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

[Milos Rancic]

There were a number of extraordinary situations in which community is
blocked (not by IPs, but by events around it). The last and the most
problematic event was related to Russian Wikibooks. So, there should
be a body which is empowered to make decisions in such circumstances.
Which implies that even admins and bureaucrats should be ultimately
responsible to some other body, out of their own community.

However, I am talking about an extraordinary situations. Usually,
everything should be solved at the community level.

My thought which stays behind the position above is that we should
allow to small communities rapid development. Do we have a person
which seems to be a reasonable one? If yes, give them all necessary
privileges to drive a project (usually, a bureaucrat privileges). If
they make troubles, remove privileges. For such dynamics community
members should be able to talk with members of other/global
communities and experienced contributors as well as they should have a
possibility to ask for removing privileges of irresponsible sysop or
bureaucrat.

We need motivated contributors. Giving to contributors all necessary
tools are making them motivated. Leaving them isolated with some
"super humans" who are not talking enough -- is not motivating at all.

And, of course, I am talking from my experience. I will say again that
the most important persons for developing projects which started up to
2004/5 are Angela and Florence. They spent enough time on talking with
(then) small communities so they knew to whom they should trust. And
we got everything needed for our development.

At the other side, while I remember Andre Engels in those times as a
good person who was taking care about some technical issues, but who
was one of those "super humans" who were not talking enough. And I may
imagine that the most of stewards who are taking care about
functionality of small wikis make the same impression to the
contributors of emerging projects. You know, a benevolent human with
supernatural powers from other world -- who fights against the dark
powers which you are not able to imagine, but who doesn't care about
problems which hurts you because he thinks that those problems are not
important enough or because he thinks that he shouldn't act in those
cases.

So, we need to give to the small communities all necessary tools:
including powers and removing of powers by neutral entity. At this
moment we don't have a body which deals with such issues. Meta Arbcom
should be such body, but at this moment we need a group of persons who
should take care about such needs, like creation of Meta Arbcom is.
And I think that the most important role of VC should be thinking
about community needs. And in a time between creation of VC and
creation of Meta Arbcom -- VC will be able to act as a temporary
authority which deals with such issues.

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 10:11 PM, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>  --- Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  >
>  >
>  > VC should, also, take care about all things which
>  > are related to the
>  > community. This means that admins, bureaucrats,
>  > stewards etc. should
>  > be responsible to VC, not to the Board.
>
>  Admins and bureaucrats should be responsible to
>  community consensus within each project.  Perhaps
>  certain community policies (i.e. EDP) might be
>  required to be approved by the VC.  The community as a
>  whole might be tasked to find a consensus within X
>  boundary set by the VC or fork.  But individuals in
>  these trusted community positions are not now
>  responsible to the board nor should they be
>  responsible to the VC.
>
>  Birgitte SB
>
>
>
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