[Foundation-l] PVC - recap

[effe iets anders]

Hi all,

First of all, thanks a lot to the people that have given their constructive
feedback when there was asked for, I am glad you did not wait until the
resolution was handed in, but joined the process when there was still plenty
of time. </irony>

In the risk of repeating myself and others, I will try to explain why the
resolution is as it is, with some proposals to take away the worst pain with
some.

As you can read in the threads that extensively discussed this topic a few
weeks ago, on this very same list, there has been a call for a volunteer
platform, a council (back then mainly called "wikicouncil", as you might
remember) for years. In that time, I heard, both in public discussions, but
also in private conversations, many times words among the setting of "oh, a
volunteer council would have been very useful here". This is confirmed by
the fact that quite some people put quite a lot effort in writing proposals,
discussing models, to come to a fair representation etc.

The exact reasons why people think a Volunteer Council (the real thing) is
required, differs from person to person. Some reasons are amongst the lines
that the Board could take care of less community issues that way, so that
they can attract more experts, some think it would be good because it could
give a direction to some commonly accepted community policies, some think it
would be better because it would be less of a "who shouts the hardest, gets
it's way". Because if we are honest, even though in the past this list might
have served as a soundboard for opinions, we can hardly say any more that it
is still the case on many issues. A few people tend to dominate several
discussions, and the constructive behavior is in some topics very low. When
the Board members try to get feedback on issues, they often get no or no
useful respons (probably Florence can (dis)confirm my interpretation of
this). This is why I think it is good that the Board establishes a Volunteer
Council in general.

However, in the discussions on this topic, both in public as in private,
every time I found that there was hardly an easy to reach a compromise. To
take an example, me and millosh had/have very different ideas on the aspect
of representivity, and what purpose such a council should practically serve.
That is not bad, but it clearly shows that there is a need for more
discussion, but probably in a more organized way. Because as everybody can
check on meta and in the mailing list archives, the topic comes up, fades
away after a month or so, and several months later, it returns, and starts
all over again. This is why I think that it is not possible to define
exactly how the Volunteer Council should look like.

In the resolution, you will first find an introduction, why it is good to
let the community have a council like this. Then you will find the creation
of the VC. Yes, this is intentionally a VC, and not PVC yet. This VC
however, will be "empty" for the moment, but it does show the intention, and
sets the boundaries between which the PVC will have to formulate their
proposal. There are not many details in it of course, as those are still to
be determined. Mike has a valid point with respect to point 2.3. The exact
wording of this might indeed be changed to something along the lines of
"advising on changes (...) and discussing these with the volunteer
communities". Whether the final VC will have the "power" to
approve/disapprove these, is indeed a point of discussion, and should not be
fixated yet.

Then there might indeed be an unexpected transition in point 4, where we
speak about a PVC. It might have been good/better to have a line between 3
and 4 to define the existance of the PVC first, something along the lines of
"To come to a effective Volunteer Council, the Board creates a Provisional
Volunteer Council, which..." This effectively does not change much to the
resolution, but I see no major objection against this change of wording.

I hope this clarifies things up a bit, and takes away a few of the concerns
that have recently been expressed.

With kind regards,

Lodewijk