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

[Florence Devouard]

Delirium wrote:
> I'm not saying elections are always the best choice, but unless things 
> actually do start to turn out badly, I don't think it makes sense to 
> assume that anything done by vote among Wikimedia projects will result 
> in the worst case of sectarianism. Most of us base our vote *much* more 
> on how much we agree with each candidate on the future of the 
> organization than we do on whether we happen to come from the same country.
> 
> -Mark

I agree with Mark.

I think trying to vote to give representativity along linguistic lines 
would result in much distress
* deciding of the number of representant for each language (likely to 
create tensions between languages, 2 for you, 3 for me etc...)
* might result in poor candidacies in small languages/projects (limited 
pool of candidates)
* will result in an unworkable set (300-500 representants)
* will prevent cross pollination of candidates (an english native might 
prefer to vote for a french speaking candidate, but will not be able)
* will result in a new board member (or council member) thinking he 
represents only a language community rather than the entire community.

I also think that many of us would prefer to vote for someone who has a 
view beyond his native community, who has already made the effort to get 
involved at the meta level.

I am fully sensitive to discrimination issues. But I do not think that 
the solution to discrimination is to reserve places to the discriminated 
ones (or perceived as such). The solution is to make sure so-called 
discriminated are given the opportunity to join the meta level, and to 
communicate with other linguistic communities, and to promote themselves 
through the type of activities they are involved in (perhaps helping to 
handle the press, perhaps helping in organizing Wikimania, perhaps 
helping with translations, perhaps helping to provide leaflets) etc...


ant