[Foundation-l] Restricting Appointed members (Proposal).

[Thomas Dalton]

On 19/03/2008, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 3/18/08, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >  However, the majority of the board does have to come from the
>  >  community, it's in the bylaws (Article IV, Section 2 (D) if memory
>  >  serves).
>
>
> And, I would argue for a different governance model where the Board of
>  Trustees and the Volunteer Council are both referenced in the Bylaws
>  with their respective responsibilities, and requirements of volunteer
>  participation in wiki projects only apply to the Volunteer Council,
>  while the focus for Board membership are legal, managerial, financial
>  qualification requirements.

There is certainly merit to that idea. The only concern I have is that
the board would almost certainly have precedence over the council in
any dispute between them (the board is legally responsible for the
organisation, so I can't see any other way it can be). This means the
outside professionals would have precedence over the community, which
makes me uncomfortable. I trust the professionals to make the right
business decisions, I don't trust them to have our values and ideals
at heart (hopefully, they will, but we can't be sure of it).