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

[John Vandenberg]

if you cant decide whether something is good or bad for the
organisation, you are ill prepared for the vote (a procedural
problem), or you are incompetent.

On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 4:06 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
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-- 
John Vandenberg