[Foundation-l] Provisional Volunteer Council - proposal sent to the Board

[Nathan]

Same e-mail, less irritating formatting. Sorry.

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 10:02 AM, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> If terminology is a problem, perhaps we should rename it to
>  something more benign, like "volunteer committee", or "community
>  advisory board" or something.
>
>  --Andrew Whitworth


Terminology is always a problem when you are talking about binding
resolutions of a corporate board. Terminology appears to be a serious
problem
for this particular proposal, because it is poorly written. Half of the
proposal outlines the "provisional volunteer council" but the line
item for the creation of this body calls it the "volunteer council." It has
been stated that
this group will have no formal control or legal implications, but if you
actually read the
proposal it says its functions "shall include...approving changes to the
articles of incorporation or bylaws of the Wikimedia Foundation" and
also discusses limiting the authority of the Foundation (hence, the board)
over some element(s) of the projects.

So, what does this resolution intend to accomplish? Creating a VC, or a PVC?
Giving the VC or PVC binding authority over bylaws and amendments, or
limiting its authority to "its own procedures"? Are the members supposed to
represent the community? Which part of the community? How do they represent
the community any more fully than the Board does currently? Perhaps this
effort
is suffering from too many competing visions -- it doesn't appear that
there is a clear idea of what it is, what it is for, what problem it is to
address or
how this is in any way a solution.

The issue of legal implications should have been the very first barrier
addressed (it had been mentioned more than once before Mike brought it
up in this thread). If your idea is to empower a separate body to make
binding
decisions or perform a binding review function of Board decisions, in
any manner, then a willy-nilly approach of "We don't know what we want, but
lets
just get going!" is truly ill-advised. I submit that if you have been unable
to achieve consensus
on any part of this council in the past (suggested by the fact that it
has languished for such a long time) then perhaps it is because it has some
fatal flaws in its
conception, and jamming it through with the idea that you'll define it later
is
not a good idea.

Nathan