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

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 4:51 AM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:

>  - Board as ultra-mega-super-body which decides not only about
>  finances, but about weather, gravity etc.

I, for one, welcome our new gravity overlords.

For those of us playing along at home, a reminder of the meta page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicouncil
I confess to not reading every message in every thread so far, and
perhaps thus not seeing all of the discussion about what such a
council would actually *do* in amongst discussion of governance types,
but what we want the council to achieve seems critical to figuring out
how it should be put together. (Perhaps this entire conversation would
be better had on the wiki, where it could be more easily split into
"how the group should be structured" and "goals for the group.")

My $0.02: I like SJ's idea of members thinking themselves as
"facilitators." I would love to see a large group that could help
share information and ideas from the Foundation to the communities;
from the communities to the Foundation; and discuss problems of
importance to the whole community over the long term.

I would love to see a structure that was well-organized enough that
people could rotate onto the council for a year or two, then someone
new could take their place with no loss in organization or
participation levels. I'd love to see a structure that promoted the
development of useful ideas over a long period of time (as a
community, we're already quite good at this, as this very discussion
shows). I'd love to see a structure that helped preserve community and
institutional memory (and the attendant community values), while at
the same time giving guidance to new, shiny ideas that are proposed by
anyone in the community at large. I would love to see an
organizational body that, with small subgroups, could help bring
skilled labor and careful advice to WMF initiatives, whether it's
organizing Wikimania or advocating for public domain works or figuring
out a nuanced position on a complicated community debate. In other
words, I would love to see an organizational body that was consciously
structured to maximize useful work and minimize wikidrama.

Regardless of how such a body is composed, making all this work well
would require  several *very* competent secretaries who, with the
input of the council, are dedicated to just making sure information
was shared -- that meetings are recorded and posted, calls for comment
are distributed, reports to the board and ED are made on a regular
basis, etc. In my experience, advisory groups in the WMF fail over and
over again because, though they get useful work done, results are not
recorded and communicated consistently over time and in an organized
fashion. Perhaps the people filling these secretarial roles are the
ones that need to be carefully elected!

For the rest, it seems like what's being proposed is a very
large-scale, carefully structured wikiproject: "WikiProject Meta
Governance and Community Communication," or "WikiProject WikiCouncil"
for short. And the way WikiProject members are chosen (on en:wp,
anyway) seems to apply: if you have the energy and enthusiasm to
participate, step right up and volunteer yourself. If you do useful
work, you're part of the project. The emphasis should not be on the
prestige of getting elected, but on the responsibility of taking care
of communication with your community. If you can't fulfill this role,
someone else should step up to help, or to take your place. Even if
there is a core elected body, that should not act to *prevent* other
people from getting involved and helping out if they want to.

-- phoebe