[Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring

[Florence Devouard]

Tim Landscheidt wrote:
> Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> 
>>>  Or, in other words: There is no
>>>  power because you cannot give orders to volunteers.
> 
>> This meme is oft-repeated but still untrue.  Almost every volunteer
>> organization has a hierarchy and "gives orders" to its members to some
>> extent.  Its members are, of course, free to ignore those "orders",
>> but the organization is then free to disallow them from further
>> participation.
> 
>> Seriously, what volunteer organization can you think of where
>> volunteers are told to just do whatever they feel like?  Does the
>> Obama campaign committee give volunteers a bunch of blank signs and
>> say "go support Obama", or do they assign people to particular routes
>> and ask them to follow particular rules while canvassing?
> 
>> The Wikimedia Foundation may run this way, and maybe it's even a good
>> way of running things, but it's certainly not impossible to do it any
>> other way.
> 
> I have spent about a decade working in election campaigns,
> and, to repeat the "meme": You cannot give orders to volun-
> teers. (Besides, I see no rationale in disallowing an editor
> to edit article A before he has edited article B - probably
> you end up with no article edited at all. What would be the
> benefit?)
> 
>   The US presidential election is a prime example: Polls
> show that supporters of the Democratic Party will not only
> cease their commitment if their favorite candidate is not
> nominated, they will even vote for *another* party's candi-
> date.
> 
>   That is exactly the point I made in the post you replied
> to: Should the board decide against the consensus of the
> volunteers (editors, developers, system administrators,
> whatever), they will walk.
> 
> Tim

I could not agree more with you.
but I would like to offer another perspective as well.

Board members are also volunteers. And you are correct "you cannot give 
orders to volunteers".

A big difference between board and editors is that if an article has not 
been written yet, an editor can not be blamed for not having written it. 
Also, if an editor makes a mistake, the next editor can not be blamed 
for the mistake done by the previous editor.

It is not the case for the board. If a board member makes a mistake, 
then the whole board is seen as responsible. If a board member does not 
do his job, then the whole board is guilty of not providing this 
specific job.
The outcome is quite embarassing. As Chair, I feel that a particular 
problematic situation. Whilst I "can not give orders to volunteer board 
members", I have to make sure that certain things are done and properly 
done (if not done, the community complains, the IRS complains, the audit 
company complains, the readers of the website complain etc...). But 
whilst I can not give orders to others, I can not fire them either.

I am left with either the choice of "letting the thing not done" (with 
the risk of failing to my own duties as board member, or with the risk 
of community blaming me as Chair, or with the risk of the community not 
electing me :-)); or I am left with the choice of trying to do the job 
myself, covering up for the others failures (at the risk of becoming 
enslaved to the Foundation, ruining my own personal and professional life).


"This meme is oft-repeated but still untrue.  Almost every volunteer 
organization has a hierarchy and "gives orders" to its members to some 
extent.  Its members are, of course, free to ignore those "orders", but 
the organization is then free to disallow them from further participation."

...is not something I believe is true neither in the case of our 
projects, nor of WMF.

Ant