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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

There have been several post even in this thread, indicating quite
specifically possible authorities of the Council, at least one by Eric who
can hardly be suspected in ignorance of the matter. May be it is good to
look at these first.

> Some of the proposals in this 100-post thread seem hopelessly complicated.
> If you want something like this to succeed, make it simple. I don't think
> its realistic to view this proposed council as a Board parallel in
> authority, even if the types of authority are separated clearly. Members
> of
> the Board have specific legal responsibility for Foundation activities
> that
> require it to be the final level of authority. Some elements of authority
> can be restricted from the Board through by-laws, but I don't think its
> possible to designate a level of authority above the Board beyond the
> "membership" itself without conferring legal duties and liabilities.
>
> What about all this effort can't be accomplished through an expansion of
> the
> duties and participation in the Chapters Community? It seems like the only
> non-ChapCom related responsibilities are governance related, and
> governance
> is the specific province of the Board - if you want to committees to make
> recommendations, well we've got those and we also already have a structure
> for them. Why reinvent the wheel, particularly when it appears that it
> will
> have a thousand moving parts? Milos has so far in this thread called for
> the
> Volunteer Council,  a Supreme Court and judicial system, another body with
> content authority... Has no one on this list ever read the WP:CREEP page
> on
> en.wikipedia? Folks self-select themselves for committees based on
> interest
> and level of committment - how do you expect to increase representation
> and
> participation simply by creating a new bureaucratic edifice?
>

Well, chapters are organized by countries, and we are organized by
projects.  What Chapter specifically addresses en.wp problems? Or of
Kurdish wikipedia? What Chapter an Ukrainian living in Germany and editing
ru.wp must be associated with? How the Chapters are going to establish the
common policy etc?


> There is great value in having non-Board groups confer and make specific
> recommendations, and value in encouraging participation and understanding
> between projects and languages, but I think the idea of a Council as has
> been articulated by some in this thread is fatally flawed - and perhaps
> this
> is why it hasn't moved forward in so long. If conceptual flaws and
> complexity have prevented agreement on the role and functions of this
> group
> before, why should we expect that such agreement will appear through the
> "provisional council" process?
>

Because there are many people ready to discuss endlessly but very few
ready to do something. The hope is a small provisional council will
finally establish the rules which could never be established via meta and
mailing lists discussions.

Cheers,
Yaroslav