Tweedledee,  as an
employee in charge of paperclips and hand him a red stapler
giving him a desk at the basement of the foundation office.

Now, there is a rule that there is an X month quarantine
during which former employees may not run for elected
office.

So,  X minus one months before the election, they fire Tweedledee,
ensuring that Tweedledee may only run after X minus one months
plus the term between elections.

I grant this is purely hypothetical. But to be quite serious, so is it
quite hypothetical to presume that a former employee running
for a board of trustees position would be deleterious to the
boards functioning. In fact one might equally argue that having
been in contact with the board intimately, they might even
have a shorter period of acclimatisation and orientation for
their position as trustee. (I am sure Oscar might be able to tell us if
he needed much time to adjust to the ways the board worked
coming from the outside, and why not the other board members
current and past too)


--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]