[Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/8/27 Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net>:
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>>> The best examples you can see are Stu West and Jan-Bard de
>>> Vreede. Stu with his technical and financial expertise is simply there,
>>> in every meeting, in the board mailing list, we don't have to go out and
>>> ask someone from the outside, especially because these expertise are
>>> really direly needed in every meeting and most of our topics.
>>>
>> Brion and Véronique have that expertise and could easily be brought in
>> to whatever meetings they are needed for.
>>
> This is incomprehensible to me. One of the key responsibilities of the
> board is to oversee the work of the staff. That requires a combination
> of the board's own expertise plus outside advisors on occasion to
> supplement this. Brion and Veronique do great work and we need their
> expertise in doing it, and occasionally they may be brought into our
> meetings to provide information. But it would be totally abdicating our
> responsibilities for us to call on that expertise in order to review the
> work they themselves did.

If you read the entire email I sent you will find that I addressed
exactly that point. Please don't selectively quote to misrepresent
people, it is either extremely stupid, extremely immature or extremely
malicious, and I'm not happy with any of those qualities in the chair
of the WMF board.