[Foundation-l] Policy modification (was possible reconsideration)

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Ray as a candidate to the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, you
are now in the race to win votes.  That makes you a politician and you have
to say and do the political things in order to win. I know and respect you
enough that I expect different shades of grey as a consequence.

When you ask people to do a task, when you give people the responsibility to
do a job you either give the authority to do the job or you do not. The
language committee has as its task to be responsible for the process to
create functioning projects in new languages and new projects in existing
languages. The objective is to create new languages that are objectively the
language they say they are and to ensure that there is a reasonable chance
for these projects to succeed. As a consequence a policy was formulated.
This policy has clear benefits. There have been people pushing their point
of view to change the policy. Solutions have been proposed that have as a
consequence that people have to do things in order to have their POV taken
in consideration. When they do not want to do this, It is their choice and
it is for them to live with the consequences.

It is exactly because the language committee has the authority to insist on
the implementation of its policies that it is a functioning committee. When
the community is free to discuss and force changes to the policy at all time
because they do not like that their exception will not be granted, then the
amount of time spend on endless talk will kill off the interest in being
part of what will become a dysfunctional committee.

Ray my question to you: are we a talking shop or are we to do what we aim to
do.

NB I am extremely happy and grateful that the new projects that have been
approved by the board have been created.

Thanks Tim !!

Thanks,
     GerardM

On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 10:00 AM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Jesse Plamondon-Willard wrote:
> > Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >
> >> If a proposed amendment fails to meet
> >> community approval criteria it fails, and that's the end of it.  It is
> >> not the mandate of  a subcommittee to override that.  I am well aware of
> >> the problem of inadequate community participation, but community silence
> >> does not mean consent, and without a predetermined minimum level of
> >> community participation no policy or policy amendment should be
> >> considered as approved.
> >>
> > That is incorrect. The language subcommittee was specifically tasked
> > with formulating and implementing a language subdomain creation
> > policy. The committee furthermore did not override the community. Some
> > community members questioned the need for that clause (long after it
> > was introduced), and failed to achieve any consensus whatsoever on
> > whether to keep, change, or remove it. As such, no change was made.
> > Whether committees *should* make decisions or depend on the wider
> > community to do so is a very different discussion than whether they
> > *can*.
> >
> I can't speak in terms of the factual specifics for the language policy
> because I did not follow it as it was developing.  I don't see it as
> appropriate that a committee would make policies simply because it can.
> That's an attitude that distances the committee from the community.
> "Override" is probably a stronger word than what I would use in the
> circumstances, when the result was based on an absence of consensus.
> What really needs to be clarified with respect to any committee is a
> demarcation of the committee's job in relation to the community's rights
> to decide.
> > As an aside, I'm a little confused. You say that committees should not
> > make or change policies, but you are a member of the Provisional
> > Volunteer Council. Do you intend the PVC to simply be a proposal mill,
> > throwing out ideas for the community to debate?
> >
> >
> That's an important question.  In general I would say more yes than no,
> but it's still an important point that needs to be hammered out by all
> the PVC.  With the number of active projects in Wikimedia the Council
> cannot presume to dictate what each of these projects will do.  If it
> does that it will soon lose credibility and influence among the
> communities.  Policies need to go back and forth between committee and
> community until there is is agreement.  The same also applies to any
> amendment of existing policy.  Naturally there need to be criteria for
> what constitutes community agreement.
>
> Ec
>
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