In planning for Wikimedia PA, we tried an approach
that was a little
more variable, to account for the fact that we would start off very
small, and could eventually become very large. Defining a quorum as
something like "10% of active dues-paying membership or 10 persons,
whichever is less" accounts for the fact that the board will grow as
the community grows.
I think you mean "whichever is greater". The model docs already have
the 10% bit in them, you just have to fill in the blank for the "or [
] persons" bit, that's where I'm suggesting 10.
TD suggested
we insert a provision explicitly allowing for IRC board
meetings. Again this seems sensible to me, but we have to be careful
legally.
Again, in WMPA we had allowances for this too because it would be so
difficult to host a meeting at a place where every PA resident could
easily get to. We allowed for members to participate in meetings via
internet, telecommunications, or via authorized proxy. We also allowed
for these things to count towards a quorum: So people who joined in on
IRC or on a conference call or something, or who authorized a voting
proxy counted towards the quorum. This also helps to eliminate the
possibility that an inconvenient meeting place/time will
disenfranchise your members.
You probably won't want to be as liberal as we were trying to be in
this area, but it's food for thought.
I think allowing people to contribute to general meetings remotely
would be a bad idea, it's just too complicated to organise (you just
know you'll spend the first 20 minutes of the AGM saying "can you hear
me now?" over and over). Board meetings should allow any reasonable
form of participation. Allowing proxies is a legal requirement since
the Companies Act 2006 and it already in the model articles.