[Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

[Anthony]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 5:19 PM, Tim Landscheidt <tim at tim-landscheidt.de>wrote:

> Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > [...]
> > "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." is a good principle for maintaining
> > the status quo, it isn't a good principle if you want progress. The
> > job isn't done yet, so progress would be good. If you want progress
> > you have to be willing to implement enhancements as well as fixes. One
> > of the main fundamental problems I have found with the WMF is with
> > regards to prioritising. Often the WMF doesn't prioritise the same
> > things as the community seems to want. The dumps that Anthony
> > mentioned is a good example of that - a significant number of
> > community members complained about the dumps not working for years
> > before much progress was made and they still aren't completely
> > working. The tech team prioritised other things over the dumps, had
> > the community had the final say they may have done otherwise (or they
> > may not, no detailed discussion of the options ever took place in
> > public so it is difficult to know what conclusion would have been
> > reached).
>
> Given the fact that no candidate for the board seems to have
> campaigned prominently for this issue in this year's elec-
> tion and it does not even seem to have been mentioned in the
> two before, I do not see why the board should have decided
> otherwise.


Well, personally I was responding to the "it ain't broke" part, rather than
proposing a fix.  I don't think having all the board members elected by the
current Special:Boardvote rules would fix the dumps.  In fact, I think if
anything it would keep the dumps broken longer.

One of the biggest problems is that the WMF doesn't really have "a
community".  The individual projects have communities, which to some extent
overlap, I wouldn't call that the WMF community.  Activity on a single
project is all that's needed for eligibility to vote for board members.
 There's no need to even feign commitment to the larger goals of the
foundation as a whole.

I guess there's now a wiki for the WMF community: strategy.wikimedia.org.