[Foundation-l] Future Board election procedures and guidelines

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On 7/14/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> What you describe is really hypothetical. The WMF does not have the funds
> to
> hire all the trouble makers that we know off. We do not have the funds to
> hire the people to fill the positions that we have. So the scenario is not
> only hypothetical it is also unrealistic and as such it is even
> irrelevant.
> Even our policy of "assume good faith" argues that when your experience
> with
> an individual tells you so, you should not get him in a position to do
> more
> evil.


Both your mathematics and your logic fail you. As there are always a limited

number of seats available for election, there would never be a need to "hire
all the trouble makers that we know off." (nice use of the word "we" there
by
the way)

"You" (or rather more accurately, the board, or ED, or whoever the person
responsible for hiring at that precise moment in time might be) would only
need to hire those persons with a *realistic* chance of getting elected...

And the point of the hypothetical example I gave would not have placed
them in a position to do "more evil" (BTW, evil is a relative term, just
FYI),
but rather would have put them in a harmless position where they would
be held busy, but would have little impact at all in anything of
significance.

So though the example is hypothetical in nature, your dismissal of it
falls really really far short.


What we need in our Wikimedia Foundation is a good working relation between
> board and employees. Most of the board members are chosen from our
> community. There is in my opinion a need for a firewall between the
> organisation of the Foundation and it projects in the same way as there is
> a
> firewall between a chapter and the projects. By denying employees to stand
> as board member, you prevent that this firewall is undermined. This is
> true
> to a lesser extend for ex-employees and it disappears over time.
>
> From my perspective, having employees in the Foundation play an important
> role in the projects is in my opinion as bad an idea.
>
> Thanks,
>      GerardM


I have absolute difficulty in grasping where you see the need for such a
firewall
stemming. Inasmuch as the majority of the Board members are *chosen*
from the community (quite rightly, BTW) I think it is clear that rather than
a
firewall, we need to ensure that there is a *bond* between the Board and
teh communities.

I still think a cooling off period might not be a bad idea, just from a
humane
perspective, to give the employee time to reflect and reinvigorate himself,
but a firewall? I think not.

A totally different thing is that the communities and the Foundation have
different *roles*, and *overlapping* between these roles should and must
be avoided. But for that purpose, it is only necessary, and *quite*
sufficient that *neither* employees nor Trustees have active roles
such as arbcom membership in the communities.



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