[Foundation-l] Would you consider being on the Board?

[SJ]

On 6/15/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
> Although the community should ideally decide about things it is my
> feeling that that is more often than not an utopian thought. The problem
> is everybody tries to throw their opinions in a debate and tries to get
> attention to these opinions. This usually results in an endless debate.

Yes.  Ongoing debate is fine, but there should be a corrolary to npov
-- a greater goal aroun each topic of improving information on the
subject, not merely having one opinion/position win or lose.  Then it
would be alright if people come and go; the underlying body of
knowledge about the topic would steadily grow more robust, people with
similar issues in other organizations would be able to start referring
to this ongoing discussion for background material, &c.

Among the longest-standing issues, the majority are faced not by
Wikipedia or the WMF alone, but by many other orgs; in our role as
leaders in creation of useful information perhaps we can improve our
debating style so that it generates both light and heat.

> Many debates within our community therefor are already going on for 2,3
> or more years. This because some people leave. Some people join and new
> views are expressed and the same debate is extended again. Because of
> this we never reach any conclusions to a debate. Which is one of the
> things that make people very tired of wikimedia (me for instance)

I would be content if, after three years of debate about how to cope
with "Fair Use" images, we had 'no conclusions' and continuing
disagerement -- there may be no 'right' final conclusion, as this
changes with time as laws change -- but the world's best free
collection of background material, case studies, legal references, and
hypotheticals on the subject.  Which is not a wholly unreasonable
goal.

> I feel that there are 3 solutions:
>
> 1) A top down approach. The community gets x time to debate an issue
<
> 2) A variant of 1) The community appoints 1 or 2 discussionleaders. They
<
> 3) The least feasible though I think an interesting option. People start
> to group themselves in parties and every party has 1 person as its
> spokesperson in the debate. This means that it will not become a
> cacophonia of voices and the debate might proceed faster. After 1-3
> months the  spokespersons should reach a consensus which is acceptable
> to most.

This is like 2 but without the assumption that for any given issue
there is a single 'community'.  More feasible than 2 in that regard.

All 3 of these assume that there is a master list of issues or topics,
and implicitly assume that there is some mechanism for identifying the
priority of a solution or issue.  Both of which  we all need to work
on together.

SJ