[Foundation-l] Community representation

[Brianna Laugher]

On 11/01/2008, James Forrester <jdforrester at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/01/2008, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have been thinking about the wikicouncil stuff lately and it seems
> > to me there is room for another form of community representation,
> > something like a union of editors.
> >
> > WMF<->Project communication is necessary and I think it would be
> > suited to a wikicouncil. But then there is the more general
> > WMF<->community representation, where "community" is the self-elected
> > group of people who are interested in "meta issues"... ie foundation-l
> > posters at the moment.
> >
> > I know the Foundation gave up formal membership however-long-ago but I
> > don't think that would preclude them from organising, or perhaps more
> > accurately recognising, a membership group that was legally powerless.
> > (We don't need to be legally powerful to have power: the most powerful
> > thing we have is the right to fork.)
>
> Maybe I'm a complete fool, but isn't that the point of Chapters? I
> understood the concept of Wikicouncil to be a combination of
> project-specific and geographical representatives. Already people
> would have two (or more!) forms of input in to the Council - would it
> be necessary to have even more, especially as most people interested
> in the Wikicouncil would be interested in the Foundation anyway?

I don't think you're a complete fool :) but I also don't think that's
the point of chapters. Chapter members would almost always have some
legal power I think, within the chapter organisation, but AFAIK
chapter members have no special status to WMF itself.

Besides which, rightly or wrongly it is not easy to create a chapter.

I don't know if I have the concept of a wikicouncil right either, but
I imagine it as a good thing to get more project editors interested in
(or at least aware of) "meta issues", foundation issues. Then what do
they do after they are interested? The answer to that currently is
"..."

cheers
Brianna

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