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

[Nathan]

I guess I should be more clear about community building - I was referring
not to increasing the size and productivity of the community, but increasing
the structure of the community by adding layers of bureaucracy. Mike G
mentioned the other day the issue of barrier to entry for new contributors,
and I think the more bureaucratic we get and the farther we are from a
fairly flat and streamlined organization the higher that barrier to entry
will be.

It seems like dissatisfaction with current structures is causing folks to
propose new and parallel structures as a solution - not only are there
functional problems with any sort of group like an Advisory Council that
subtly parallels the Board, there are legal problems as well. Committees
like chapcom and langcom etc. that are clearly and fully subordinate to the
Board exist and perform currently, and so before hashing out a complex
structure for a Volunteer Council I'd like to see a succinct bullet point
list of exactly what it is supposed to accomplish, and how it will benefit
the goal of accumulating and distributing free content. Perhaps this has
been outlined already and I haven't seen it. Having asked the question, I'll
go look now to see if its already been answered.

Nathan

On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 2:09 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 3/14/08, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My concern with this is that the Foundation has a specific mission, and
> it
> >  isn't to be an experiment in community building and governance. Is
> there a
> >  direct connection between establishing councils, advisory groups,
> committees
> >  etc. and improving the encyclopedia? Is the contention that the
> >  "under-representation" of the community on the Board (which I don't
> agree is
> >  actually the case) damages the Foundation's progress towards achieving
> its
> >  overarching goals?
>
> While I may give to you a number of connections because you asked a
> very general question, I will say only that community's (or
> communities') goals don't need to be the same as Foundation's goals.
> While local chapters' goals have to be the same, community is not a
> legal body. And if such thing is ignored, sooner or later community
> will separate itself from the Foundation.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>