[Foundation-l] Volunteer Council - A shot for a resolution

[effe iets anders]

2008/3/13, Lars Aronsson <lars op aronsson.se>:

>
> I see two issues, that your proposal would benefit from
> addressing.  The first is the relationship between the council
> members and their constituency.  Who is their constituency, these
> "volunteers" or "the community"?  Who is included and who is
> excluded?  Perhaps council members, once appointed, can just
> ignore all volunteers and represent nobody but themselves?
> Won't the new council be just as remote from everyday contributors
> as the current WMF board is?  What mechanism will make the
> difference?


The Volunteer Council is a council representing the volunteers active within
Wikimedia. The major difference witth the Board is that this council will be
a full community representitive body, with no "external experts". The board
does have (or even more: had) "expert" members, which are not primarily
volunteers in Wikimedia. You can probably remember Tim Shell and Michael
Davis, but you can also think of Jan-Bart de Vreede. The exact mechanisms
are still under discussion, and depend a lot on what shape the council will
take.

The second is the task of the council. Exactly what practical work
> is it going to perform?  If the creation of the council gets
> delayed by half a year, what actual harm does that do?  If we can
> delay it, maybe we don't need it at all.  Is the approval of
> changes in the WMF bylaws really any urgent business?


The main task of the preliminary council is to write the report to the
Board, about the exact definition and regulations on the Volunteer Council.
The preliminary council will mainly have to discuss what shape, how the
representivity will be arranged, what size etc. This is because apperently
we don't come to a clear conclusion as the whole volunteer group. If we get
the council running, it will most likely be better able to finalize this
discussion. As you can note in the previous discussions, although everybody
agrees this Council should come, there are big gaps to be bridged between
the different opinions on size, purposes, representivity,
election/appointment, enforcement of opinions, connection to the volunteers
etc. I feel that taking the other route, which we have been on for three
years almost now, does not really bring any progress soon any more, which
makes this next step logical. Is it superduper urgent? I can't tell. Most of
the times, when you really need such a council, there is no more time to
establish one. Is this council an improvement to the current structure? Yes,
I certainly believe so.

As long as the task is to improve communication and mediate ideas,
> perhaps an improved Wikipedia Signpost can do that, which is not a
> power base that pretends to represent anybody else, only a
> newspaper that tries to keep an eye on things that are going on.
> That work can start tomorrow and doesn't need any formal approval
> or appointment of committee members.
>
> Of course you could be right, and there might be no need for a council
after all. I don't see why a preliminary council couldn't get to this
conclusion if that would be the case. They can of course always advice to
stop with the council in that case :)

Best regards,

Lodewijk