[Foundation-l] Chapter-selected Board seats - brainstorming

[Florence Devouard]

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Florence Devouard wrote:
>> The way I understood it when we drafted the text is this:
>> We felt that various people considered that the board was not supportive 
>> of the creation of a USA chapter;
>>  From the moment when the chapters have a say in the board membership, 
>> it seemed likely that part of the community could have complained that 
>> American citizens would not be able to have a voice about these reserved 
>> chapters given that the board did not allow US chapters.
>> As such, what our sentence primarily meant was that the board would not 
>> oppose the creation of a USA chapter.
>>
>> It does not mean that we know or have a clear opinion on how to deal 
>> with state level - city level - library level etc...,
>> It does not mean that we yet know what these chapters would do
>> it simply means that on the principle, we'll be happy to approve a USA 
>> chapter ... or USA chapters, or USA chocolate cake, or something, that 
>> will make it possible for USA citizens to get involved at board 
>> membership level.
> 
> As the chapter representation discussion develops the impression that I 
> get is that the whole thing was poorly thought out.
> 
> I have no problem with the general idea of chapter representation on the 
> Board, but American representation is the kind of problem that the Board 
> should have foreseen before it went ahead and resolved that there would 
> be chapter representatives by a certain date.  The Board seems to have 
> forgotten the lesson of the first election when one elected person would 
> represent the editors in general, and the other would depend on some 
> notion of membership.  The idea didn't work, and we ended up with two 
> trustees who essentially represented the first of these groups.
> 
> Perhaps the Board should have sought a working paper from the Chapters 
> Committee before embarking on this path, by asking the simple question, 
> "We are considering chapter representation on the Board, please advise 
> us how this might best be done."
> 
> Ec

You may not have interpretated our decision in the right way Ec.

We have essentially said to the chapters, "we want chapter 
representation on the board and we have decided to reserve two seats on 
that regard. Now, please advise on how this might be best done, report 
to us, the WMF board will approve this procedure, then the two 
representants will be selected according to this procedure".

The only big difference with what you suggest is that rather than asking 
the chapters IF they wanted to be represented on the board, we told them 
it would happen.

Now, you may consider that this was mere authoritarianism; my own 
feeling is that it was not. I can remember several discussions with 
chapter members, where those pointed out that it was not fair that the 
Foundation had so much power over chapters and chapters had so little 
(with regards to tms uses in particular). It was felt that in a 
partnership, checks and balances required that chapters have more of a 
say than they had. And I heard several times that it would be fitting 
that chapters have one seat on the board.

So, it may not be entirely surprising that the board decided to skip 
that step.

Now, for all the coming steps, we are waiting for advice on how this 
might best be done.

Ant