[Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member

[Jan-Bart de Vreede]

yes:

this bit:

"
I don't think it's about childish beliefs about "evil". Money has a real influence, conflicts of interests are a real thing, and opacity at any stage allow abuses. It has been shown countless times in countless situations, empirically and scientifically, that people in power WILL use it to keep it, as much as they can.
When an entity is using its influence to determine who will supervise it, it's a matter of keeping the power of self-determination. You may agree or not with this strategy, but there is no way to lift doubts about the fairness of such appointment and obtain a clean cut legitimacy from such premises.
"

I don't understand what you are trying to say or imply?

Jan-Bart

On Feb 18, 2013, at 3:30 PM, cyrano <cyrano.fawkes at gmail.com> wrote:

> Jan-Bart,
> 
> can you be more specific?
> 
> Cheers
> 
> 
> Le 18/02/2013 10:55, Jan-Bart de Vreede a écrit :
>> Hey
>> 
>> I seriously can't follow this, could you explain?
>> 
>> Jan-Bart
>> 
>> On Feb 18, 2013, at 2:11 PM, cyrano <cyrano.fawkes at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> I don't think it's about childish beliefs about "evil". Money has a real influence, conflicts of interests are a real thing, and opacity at any stage allow abuses. It has been shown countless times in countless situations, empirically and scientifically, that people in power WILL use it to keep it, as much as they can.
>>> When an entity is using its influence to determine who will supervise it, it's a matter of keeping the power of self-determination. You may agree or not with this strategy, but there is no way to lift doubts about the fairness of such appointment and obtain a clean cut legitimacy from such premises.
>>> 
>>> Cheers.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Le 18/02/2013 09:52, Jan-Bart de Vreede a écrit :
>>>> Hi
>>>> 
>>>> Sounded like good intervention, thanks for reminding me :)
>>>> 
>>>> Truth is of course that board Governance Committee is driving this process together with Gayle. That means that multiple community (s)elected board members are involved in the initial screening and that the whole board will be included in the final selection.
>>>> 
>>>> This would also be a good opportunity to make a small point: not all external consultancy is evil :) As a community we tend to be naturally suspicious of people that get paid "a lot" of money for tasks that theoretically "could also be done my the community"… There is a good reason why we sometimes rely on paid external advisors, some of which were given by Gayle.
>>>> 
>>>> m|Oppenheim in particular has been a great partner in WMF hiring with great results, and I hope that they can be as effective in this search (which we hope you can help out with by suggesting good candidates to them)
>>>> 
>>>> Regards
>>>> 
>>>> Jan-Bart
>>>> 
> 
> 
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