On 9 May 2016 at 08:19, Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org> wrote:
...
The elimination of the Founder seat, I'm also not
so certain there is broad
agreement. There are doubts though, for sure. And there is also no broad
agreement to keep the seat as it is.
It's simple enough to test "broad agreement" by having a public vote
open for all Wikimedians. Maybe you can kick one off?
And finally, yes, I do think there are many people who
want to 'truly
elect' community representatives. But again, I'm uncertain whether that is
legally possible without turning the structure of the WMF upside down. In a
foundation, the board has the ultimate authority, so to include a rule that
delegates that authority to an vaguely defined group of people is...
tricky.
Not tricky at all. There are *plenty* of other similar organizations
that have elections for their trustees to their boards, including
several Wikimedia chapters/affiliates where their boards have oversite
of many employees and significant sums of money. There is no need to
turn improvement of democratic governance of the WMF board into a
challenging drama that turns the "WMF upside down".
Perhaps we should stop looking for hypothetical excuses to avoid
changing the way the WMF board governs itself, and start to set
targets for the WMF board so that board members take an active part in
leading basic improvement to transparency and accountability in
public, rather than alluding to confidential political horse-trading
in back-rooms. The WMF is not a heated political party, or a
fuddy-duddy old-boys club for people who don't understand simple legal
words, neither should becoming a trustee be seen as a personal honour
that means that asking difficult questions or holding a trustee to
account for their action or inaction is batted away as a personal
attack.
The WMF board is locked into a infectious mind-set that is overripe
for modernization and the removal of ego driven politics. It would be
refreshing to see selfless inspiring board leadership that meets the
public expectations for free open knowledge in the 21st century.
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae