On 03/20/11 7:13 AM, FT2 wrote: > That's a different possible category. Should people who do not have capacity > to vote as editors, but are paid-up members of a chapter, be able to vote in > that capacity? (Alternatively, are chapter members' voting rights and > involvement limited to the chapter if they haven't taken part in any wider > activity?) > > I don't have a problem with it, provided their membership is long enough (6+ > months?) before the election. > > There are probably good arguments both ways. A lot depends on personal > philosophy: whether you see the foundation and chapters, as effectively > different arms of the same thing or as distinct. For example, if they are > "different arms of the same thing" then there would be commonsense reasons > to share donor lists (as John Vandenberg raises) as there is no reason why 2 > parts of the same project would withold information from each other. If they > are distinct then paying membership to one may not lead to voting franchise > for the board of the other. There's considerable philosophy here that > spreads far beyond the election, it may be better to discuss it before it's > a problem in any way while it's fresh and malleable, but the board election > isn't really the context to do so.
There are legal issues here too, WMF is not a membership based organization; even those who are elected from the community need to be appointed by those on the existing Board. On the one hand it means that the editors have no legal right to representation on the Board. On the other it allows for an arms length relationship between Board and editors that strengthen its status as an ISP instead of a publisher. The situation is different for chapters; they are legally independent entities founded on the laws of their respective countries. They are often member based organizations, whose legal ties with the WMF are purely contractual within the Chapters Agreement. As such the Agreement cannot override the laws of the chapter's country, and among those laws are privacy provisions which prevent the sharing of membership lists with non-members. Without the ability to share those lists the flow through of voting rights would be impossible. Ray _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
