[Foundation-l] A proposal for organisation

[Ray Saintonge]

Birgitte SB wrote:

>Personally,  I  really like this model a great deal. 
>I like it much better as it is here than with any of
>the modifications which have already been proposed. 
>This really could work easily without major elections
>in most cases.  I think we should keep it as simple as
>possible.  Start off with all current buearucrats
>being Project Members ask them to immediately nominate
>one(?) other person from where they are a bueruecrat
>and two(?) people from a language too small to have a
>buerucrat.  That is the seed membership which should
>allow initial elections of officers and voting on
>basic bylaws etc.  From then on any Project Member can
>nominate anyone to join as in Apache, also future
>buearucrats do not automatically become members.  Once
>that is setup we begin to worry about how to seed the
>Foundation Memebership.  I think that Foundation
>Membership should be drawn from Project Members and
>Chapter Members pretty much exclusively without
>"making a choice" of which membership card one person
>can carry.  Although I do not think *officers* at the
>Project Level should hold any position on Foundation
>Level commitees at the same time, I do not see a
>problem with an officer being simple voting Foundation
>Member.  Nor do I see a problem with Foundation
>Committee members being simple voting Project or
>Chapter Members.  I imagine the Foundation Membership
>would be pretty self-balancing.  If for example the
>Foundation Membership begins to be over weighted with
>Wikipedia Project Members the Chapter Members and
>other Non-pedia Project Members could easily put a
>stop to more Wikipedia Projects Members being
>confirmed and confirm people from other areas to
>restore balance.  
>
>As to concerns that smaller languages will be left
>out, and that they have different issues.  I think the
>first can be easily avoided as so many people strongly
>believe in promoting smaller languages.  Honestly can
>they be more left out in this new system than they are
>now?  That they face different challenges according to
>size is even more reason to keep them together so they
>can learn from each other.  A place were RC can be
>checked by hand will one day grow, and to learn in
>advance how to deal with libel on a larger project can
>only be a benifit.  The problems faced at a smaller
>languages can find many suggestions from those who
>have already "been there and done that".  But I think
>the Project Membership (especially non-pedia ones)
>will be as concerned with common technical issues as
>legal or procedural ones.  Besides that there are many
>issues that *do* scale.  How to encourage people to
>work on core topics, instead of pet projects for
>example.  There could always be a backdoor built in to
>allow the Board to appoint people from
>un-representented languages to Project Membership if a
>complaint comes up through the Chapters.  But I do not
>think it would come to that. /listinfo/foundation-l
>
This would be a helpful approach to getting the ball rolling.

We begin with what works, and deal with problems pragmatically rather 
than trying to imagine every conceivable hurdle ahead of time.  By-laws 
should reflect practice; not the other way around. 

Ec