[Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

[Anthony]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 11:34 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:

> 2009/8/28 Ting Chen <wing.philopp at gmx.de>:
> > There are other reasons too. For example because an
> > advisory board member don't have certain authority against the staff,
> > and because in a lot of cases you cannot definitively say here ends the
> > strategic planning and there starts the othervise function.
>
> Now we're getting to some real reasons. I don't agree regarding
> authority - the board as a collective body has the authority, they can
> exercise that authority on behalf of an advisory board member if
> necessary. The difficulty in drawing lines between different parts of
> the role is valid, though. I expect it can be overcome with some
> effort, however.


I think the main valid reason is that it's kind of rude to ask someone like
Halprin to commit a certain portion of his quite valuable time to the
project, absolutely free, and not to even allow him one board vote (out of
what, 10 now?).

I'd rather see a system for experts where "the community" (with a better
definition than just whoever makes X edits) ratifies the nominees made by
the nomination committee, or at least one where "the community" has the
power to remove members.  But I'd rather see the Wikimedia Foundation as a
membership organization...  So whatever.