[Foundation-l] Projects without >FDL1.2 migration clause

[Lars Aronsson]

Milos Rancic wrote:

> If anyone's conclusion is that my information is wrong, it may 
> be said so (something like "I checked it with <some better 
> introduced person in fr.wp> and there it is not relevant issue 
> anymore.").

Not that it's wrong, but that it's too vague and unspecified.  
The burden must be on you to prove that there is a real problem at 
hand.  Or else, any whisper or rumour would force the board to 
spend significant time on investigations, that most often would 
turn out to be pointless.

Somehow this relates to your earlier posting where you detailed 
some actual problems where the board had failed and a council 
would be needed.  I liked that posting a lot, because it suddenly 
brought the discussion of a council from the abstract and fuzzy to 
the clear and concrete.  But that also made your ideas vulnerable 
to scrutiny.  For example, you mentioned that the board had been 
too slow in closing down the Moldovan Wikipedia.  Well, perhaps 
there was (is) no real problem in delaying?  Some matters are 
urgent, others are not.  Somebody at the top must do the 
prioritizations, and somebody at the bottom will inevitably 
disagree and be unhappy.  You are apparently unhappy with the 
board and ultimately with Anthere.  But is a council really a 
solution?  What if you, instead, was the chair of WMF?  That would 
mean you could prioritize those issues that are really important 
(according to you).  But what if other volunteers were constantly 
bothering you with irrelevant and unsubstantiated requests?

Now suppose the board continues as today, and the council is 
added, with you a member of the council.  Some decisions are taken 
by the board, others by the council.  Requests are acted upon in a 
timely manner.  But will everybody at the bottom be happy now?  
In order to get things done, the council needs to take action 
after a majority vote, which leaves a minority unhappy.  Even if 
the members of the council reach consensus and they are properly 
elected by and do represent their communities, will everybdoy in 
the community actually agree with their actions?  I think not.

There are a lot of legal and organizational technicalities in 
setting up a council, such as how do you determine who is included 
in "the volunteer community" and how do you properly "represent" 
them.  But what is the benefit?  Even if you succeed in setting up 
the council, lots of individual volunteers will be unhappy with 
every single action that this council takes.  The only people who 
get happier are those who are elected to this council.  Is *that* 
the problem you are trying to solve?



-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se