[Wikimedia-l] Info: Election for WCA Chairperson

[James Alexander]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 12:45 AM, Fae <faewik at gmail.com> wrote:

> @Jan-Bart
> One of the early discussions before agreeing the WCA charter was the
> possibility of automatically counting all legally recognized chapters
> as members. It was felt that this would not result in a credible
> democratic process, indeed the current 21 members are not all very
> active in votes and the current voting pattern shows participation at
> around 2/3 of the members or less in any vote. If we counted all

Chapters, then a quorum would have to be set to be artificially
> low.<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Resolutions/2012_votes
> >
>
> Should any Chapter wish to vote in this election, they need only
> provide a statement to me and then the new Council member sends in a
> statement that they support the charter. The Council member need not
> be on the board of the Chapter. There are no fees, there are no
> specific duties and we are always looking for more light-weight ways
> of handing our processes. Any Council member recognized before the
> vote opens, will be eligible to vote.
>
>
Err .... ok, I'm sorry but this actually moves to the realms of scary. You
require the new Council member to send in a statement ... pledging loyalty
essentially? I don't see anything in the charter that would require
something like that, is it in your remit as chair? Sadly that just sounds
like a way to force out reformers, if you don't support the charter you
can't join the council? How do you expect to get things to change when
necessary?

James