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

[Ray Saintonge]

Erik Moeller wrote:
> But these qualifications are absolutely necessary for protecting the
> organization. Just an example: It's very hard to do good hiring for a
> position whose background is completely different from your own.
> That's why Brion is the hiring manager for developers and not Sue - so
> we can find great techies to expand our team. Similarly, to hire a
> competent Executive Director, it helps to have significant experience
> in the management of non-profit organizations. And so forth.
>
> We need to get over the idea that the Board somehow has to be deeply
> connected to
> - the project communities
> - the day-to-day questions facing the Foundation.
>   

While I sympathize with the idea that only one-third of the Board should 
be appointed, I find the motion ill-timed.  It is conceivable that a 
Volunteer Council could propose such a requirement, but only in the 
context of other requirements.  In isolation it leaves the impression of 
being more about power struggles than about building real value to the 
organization as a whole.
> Dealing with challenges in both areas is the responsibility of staff &
> volunteers. Staff are organized through the Foundation itself;
> volunteers lack organizational representation. That's what the
> Volunteer Council seeks to address: giving volunteers a forum, a
> voice, a set of responsibilities.
>   

Expertise is a sine-qua-non for staff hiring, but tipping one's hand in 
favour of a Board full of technocrats could too easily be divisive.  
Saying that volunteers lack organizational representation is certainly 
to the point, and I would be tempted to go a little further to say that 
it lacks any kind of coherent general organization at all.  There are 
isolated pockets of excellent organization in various committees or 
projects, but little in the way of giving a broad overview to the entire 
operation.
> Some decisions which were in the past taken by the Board (final
> approval of new wiki projects, policies on licensing, some or all
> agreements related to the chapters) could be delegated to the V.C.,
> but importantly, it would also address questions which are only very
> vaguely answerable right now: What to do when a conflict escalates
> beyond a single wiki, how to investigate allegations of serious abuse
> of administrative privileges, when to activate a software feature,
> etc.
>
> The V.C. would work with the staff on issues affecting the
> communities, e.g. business deals affecting the projects, grant
> proposals, etc. - the nature of that relationship would still have to
> be developed, and a lot of it would probably be consensus-driven, just
> like collaboration in the projects. Some decisions could be firmly in
> the V.C.'s hand, e.g. final approval of organizational program goals,
> approval of any change significantly affecting a project, etc.
>   

These are all possibilities, but I would be cautious about putting too 
much on the VC's plate too early.  All those responsibilities 
collectively would have too much the appearance of a power vacuum 
waiting to be filled by people who have convinced themselves of the 
Board's excesses.  I think the Council can be an important bridge 
between the Board and the communities, but before it can be effective in 
that role it needs to build trust with both the Board and the 
communities.  Doing so with the Board should be relatively easy, but the 
perceptions in the communities are widely divergent, and often based on 
unfounded fears.

The first duty of the VC that would continue past the provisional stage 
is to develop its own coherent internal organization. A VC that thrusts 
itself prematurely into thorny conflict resolutions risks becoming a 
part of the problem. 

Several people in these discussions have asked for a more precise 
definition of what a Council would do.  Ironically, if those answers 
were easy to come by it could obviate the need for a Council.
> In such a model, a Board of people with decades of non-profit
> experience provides the necessary "last protection" for the
> Foundation: protection against mismanagement, support of
> sustainability efforts, protection against violation of core values,
> etc. This does not mean that these people have to have 10,000 edits in
> the projects. They could come from education, from projects assisting
> developing nations, from the technology sector. But they would have
> one thing in common: experience safeguarding _organizations_, rather
> than wikis.
>   

In a lot of respects, I can agree.  But the 10,000 edits criterion may 
be the only one that is readily verifiable by the largest part of the 
community.  Other criteria may be just as valuable, but do they address 
our own counterpart to the legal maxim that justice must not only be 
done, but seen to be done?
> >From everything we know, Wikimedia is a very young, proud, geeky
> community. And it's the common fallacy of young people to
> underestimate the value of experience. Work experience for
> organizations with hundreds of staff in positions of management,
> accounting, legal responsibilities means having hundreds of personal
> case studies to draw from, hundreds of parameters to consider when
> making a decision. Expertise _matters_.
>   

Sure, but the young and restlessly geeky are not easily convinced of 
this.  Nor for that matter are many academics.  The aesthetic 
satisfaction of an elegantly technical solution is often viewed by the 
general population as intellectual masturbation.  The experienced person 
may be more concerned with the simple question, "Does it work?"  "How 
much effort is needed for the not-so-technical staff to employ a new tool?"
> Integrity can come from within or from without. 

This is an ambiguous statement. If we are speaking of personal 
qualities, no, it can only come from one's own personal fibre.  If it's 
a matter of where people of integrity can be found then yes they can be 
found both within and without the organization.  But the other side of 
that coin is that scoundrels can be found both within and without the 
organization.  Unfortunately people of integrity are often weakest at 
recognizing scoundrels, because they find the activity of scoundrels to 
be unimaginable.
> "Not a wiki editor"
> does not mean "person who will sell out the project to evil venture
> capitalists at the next opportunity". Wikimedia is a values-driven
> community; it is not the only one. People with strong convictions and
> beliefs and passions _and_ experience who would support our cause
> wholeheartedly can be found -- and they can be asked to commit to core
> principles and values we hammer out. To a large extent we've already
> done so.
>   

Maybe, but there can be a reluctance to commit to the values that 
someone else has hammered out.  Many such people prefer to rely on their 
own reasoning.
> The mixing of the senior managers, accountants, lawyers and the young
> wiki volunteer enthusiasts into a single body is a recipe for conflict
> and burn-out: One group has near limitless energy, the other has to be
> conservative with its time; one group tries to make measured decisions
> with long term implications, the other is highly involved in actions
> taking effect immediately; one group tries to be vocal and visible as
> members of a community, the other tries to be cautious and deliberate.
>   

This doesn't leave a lot of room for radical new ideas.  In the battle 
against the half-baked the half-asleep have inertia on their side. Their 
is a fundamental paradox in all this.
> Different organizational functions call for different qualifications.
> We've tried to fit everything into one Board. That was the simplest
> model to start with when the organization was young. As we grow, we
> need to achieve a mature balance that is sustainable. As Henning said:
> If we want to become a charity of free knowledge, we need to start
> thinking like a charity -- and that means drawing from all areas of
> expertise, not just the obvious core volunteer community experience.
>   
Functional differentiation should indeed be a part of development, but 
let's not misplace in the Board the kind of monomania that properly 
belongs in the staff.  A Board still needs the wisdom to balance these 
various specializations.

An effective charity aspires to no longer being a charity.  We would do 
better to aspire to be knowledge's Grameen Bank.

Ec