[Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring

[Samuel Henderson]

Thank you for this reassurance.  I am astonished that the Board would not
anticipate this (widespread) interpretation of events, or recognize that
this change would be regarded by many as a power grab by insiders.

Again, for my part, the presentation of this as if it were not removing
power from the editing community (which it certainly is) is far more
troubling than the actual removal of power (which may indeed be a wise
move).  I remain troubled.

A general observation, if I may:

The assumption of good faith becomes increasingly difficult to sustain as
the power relations become less symmetric.  (The limiting case of this would
be assuming good faith in national leaders, which the events of the past
decade have shown to be extraordinarily unwise.)   At the moment the
difference in power between individual editors and Board members is
enormous, and growing.  Much of this is for eminently sound legal and
strategic reasons, but the members of the Board should understand that this
means that they will need to account scrupulously for their actions if they
expect to be regarded as good-faith actors.   To expect otherwise is not
only unrealistic, but frankly underestimates the intelligence of the editing
community.

Cheers,

Sam

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 9:23 PM, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
<snip>

>
>
> I can assure you that none of that bad-faith understanding of this is
> valid.
>
>  > In this regard, I
> > sincerely hope that I and others have misinterpreted a substantial part
> of
> > this discussion.
>
> I believe that you have.
>
> The board believes that the chapter mechanism is working and workable
> and should be supported and expanded.  It provides for an excellent and
> formal means for extending community control of the projects and of the
> future direction of the Foundation, with some interesting and useful
> advantages over on-wiki election... and some interesting disadvantages
> as well.
>
> But there is absolutely no sense in interpreting this as some kind of
> removal of power from the community.
>
> --Jimbo
>
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