[Foundation-l] VC - alternative resolution

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
When you are of the opinion and when this opinion is share in the council
that the members of the council are not responsible and only parrot what
they perceive their community wants, the whole council will be
irresponsible. Power without responsibility is a recipe for disaster.

There is no need for people to talk about all that is wrong when as a result
there is only talk. We already have this. We have it in many places and it
is as effective.

When the council is not responsible for its actions why should anyone take
heed of what its opinion is ? What would be the benefit to the board, to the
organisation ?

Thanks,
     GerardM

On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 2:09 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  The short answer is you are. The longer answer is that things are about
> >  priorities. For me language and localisation is a priority. For you the
> >  introduction of scientists is a priority. For others it is responding
> to
> >  mail. Both you and me do what we can and we might be able to do more
> >  effectively. The operative word is DO. We DO what we can.
>
> While I understand what are you talking about, I need to say that it
> is not my responsibility because it is not my priority :) While I have
> some priorities in my Wikimedian activities (making a higher level of
> automation and development of communities around the projects), I am
> doing a lot of things which I may do because of my position somewhere.
> So, if I did something which is out of the scope of my priorities, I
> expect to find someone who is willing to take it (even as a scratch of
> the project). However, there is no such place, except to write it on
> the list or on the wiki and leave it as is.
>
> >  When you think SUL has been implemented, you are largely right and
> largely
> >  wrong because it has only been implemented for admins. For me it is a
> >  godsend. I have been active on several new projects since and it has
> saved
> >  me a lot of time. For others it has not been implemented and one of the
> >  reasons is that there is no group of people willing or able to get
> involved
> >  into the enormous amount of admin that will be the result. If anything
> there
> >  is a need for people to DO things. When a council will take
> responisibility
> >  and coordinate the needs for such activities, it will be a good thing.
> When
> >  the council tells others what to do it will be an unmitigated disaster.
>
> I think that you didn't take enough care about the my position which
> is very clear: VC members should be *delegates* of communities' will
> and persons who are working on a particular issues inside of the
> working groups. According to my concept, they shouldn't be able to
> decide anything related to the global policies. Contributors from the
> projects should do that.
>
> >  When you observe that nobody is responsible, you are right up to a
> point.
> >  The board is primarily involved in overseeing the WMF ORGANISATION. It
> has
> >  always done a minimal job interfering in the projects. If a council is
> to do
> >  what needs doing for the projects, absolutely, great idea, when will
> you
> >  start. When the council coordinates the needs of the projects with the
> >  organisation, with the board it will be good. The fun thing is, it does
> not
> >  need any of the formal powers and capacitites of the board to do that.
> It
> >  only needs to DO this thing in a credible way.
>
> I said a number of times that I am not participating in this issue
> because of legal issues, but because of community issues. I understand
> and support need for transparency, but I don't think that we urgently
> need a body which would supervise the Board, but the body which would
> take care about community issues.
>
> >  To answer your last question. YES all WMF projects have something more
> in
> >  common. They are all to make information / knowledge available to all
> the
> >  people of the world.
>
> Then, I would ask you what do the Wikimedian projects have more in
> common than a particular one compared to a random free knowledge
> institution (of course, out of purely technical issues like interwiki
> links and servers are)?
>
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