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

[Birgitte SB]

I guess I think the Council should be a structure
which increases the size and productivity of the
community.  I suppose some ideas expressed in this
thread seem overly bureaucratic to me, and I do not
support those.  However I don't find the idea of
Council inherently more bureaucracy than it is worth.

Birgitte SB

--- Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
> >
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