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

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 11:00 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > To me it looks obvious that if we have an executive body and we are going
>  >  to have a legislative body, that in the long run we also need a judicial
>  >  body. Otherwise, the whole system would not work.
>
>  You need some kind of judicial system, but it doesn't necessarily need
>  to be separate (it is, however, the branch that is most desirable to
>  have separate, but it depends on the details as to whether or not its
>  worth it). I'm not sure the distinction between executive and
>  legislative is entirely accurate anyway. The way I see it, the board
>  both legislates on and executes matters than require expert knowledge
>  and the council both legislates on executes matters that don't. The
>  analogy to the US government system isn't a very good one.

I don't agree with the whole idea of having a three-part governing
system for the WMF. I think it's far better to treat the volunteer
council as an advisory group that serves the board, and not treat them
as a separate authority structure. The board can handle the authority
aspects, as it has since it's inception. What the board can't be
expected to do is stay up-to-date with the minutia of hundreds of
projects in hundreds of languages. The board also has a good history
of staying above the fray, and choosing not to get involved with the
management of the individual projects. If the board and the council
aren't competitors, then we don't need to worry about any kind of
judiciary (dare I say "meta arbcom") to maintain the peace between
them.

--Andrew Whitworth