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

[Milos Rancic]

On 3/14/08, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>  It is really nice that Milos wants this big representative body for
>  languages and projects, but there are several ways win which they can be
>  represented. They can be represented through a chapter, they can communicate
>  directly with the organisation; I can imagine that Gary is the obvious
>  person for such things. In OTRS we have a functioning system where queries
>  and pointers are handled. When you want to get involved in things that do
>  not work well, there is plenty of scope for getting involved.

My primary idea is not to make a body with a large number of members,
but to democratize our institutions.

Asking something on the list or at OTRS or wherever except to the
local chapters have the ultimate judge, manager, law-maker which
numbers something like 7-10 persons (I don't know the exact number and
I am to lazy to check it now). By having power concentrated into such
small number of people, there is a high possibility for corruption.

All other things are direct consequence of complicity of our community.

Treat those 500-700 body as just a mathematical play with electoral
body to make better representation of small projects. So, those
500-700 people would be tribunes, but with the main goal to transfer
decision about some issue from projects which they represent to one
place.

The other option is not to choose tribunes at all. We may say that
there are "electoral points" which every language, every project,
every group of projects, the Board (etc.?) have. Then, decision would
be made at those levels and after that points would be just counted.

Operational bodies (like "Community regulation body" or "NPOV
implementation body") should be, of course, much smaller and
functional.

But, in all cases, as Yann said, we are a virtual community and our
primary medium of communication is Internet. So, whatever the size of
body is, members of any Wikimedian body should treat Internet as their
primary communication channel -- not live meetings.