[Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring

[Aphaia]

First I think it would have been nice this decision making would have
had a public comment phase, before the Board simply resolved that as
such, while most of its current members come from the community. It is
rather, a issue of process of formalization of decision making, not
criticism to its outcome. <OT>Adherence of good formalized process is
a strong feature of tea ceremony and Japanese way of thought in
general.</OT> .

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  > For the record, this is the current chapter distribution:
>  > Europe - 9
>  > East Asia - 2
>  > Middle East - 1
>  > South America - 1
>  > Australia - 1
>  >
>  > -Mark
>
>
>  You are absolutely correct Mark.
>  But you may not have understood that chapters will not necessarily elect
>  chapter members ?
>  I even have the weakness to think that they will have the wisdom to
>  avoid that trap ;-)

Hopefully so,　and Kurt seems to show such a wisdom already (and you
are also WMFR Board member, right?), so in a short time it would be
okay (or am I too optimistic?), but for a long run, I'm not sure the
scheme announced is the best composition and schedule.

Several brainstormig ideas:
* Why not having the "chapter seats" as of appointed ones and keep the
community vote seats in the current number or so?
* Why distribute into 3/2/1/4? Why not 4/2/ ...  and have the
community to elect 2 in one year?
* Why (always) need 4 appointed? (I think it was already brought
up...) why not say "up to 4"?
etc etc.

The chapter seats may have many implications. It may be seen as an
alternative of current  community seats, so from this view, it could
be seen as reduced the power of community, specially when one have no
near future possibility to settle a chapter in his land (e.g. PRC Main
Land, excluding HK and Macau). Reflecting more thought from the
chapters, in respect to their experience, is fine. But reducing the
representation of the rest of community is not always fine.

However, I have another thought it wouldn't make the situation change
drastically at least at this moment: my gray cell units whispers
"anyway most of votes come from the project whose volunteers or at
least some of them have formed a chapter or more?" And I am tempting
to say "yeah, exactly" .... For 2007: top ten projects of voters were
en [UK and now Austria], de [DE, CH and now AU], fr [FR, CH], it [IT,
CH], pl, nl [NL], ja, commons, no [now NO], es [now AR and we know
already some planning chapters] . Only ja has no chapter even in the
plan, and we may remove commons for this consideration because of
their service project characteristic.. In top twenty, we will find
also he and zh. sv and sr had relatively small numbers of voters (10
and 8 respectively) but anyway there are many projects which had no
voter at all).

I won't say the issue of overweight is purely theoretical, since I
believe the composition of Board should be considered carefully, both
in a short term and in a long run. But even such consideration is
genuine theoretical, it should be based on facts we know and have
faced. I think I don't so much like of this chapter seat and its
distribution ideas, but currently I won't reject it simply either.

Re: community election schedule. As a past election committee member I
tend to support a election in every two years, because of overhead of
election process, but on the other hand, I believe the basic idea of
having an election every year is good to keep the BoT composition to
reflect the  latest community concerns, specially considering the
possibility the chapter seats will be able to be taken by people not
coming from the community.

And my first question was: is there any potential problem to have
other orgs (legally chapters are other orgs based in another country,
at least at that moment, right?) voices to select WMF BoT and not vice
versa? I suppose the Board had consulted Mike and he nodded, but I
would love to get further explanation.

-- 
KIZU Naoko
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese)
Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD