[Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
A chapter is not related to any project. You can contribute either to a
project or to a chapter, the two are not necessarily related. You may either
be represented by a chapter in your country or you are not represented at
all in this way.
Thanks,
      GerardM

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 6:54 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
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