[Foundation-l] Call for nominations: chapter-appointed seats on the WMF Board of Trustees

[Risker]

On 1 February 2012 17:38, Stuart West <stuwest at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Feb 1, 2012, at 2:17 PM, Risker wrote:
>
> > it gives the impression that the current three
> > elected members of the board are somehow considered not representative of
> > the movement....  It
> > concerns me a lot that the 97% of active Wikimedians who are not chapter
> > members seem to not be considered part of the movement.
>
> Anne, my personal view is that elections capture the input of a certain
> subset of our community:  those editors who are fairly active and who are
> interested in governance issues.  That subset of our editors is an
> important part of our community.
>
> Having seats appointed by movement organizations like the chapters offers
> a chance to involve of another subset of our community:  those who are
> interested enough in governance issues to get involved in the leadership /
> decision-making of movement organizations. That's also an important subset
> of our community.
>
> But, to your point, neither of these two subsets alone nor the combination
> of the two fully represents our movement.  Many groups are excluded.  For
> example, the "silent majority" of 75,000+ active editors who haven't
> historically voted in elections. Or our 475 million readers. etc., etc.,
> etc.
>
> Governance and suffrage in an online community is really, really hard.  I
> don't think we have the perfect system.  Our current board structure was
> put in place less than 4 years ago.  The one thing I know is that it will
> change as we try new things to make it better.  I want us to continue
> improving it.  And I for one am open to absolutely any suggestion for how
> we can do that.
>
>
I do agree that governance and suffrage is hard; however, it shouldn't
intentionally be designed to give a disproportionate representation (and
essentially double suffrage) to one subset of the community over another.
Chapter members have the opportunity to influence five seats on the Board;
those who are unable (for many variations of "unable") to be chapter
members are only able to influence three seats.

Risker/Anne