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

[cyrano]

Le 18/02/2013 20:35, Nathan a écrit :
> Cyrano - I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature
> of the Board. It is self-perpetuating in every respect; the elections
> are advisory only, and the actual appointment of Board members is
> executed by the existing Board. The organization has no members, and
> no one who is not on the Board has any power or authority to exercise
> over the Board or the WMF. This merely describes the legal reality of
> the WMF and the Board.
>
Nathan, you misunderstood me. We agree on the legal reality that you 
describe. I'm discussing two points: 1) community's majority is not 
guaranteed in the Board of Trustees, and 2) relying on paid third 
parties for the process of appointing one of the five "expert" seats is 
not neutral. Handling and filtering the candidates, and thus the list to 
choose from is a form of influence. Allowing such influence when you 
don't have the majority is a risk for the community.

Le 19/02/2013 04:42, James Alexander a écrit :
> On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:14 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede <
> jdevreede at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> I simply don't agree.
>> a) Chapters are part of the community
>   :-/ To be honest I don't particularly like this meme that the chapter are
> part of the community either. The chapters may be part of the community
> (and so the statement not false) but we use the phrasing in such a way as
> to say that they are more then they are.  There may be a part of the
> community but they are really a very small part of it overall.
Yes, in the best of cases, they are a tiny subset of the user and editor 
community with a strong bias towards political organization, 
administrative responsibilities, decision taking, vote collecting, power 
assuming. Maybe they're needed, I'm not discussing that, but they can't 
impersonate the community as if they were the community.
Their voice is their own. They won't give up their two seats to the 
community because "they're one with the community". They won't, and it 
means that they're different from the community, no matter how you try 
to think about this fact.
They have their own agenda, which may coincide or not with the interests 
of the community at large. There's no guaranty of an alliance. There may 
be conflicts.
Saying that "the community has 5 seats" is thus misleading. It has 3 
seats. Saying that the community has "an absolute majority guaranteed" 
is simply false. Trying to analyze the Board of Trustees and its process 
with the belief that the community's interests are guaranteed is a mistake.

Objectively, the Board of Trustees cannot guarantee a majority to the 
community. Its design makes it vulnerable to other influences, and 
possible schemes, alliances, power struggles and political moves. Maybe 
it's not bad, I don't know. I just think that things should be clear to 
the community, since they're the one being tricked by the words.

My claim is that in a context of no majority guaranteed for the 
community, injecting third parties (which are layers of opacity) and 
money  in the process of appointing new board members is a risk for the 
community.

There is no guaranty that a third party understands or shares the values 
of the community; there is no guaranty that giving it influence over the 
candidatures for five seats will serve the cause of the community. 
That's a risk. I'm not to say if it should be taken or not, but we 
should be aware of that risk. It sounds reasonable to engage the 
scrutiny of the community when such risks are about to be taken.

I would also like to underline that paying someone doesn't necessarily 
make things better done. A professional mercenary has skills, but 
doesn't necessarily share internally the cause of the community, or 
understand it, or even care to know it. In fact, giving money - or any 
other form of power - to someone to execute a task creates money-driven 
goals, which can be in conflict with the ideal-driven goals of the 
community.

That's why in think that the more you rely on third parties or paid 
professional, the more you need to reinforce your control over them. The 
community's control through the Board of Trustees is too weak to 
guarantee its interests, too weak to relinquish power as it's currently 
done and planned.