[Foundation-l] Board Resolutions from March 30th 2012

[Thomas Dalton]

On 31 March 2012 05:56, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:
> An abstention is a refusal to vote.  By doing this, a trustee must
> have a good reason, such as conflict of interest, and it should be
> minuted why, or they are refusing the duties of their appointment and
> should be removed.
>
> To often board members choose to abstain rather than oppose, and that
> is a failure to do their duty.  The WMF board has a surprisingly high
> number of unexplained abstains, especially in light of the Values
> including transparency.

I disagree. If, after careful consideration, you are split and can't
decide whether something is a good idea or not, the correct action is
to abstain and let those that do have an opinion make the decision. If
you are abstaining when you are actually opposed and are trying to
avoid conflict rather than act according to your conscience, then that
is failing to do your duty (it is a duty of any trustee to always act
according to their own conscience), but that isn't necessarily what is
happening here.

I suspect the abstentions were because it was a compromise motion, so
they went with a compromise vote. I hope we'll be able to see in the
minutes what individual views actually were. I don't know if they
actually voted on alternative motions, but it would be good if at
least the discussions are properly minuted.