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

[Milos Rancic]

On 3/14/08, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  I want to express my support for these ideas.  My
>  vision of a Council very much involves the use of
>  smaller working groups within the Council that would
>  repot back to the full membership.  I also imagine
>  that non-Council members would be allowed to
>  participate in such working groups if the task at hand
>  interests them.  Again I very much would want to see
>  the full Council as a facilitator identifing and
>  prioritizing issues, and then bringing together people
>  capable of solving the issues and empowering them to
>  do.

Yes. Thanks for mentioning non-Council members participation. It was
on my mind, but I forgot to say.

>  Regarding smaller wikis.  If the Council members wish
>  to make such communities feel heard they can do so
>  without being from that community themselves or
>  reserving seats for that community.  I don't like
>  describing the Council in terms of representation,
>  because then people will vote for personal
>  representatives and this in my mind should be more a
>  working body than a governing body.  There is no need
>  to "govern" wikis, but the wikis do have needs that
>  are not being met by existing structures.

There are two important roles of the Council which requires representation:

- Communication: person from wiki X hears what are the needs of wiki Y
through this channel. While such communication is quite possible, for
example, here -- I don't remember that I heard here anything like
"contributors of Swahili Wikipedia are talking with contributors of
Maltese Wikipedia about their common needs". By giving a duty to some
contributors to talk, I am sure that we will have at least -- more
talk, more communication.

- Decisions about common interests and goals: What is, for example,
NPOV to us? A Bible? A sacral code which should be copied and
translated only? If not, who is responsible for its development?
English Wikipedia contributors only? What about some other basic
values (i.e. Five pillars)? What about trash on some projects? If we
want to work on any meta thing we need to have a legitimate body to
make such decisions.