[Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Aphaia wrote:
> First I think it would have been nice this decision making would have
> had a public comment phase, before the Board simply resolved that as
> such, while most of its current members come from the community. It is
> rather, a issue of process of formalization of decision making, not
> criticism to its outcome. <OT>Adherence of good formalized process is
> a strong feature of tea ceremony and Japanese way of thought in
> general.</OT> .
> 

*nod*


> The chapter seats may have many implications. It may be seen as an
> alternative of current  community seats, so from this view, it could
> be seen as reduced the power of community, specially when one have no
> near future possibility to settle a chapter in his land (e.g. PRC Main
> Land, excluding HK and Macau). Reflecting more thought from the
> chapters, in respect to their experience, is fine. But reducing the
> representation of the rest of community is not always fine.

Yes, I think this is an important point. There are three things
that matter. Appearances matter. Formal arrangements matter.
Practical functionality matters. Ignoring any one of these
three is not good.

I have an idle thought. If there are to be seats elected by
a limited circle of projects with chapters, would not the
easiest manner of balancing things be that people from
projects with chapters not be able to vote in the other
elections from the community. In this fashion the so called
"community" seats would be transformed into "chapterless
community seats".

Note that this proposal has the virtue that this would not
disenfranchise nearly all the _individuals_ who contribute
to projects with chapters, as many of them contribute in
multiple languages, and thus may have an voting-eligble
account in a smaller language without chapter.


> 
> However, I have another thought it wouldn't make the situation change
> drastically at least at this moment: my gray cell units whispers
> "anyway most of votes come from the project whose volunteers or at
> least some of them have formed a chapter or more?" And I am tempting
> to say "yeah, exactly" .... For 2007: top ten projects of voters were
> en [UK and now Austria], de [DE, CH and now AU], fr [FR, CH], it [IT,
> CH], pl, nl [NL], ja, commons, no [now NO], es [now AR and we know
> already some planning chapters] . Only ja has no chapter even in the
> plan, and we may remove commons for this consideration because of
> their service project characteristic.. In top twenty, we will find
> also he and zh. sv and sr had relatively small numbers of voters (10
> and 8 respectively) but anyway there are many projects which had no
> voter at all).
> 
> I won't say the issue of overweight is purely theoretical, since I
> believe the composition of Board should be considered carefully, both
> in a short term and in a long run. But even such consideration is
> genuine theoretical, it should be based on facts we know and have
> faced. I think I don't so much like of this chapter seat and its
> distribution ideas, but currently I won't reject it simply either.

If we ignore (just for discussion, not in the real world, as that
would be bad) for the moment the "formal structure" and the
"outward appearance" of the thing; in practical terms there
might become into force a paradoxical tendency...

Since in practise the disenfranchisement of the chapterless
this new process creates would drastically lower the "opportunity
cost" of creating a completely separate institution to represent
specifically the chapterless, whether official or unofficial,
those of a paranoid tendency in the chapters, might in actual
practise bend over backwards to make sure the *actual* concerns
of the chapterless are given high attention to.

I am not saying this is necessarily a felicitous way of making
sure that that happens, but it is something to consider.


Yours in Wikimedia;

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, AKA. Cimon Avaro